The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned • Hacker News Board

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#131

Post by quasse » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

snoopy_telex wrote: post #2

Such a weird decision given the results they indicate. Was there any rational thought behind the layoffs beyond giving the metaverse more dollars?

Based on input from my friends at Meta, this is a direct side effect of the way individual performance is quantified.

Each person is required to "excel" along four axes, the two relevant ones for this story are likely "engineering excellence" and "impact"

* "Impact" means you made KPIs go up. Specifically KPIs relating to getting user eyeballs onto content / ads. Reducing costs, designing good systems, reducing developer friction all do not count towards your impact. * "Engineering excellence" is where every other aspect of being a good developer is lumped in. Saved the org $10mm? Sorry, no impact for you, just a point in engineering excellence.

Unfortunately, as you can probably guess "impact" is the weighted the highest when determining the value of an employee. I would guess Eric and his team fell afoul of this aspect of the internal political game at Meta.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#132

Post by giraffe_lady » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

kalkin wrote: post #104

"Everyone was kind, smart, dedicated, thoughtful, generous with their time and knowledge, and a genuine pleasure to work with." I know this is what everyone says after leaving a company if they don't want to burn bridges, and I bet it's even fairly true to Eric's experience. I'm also entirely sympathetic to his frustration with both the immediate experience of being laid off for any reason and the broader large-organ…

This is something I still find as kind of a culture shock on HN honestly. The idea that pursuing work that is personally interesting and remunerative is at worst neutral is basically an in-built assumption here. There is often pretty intense policing of it if there's a whiff of deviation.

FWIW I don't think it's true either. A lot of engineers can be convinced to work on basically anything if it's "a hard problem" in the right way. This is bad. We should all consider ourselves responsible for the end results, rather than entitled to the means.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#133

Post by francisofascii » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #26

I’m probably not as talented as the author, but I can’t relate to this feeling of giving up because some work won’t be used. I have been working for ten years post-PhD and every single product I’ve ever worked on has been canned, sometimes very circuitously via acquisitions. My work is trade secret so I’ve never filed a patent, written a publication, nor given a talk. I have zero outwardly observable accomplishments.…

I don't think Eric is giving up or retiring, just taking a much needed break. We should all look up from our keyboards from time to time to see the bigger picture.

> I need a good long corporate detox before I go looking again.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#134

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #8

Eric Lippert was my hero back when his blog was hosted on MSDN. Sad to see him go into retirement when he's at his prime. Hope he finds some new exciting project.

Given how many greatly appreciated his blog and have been upset at the last few years of Facebook-encouraged radio silence (including myself, Eric Lippert has been a blogger I've looked forward to posts from), even if he were to just fall into the exciting "old" project of blogging regularly again (as his post teases at the bottom), I think that would be a great use of "his prime" and I wouldn't exactly call that a retirement either. Our industry tends to forget, overlook, and/or look down on pedagogy (teaching), but I think it is worthy enough to celebrate a great teacher returning to teaching after lost years away.

I hope, if Eric does need to return to laboring for someone else's company that he does so without restriction to his teaching efforts, as he has seemed to always enjoy that. But I think more fervently I hope that Eric finds out what he wants to do, and if maybe that is teaching that is high calling, often underserved in this industry, and that he can find a fulfilling way to do that on his own terms as his own vocation. That may look like a retirement to a lot of us on HN, but I think there are few things more worthy to be doing with your time than a "hobby" that has clearly already educated a lot of people in threads around here.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#135

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

a4isms wrote: post #108

apohn wrote: post #3

I work in the field of Data Science and one upsetting reality has started to sink into my mind over the last year. In a business there is top line and bottom line. There are a lot Statistics/ML/Data Science jobs that are about moving that bottom line. You build something to optimize something to reduce costs. The value provided by the bottom line people is less visible than the value of top line people. The easiest w…

> It's the same thing as people say about fires. When you put out a fire you are a hero. When you prevent the fire in the first place, everybody thinks it's business as usual and nobody understands why you are needed. I got a dose of very cold water about this thirty years ago when I was building payware that improved developer productivity. I gave a presentation about its ROI, and afterwards, a developer walked up t…

[deleted]

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#136

Post by autotune » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #122

kalkin wrote: post #104

"Everyone was kind, smart, dedicated, thoughtful, generous with their time and knowledge, and a genuine pleasure to work with." I know this is what everyone says after leaving a company if they don't want to burn bridges, and I bet it's even fairly true to Eric's experience. I'm also entirely sympathetic to his frustration with both the immediate experience of being laid off for any reason and the broader large-organ…

I use Facebook to keep in touch with old friends and sometimes people organize events and they invite me on Facebook and it works and makes my life a tiny bit better.

Then you submit a post on FB that none of these old friends or acquaintances like or comment on and wonder why you suddenly feel like a leper afterward.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#137

Post by beambot » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

zemvpferreira wrote: post #120

a4isms wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same thing as people say about fires. When you put out a fire you are a hero. When you prevent the fire in the first place, everybody thinks it's business as usual and nobody understands why you are needed. I got a dose of very cold water about this thirty years ago when I was building payware that improved developer productivity. I gave a presentation about its ROI, and afterwards, a developer walked up t…

It's a trope with some truth to it, but it runs out of steam fairly quickly. Was original facebook a painkiller? Instagram? $1000 iPhone? Liver King? I find it's a useful framework for selling b2b. Even then, desire can win over pain many times. Fear and greed are the real big sellers in b2b anyway.

Youthful hormones and social belonging are pains too... Consumer pains are often more abstract.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#138

Post by i_am_proteus » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

abakker wrote: post #29

apohn wrote: post #3

I work in the field of Data Science and one upsetting reality has started to sink into my mind over the last year. In a business there is top line and bottom line. There are a lot Statistics/ML/Data Science jobs that are about moving that bottom line. You build something to optimize something to reduce costs. The value provided by the bottom line people is less visible than the value of top line people. The easiest w…

Cutting costs is always a marginal thing, because businesses tend to value growth. Oversimplification: If you have a 50% margin business, the value of one more dollar of revenue is $.50. If you cut costs and change the margin to 55%, then you've added only $.05 of revenue to that additional dollar. Now, a sane person will look at the improvements to margin across the whole business and still want to make those improv…

And if you cut costs in a (prospective or current) operating area from 120% of revenue to 90% of revenue, you've opened up an entire new operating area to profitably grow in.

Developing the technology to do a thing profitably that previously could not be done profitably is the stuff unicorns are made of.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#139

Post by daveguy » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

colineartheta wrote: post #60

georgeburdell wrote: post #26

I’m probably not as talented as the author, but I can’t relate to this feeling of giving up because some work won’t be used. I have been working for ten years post-PhD and every single product I’ve ever worked on has been canned, sometimes very circuitously via acquisitions. My work is trade secret so I’ve never filed a patent, written a publication, nor given a talk. I have zero outwardly observable accomplishments.…

How were you able to acquire a PhD without a publication?

> post-PhD

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#140

Post by dnissley » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta...

It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally and there is even a hint of cynicism in what they say, they are frequently called out on it. Never seen such a thing ever before in my life. For me it's refreshing, but I imagine for some, depending on the topic and how negatively they feel about it, it could lead them to spiral and exit.