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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#201

Post by gulugawa »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #69

This sounds bad to say, but it's difficult to feel bad for any meta engineers who lost their jobs. You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet. Former employees will deflect and make the comparison to United Fruit workers, despite the obvious difference in employee-optionality and influence. You made your bed. I hope you…

As someone who quit their corporate tech job to focus on community building work, I don't think finding better job is that simple.

Nowadays, when I look at job listings, practically all of them are for companies that are ethically compromised in some way. They are overusing generative AI or building products that are having a negative impact on society.

One of the worst examples I saw was a software engineer job posting from my previous employeer that builds cloud-based physical security systems for buildings.The job requires the use of AI. I wouldn't trust a security system that randomly decides to unlock the front door to my house because of a hallucination.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#202

Post by butlike »

aantix wrote: post #174
throwarayes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it says more about Metas inability to create new products or make investments. Look at their big growth areas. They acquired instagram and WhatsApp. Threads seems successful(?) but is an extension of instagram. Mostly they’ve just gotten better at weaponizing rage bait. Which I’d argue, long term, will be a losing strategy. If this were a healthy culture, with all the people working there, Zuck would have pro…

Never understood why Facebook hasn't implemented the 'Explain this post' type feature that you see on X (@grok). Facebook seems to be the most misinformed audience - an LLM fact checker would be a great addition.

The scales are different. FB has far and away more users. Could you imagine the headlines? "AI tool now thought police for articles on Facebook"

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#203

Post by alpha-male-swe »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #69

This sounds bad to say, but it's difficult to feel bad for any meta engineers who lost their jobs. You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet. Former employees will deflect and make the comparison to United Fruit workers, despite the obvious difference in employee-optionality and influence. You made your bed. I hope you…

you shouldnt feel bad for them because they are smart and could get a job at meta (unlike you)

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#204

Post by PaulHoule »

rozap wrote: post #196
PaulHoule wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram hasn't updated its web application in years -- leaving out the filters which I don't use, unfunded Mastodon has an easier, faster and more reliable interface to upload photos.

My experience is a bit different. They constantly update it and make it more unusable. At this point it's totally broken. Occasionally I open it, it loads for 30 seconds, I have a notification icon for a post I saw a month ago, then my feed shows the same picture of a guy I follow driving his rally car, which was posted several months ago, then I log off. It's truly bizarre what they've managed to do.

That's back end. With the money they make they could have rewritten the front end so it doesn't have to reload everything whenever you upload an image.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#205

Post by skizm »

jmuguy wrote: post #100

I do think you have to admire how almost comically insane Zuckerberg is to do stuff like this. If Facebook was being run by someone normal what would happen is it would spend the next 20 years pissing away everything slowly as social media advertising became less and less relevant. But not with Zuckerberg at the helm. He will burn that place to the ground trying to find some way to remain important. Its surprising th…

Their advertising revenue grew 33% YoY last earnings call. They're literally making so much money they don't know what to do with it so they plow it into each new fad as to not miss out if this one happens to be a new billion user business. This is in addition to returning capital to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#206

Post by gulugawa »

nine_k wrote: post #117
jazzpush2 wrote: post #69

This sounds bad to say, but it's difficult to feel bad for any meta engineers who lost their jobs. You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet. Former employees will deflect and make the comparison to United Fruit workers, despite the obvious difference in employee-optionality and influence. You made your bed. I hope you…

Truth be told, the Meta engineering organization created PyTorch and React. I won't color any large entity uniformly bad at all times and aspects.

I agree that Meta is not uniformly bad, but I would not consider React to be a great tool. Every React project I worked on has turned into an unmaintainable pile of spaghetti.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#208

Post by gulugawa »

pjmlp wrote: post #190
jazzpush2 wrote: post #69

This sounds bad to say, but it's difficult to feel bad for any meta engineers who lost their jobs. You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet. Former employees will deflect and make the comparison to United Fruit workers, despite the obvious difference in employee-optionality and influence. You made your bed. I hope you…

You mean like React? Agreed, what a damage to the world.

React is an overcomplicated mess made popular by manufactured consent.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#209

Post by dylan604 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #138
fabian2k wrote: post #4

> 30-50% of engineers on core teams have been forcefully reassigned to data labeling and RLHF, upsetting folks even more. This really doesn't sound believable to me, but who knows with all the craziness going on. Software developers in the US are seriously expensive, using them for data labeling would be a waste of resources. And the percentage sounds very high, unless "core teams" is only a small subset of the total…

Silicon Valley strikes again? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS-qZO9uCQ

I still use the phrase "not a hot dog" to describe things that only does one thing while described as having a lot more capabilities

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#210

Post by gulugawa »

fzeroracer wrote: post #178
thepryz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but your rant comes from a place of naive privilege when you assume meta engineers all had options. I know a number of people that accepted roles with companies they vowed never to work for after being laid off and unemployed for a year. The reality is that when you look at tech in abroad context, there really are very few ethical and/or noble companies.

There are plenty of options. I for example am one of those unemployed engineers that has been looking for a job for about a year now. Meta recruiters have came to me trying to poach me, and I've said no every time. The reality is that more engineers need to be able to grow a spine, have longer term thinking and actually stand their ground when it comes to these companies. You could not pay me enough money to work at…

What options?
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