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

#141

Post by astrange » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:28 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…

What actually happens with vitamins is people love taking them (because they’re colorful and some of them are food preservatives) but there’s like no evidence they have health benefits.

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

#142

Post by astrange » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

matkoniecz wrote: post #130

zemvpferreira wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Was original facebook a painkiller? Instagram? I would say that it was closer to a tasty pizza. It was definitely not fitting either "vitamin" (worth investing for future payoff) or painkiller (solving immediate and urgent need[1]) [1] I guess that hiding/temporary fix is not intended to be part of this allegory

Lots of people run businesses out of their Instagram accounts. Might not be what it was for, but those followers can be valuable.

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

#143

Post by MikusR » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #113

As someone not in the topic the metaverse seems even worse, i.e. it looks like Facebook spent 20 Billion and didn't manage to add anything to VR other small companies haven't added years earlier... I'm probably missing something, but it honestly looks worse then burning money, it looks like extremely inefficiently burning money. Anyway sounded like an interesting work before the team was dissolved.

Good standalone headsets were a thing before Quest?

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

#144

Post by hunter-gatherer » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:30 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…

I've brought this up a few times and the response is usually against me. I feel the same way, although I understand that people need to work and people need to get paid. I've worked jobs that probably had little if any positive net impact on society. I'd contend that net-positive industries are actually a small minority. Just because something provides a consumed/demanded product doesn't mean that it is a net positive, and I think people generally aren't as good at diffentiating between the two.

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

#145

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

UncleOxidant wrote: post #20

> Most of my team has found other positions and I am hopeful that the rest will soon. Wow, I guess I would've figured that it would take people with this kind of background a while to find another gig (working on similar things) in the current environment. So maybe things aren't as bad as they seem? (yet, anyway) > But after >26 years of thinking about programming languages for corporations, and the last three years…

> Wow, I guess I would've figured that it would take people with this kind of background a while to find another gig (working on similar things) in the current environment. So maybe things aren't as bad as they seem? (yet, anyway)

Finding another position doesn't mean finding another equivalent position.

I work for a FAANG right now. If I was getting laid off I would get the first job I could and then keep applying to other companies that are more suitable to the level that I had before.

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

#146

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

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #46

3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference.

If your work is rote crud apps the sure, I can see that. But if your work has been the development, deployment and advocacy of your own ideas and research... thats very different to me, because the level of personal ownership is greater.

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

#147

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

brutus1213 wrote: post #40

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…

I understand the top-line bottom-line divide, but I am not fully convinced if the top-line projects are any safer. Wouldn't another reasonable business strategy be to get rid of all new projects, and only focus on operations-as-is during times of economic uncertainty?

> Wouldn't another reasonable business strategy be to get rid of all new projects

Only if you want to close the company in ten years

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

#148

Post by marcusf » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

ericlippert wrote: post #33

musk_micropenis wrote: post #9

Sorry to hear about the lay-off. I can't stress enough how influential Eric Lippert was on my early career. His work on C# and .NET, but more importantly his openness and engagement with the community played a big part in me continuing on the Microsoft stack. Just jumping into any random month[1] in his blog archive from my formative years is incredible nostalgia for me. It's not the kind of high-concept "a monad is…

Thank you, that's kind of you to say.

Eric, want to echo what folks are saying here. I stumbled on your blog in high school (ca 2003?) and you (and Raymond Chen) fueled so much of my passion for compilers and API design respectively, which dictated both my school choice and at least some career choices later. You were highly influential from afar :)

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

#149

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

I wonder if this is why there's been a spate of open source announcements from Meta. Might just me being sensitive to it, but I can imagine worried team members wanting to give the world some of their work, and/or want to pick up where they left off in another company.

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

#150

Post by htrp » Wed, Nov 30, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #66

Satam wrote: post #62

Author mentions that his team's work saved "millions" of dollars for Meta every year - let's assume that's $10 million. Meta's operating expenses are over $80 billion annually. That's barely one hundredth of a percent in savings for Meta. I'm sure they were doing interesting work otherwise, but it make sense why the team would be considered for cuts if there weren't any breakthroughs on the horizon.

If the team is costing less than $10 million/year, it still makes less sense to let them go.

The savings are already banked (in the code/infrastructure) so you save the headcount cost as well.