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On Leaving Facebook

frantic.im

381–390 of 645 posts

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#381
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think netflix is a moral compromise? What about the US government?

Netflix was pretty neutral until about 4 years ago. Their leadership jumped the shark and the entire platform has been trash since. Side personal note: Fuck you guys for getting rid of stargate.

How is the platform being trash (also arguable) related to employee's moral compromises?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#382
Even though I have 10 years of experience writing, shipping, maintaining and operating production systems for 10k RPS scale and also having OSS contributions in some very popular projects, I'm still intimidated by the LeetCode-style problems.

I'm planning to interview for a large company the coming weeks, and I'm truly disappointed that I struggle even on the Easy level. I guess I never needed to solve such issues in my previous jobs (backend, SRE).

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#383

Even though I have 10 years of experience writing, shipping, maintaining and operating production systems for 10k RPS scale and also having OSS contributions in some very popular projects, I'm still intimidated by the LeetCode-style problems. I'm planning to interview for a large company the coming weeks, and I'm truly disappointed that I struggle even on the Easy level. I guess I never needed to solve such issues in…

Don't worry. 90% of the interview processes are broken. Don't take it too personally :)

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#384

"A common question I get is about work/life balance. And I view it a little different too now. At Facebook I could get by barely working a few hours a day. But the job was so unsatisfying that it spilled the frustration in the “life” part" This is the golden piece for me. I too recently left a big corp to a smaller place, expecting to sacrifice WLB and my free time - yet I ended up feeling happier and spending less t…

> At Facebook I could get by barely working a few hours a day. But the job was so unsatisfying This is a little too first world. if the work were too sparse and wants more work, why not join interview loops or take classes/training, attend talks? Does Meta not have those options? The frustration feels almost artificial, if one does not want to get more work, then maybe just go boating or mountain biking. Watch some s…

Any job ive had regardless of pay, regardless of how good its been for how long, what the job market is like... after about 5-10 minutes wondering if I am adding value I will look for another.

I have one life, I need to have money to live but thats easy, actually having a positive impact is a reason to do something for someone else.

I dont necessarily apply but its its all i am thinking about untill I have value to add again: what am I doing here?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>were hit with antitrust litigation starting around 2010 because they were all involved in colluding to reduce the ability of devs to switch jobs I didn't know that, really interesting detail. >no one wants to admit they don't know what they are doing. Interesting perspective, though I don't know about the vodoo part. They seem to be taking the matter quite seriously, at least google does. Take the matter of competit…

Oh, definitely. I'm sure they do take it seriously. I just don't believe taking it seriously to be the same as actually producing results. Managers still take OKRs/KPIs seriously. There are still people that believe in the healing power of Agile. If any of these companies knew what they were doing then they wouldn't require multiple interview rounds. I expect the correlation between one's ability to perform at Google…

Well, i have worked at Amazon, for less than a year; My rather limited impression was, that this is a very dysfunctional organization. Now if this impression is correct, then the leetcode appoach has some merrit; the leetcode approach would select for people, who stick to the technical part in the narrow sense of the word, and who would not question the state of things too much.

But I guess, that this is all speculation..

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#386
This is an amazing piece of writing. I’m grateful to the author for publishing it, and for the poster bringing it to HN. It’s heartening to see high quality writing on a personal blog. Definitely subscribing.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#387

Even though I have 10 years of experience writing, shipping, maintaining and operating production systems for 10k RPS scale and also having OSS contributions in some very popular projects, I'm still intimidated by the LeetCode-style problems. I'm planning to interview for a large company the coming weeks, and I'm truly disappointed that I struggle even on the Easy level. I guess I never needed to solve such issues in…

Don't worry. 90% of the interview processes are broken. Don't take it too personally :)

I'd like to hear more about the 10% that are not broken :)

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#388
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about someone being hired that couldn’t write simple code. It’s easy to study leet code, and it’s relevant because it shows the interviewer you can write code. I’ve had non-leet code interviews, like write some feature in 60minutes. It was fine. It tests code and knowledge as opposed to just algorithms and tricks. I dunno I’ve always felt that the people who can’t leet code are the…

> It’s easy to study leet code, and it’s relevant because it shows the interviewer you can write code. I have a million things I want to learn about. If a potential employer would rather I spend time on what amounts to trivia, then great, I don’t want to work there. > I’ve had non-leet code interviews, like write some feature in 60minutes. This is also a problem because it’s impossible to understand the constraints,…

“Ask about a project” proves I understand the final implementation, but not whether I could or did choose that approach or design it myself, nor how long it took and how many false starts we had.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#389
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s one thing to state your values and non-negotiables, and it’s another to seem arrogant and sanctimonious about it. To me, your comment appears to be firmly in the latter. If that truly is the case, hope you figure out what you are resentful about because, unbeknownst to you, it is alienating those who see such language. I agree with your values but I would still think twice about working with you based on the com…

> to seem arrogant and sanctimonious about it. I’m firm, firm in my belief that the people who have chosen of their own free will to work for FAANG have made moral compromises that disqualify them from my employment. I don’t get how this is “sanctimonious”. These people have made some absolutely terrible life choices, and alienation is a part of the consequence package that comes with those life choices.

There are some people, especially say 10+ years ago, who thought e.g. Google wasn't evil.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#390
post #372

"everyday life it’s still very prestigious place to be working at. Getting a mortgage or a car loan is easy, saying you work for Facebook gets you on the fast line." I once felt that way but after leaving FAANG years later, I realized how snobby something like this would sound.

> a car loan Is it normal for a software engineer (or anybody who could afford it after saving for a few months) to get a loan to buy a car in the US? Is it worth it financially? Or is it to improve credit scores, maybe?

Money’s cheap. Why wouldn’t you take a low interest loan and invest the leftover money yourself? Car is the worst investment you can do anyway.
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