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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#281

Post by hintymad »

> Managers inside Meta “fight” over the pay packets of their employees, which involves “knocking down” the packet of engineers on other teams

> Quotas are handed down to managers for the splits of the workforce to be put in each ‘bucket’, and the internal politics gets heated as managers try to get their reports into higher buckets.

Curious, why can't the management assigns budgets (or resources in general) to individual teams? That is, it is the managers who are responsible for the resources that their teams get, and the budget is tied to the importance of the "team" that each manager owns. In that way, all the performance review will be local to each team. As a manager, I'd be responsible for the output and importance of my team, and I answer to my manager because they will allocate the budget (or resources in general). Recursively, my team members will answer to me and I don't have to justify who gets rewarded by how much to my peers, except that there will be some form of check and balances.

How Meta manages their perf review seems to set up their managers to be ineffective.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#282

Post by klipklop »

klipklop wrote: post #39
_rsg3 wrote: post #17

[deleted]

> my manager has no idea who I am, nor what I’m working on, and I’ve never met them despite me being on the team for nearly two months. This is the fast track to being next in a round of layoffs. If your manager does not know you, they won’t vouch for you when it comes time to toss people out of the airlock. You are in a vulnerable position.

Looks like the Facebook employee got scared. They always keep quiet…

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#283

Post by torben-friis »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #257

I think the gloating in this thread is very misguided. Meta is evil, sure, but that's not the point. The point is that this kind of AI psychosis might be the new normal for our industry, or at least one of the new normals. My last workplace absolutely did a jump in toxicity when the CEO got obsessed with AI, instituted token leaderboards, told us all to drop all non-AI work for a time, etc. We were no Meta.

I think it's just one more show of how addicted to the algorithm people are.

The difference here is that this particular wave of propaganda hits people whose actions have deep effects on their industries, so their unreasonable actions are far more visible.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#284

Post by torben-friis »

ironman1478 wrote: post #70

Having worked at meta, something I noticed is that the orgs that were well run were ones that were bought. WhatsApp, reality, insta, etc. I worked in an org that was not associated with those products and was purely homegrown and it was awful. Things got done but horribly inefficiently due to over hiring and extreme requirement and schedule shifts. I believe that the cultures that were developed outside of Meta are u…

Probably well run compared to the rest of meta, not to the versions of themselves pre acquisition. Whatsapp is worsening by the day.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#285

Post by jazzpush2 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #223
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…

Id honestly wager that at you and most of the people who are agreeing with you in the comments don't make the meta SDE salary, and if offered the 300k/year positions at Meta, even for a limited time, you would absolutely take it And you would be stupid not to. One one hand, you can be that guy that says you declined a Meta job, and be stuck at your current salary level, watching people make more money around you, and…

I work at a frontier lab and have rejected Meta interviews (for much higher salary) many times over the years.

And BMW meetups are not good ways to meet high-salary people. Likely the exact opposite.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#286

Post by smrtinsert »

ironman1478 wrote: post #70

Having worked at meta, something I noticed is that the orgs that were well run were ones that were bought. WhatsApp, reality, insta, etc. I worked in an org that was not associated with those products and was purely homegrown and it was awful. Things got done but horribly inefficiently due to over hiring and extreme requirement and schedule shifts. I believe that the cultures that were developed outside of Meta are u…

If its any consolation, it doesn't work. Just from reading about the company and watching its business operating principles and innovation track record, its very clear what is going on inside - at least from someone with experience in the overall tech industry.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#287

Post by vkou »

hintymad wrote: post #281

> Managers inside Meta “fight” over the pay packets of their employees, which involves “knocking down” the packet of engineers on other teams > Quotas are handed down to managers for the splits of the workforce to be put in each ‘bucket’, and the internal politics gets heated as managers try to get their reports into higher buckets. Curious, why can't the management assigns budgets (or resources in general) to indivi…

Because that would give managers too much agency. You aren't supposed to get that agency until you are director. Managers manage people and get headcount. Directors manage money and get budgets.

That agency has a price, though. Whatever level you get it at, your boss will not give a single crap about any excuses for why you didn't deliver. A meteor could have hit your building, and it wouldn't matter.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#288

Post by smrtinsert »

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…

This reads like a way to get engineers to quit while they work on something "useful". After losing Yann, I doubt its going to end up being useful.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#289

Post by JacobAsmuth »

svachalek wrote: post #251
ironman1478 wrote: post #70

Having worked at meta, something I noticed is that the orgs that were well run were ones that were bought. WhatsApp, reality, insta, etc. I worked in an org that was not associated with those products and was purely homegrown and it was awful. Things got done but horribly inefficiently due to over hiring and extreme requirement and schedule shifts. I believe that the cultures that were developed outside of Meta are u…

I had a similar experience at Google, they were so convinced they were the only good engineering company in the world and had to protect themselves from all the wrong-thinkers outside and yet the only progress they made was via acquisitions.

You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#290

Post by jazzyjackson »

JacobAsmuth wrote: post #289
svachalek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience at Google, they were so convinced they were the only good engineering company in the world and had to protect themselves from all the wrong-thinkers outside and yet the only progress they made was via acquisitions.

You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

It’s doing a great job making sure I know where Burger King is when zooming into a city
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