Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 566 posts

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#431

Post by bennyelv »

ffsm8 wrote: post #308
zmmmmm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to judge culture during a period of serial downsizing because it will always be toxic in that context. But what you tell aligns with what I have inferred over a period of many years observing, even during times when they were growing: at a high level, Zuck gives the right signals of a successful tech CEO. He's smart, insightful, talks well (now) and appears decisive and willing to back long term bets into…

He is the owner though. If zuck wanted, he could solve it. Decimate middle management, downsize at a level of what musk did to Twitter and then _slowly rebuilt_ in order to pay attention to the culture this time, removing anyone that takes part in such behavior... The company would be worth more (because smaller headcount) and likely even ship more, because the culture would be better.. I've never worked at Facebook…

Why is the problem assumed to be middle management? Maybe middle management is the only thing preventing the company going from successful dumpster fire to unsuccessful dumpster fire…

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#432

Post by mdavid626 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #399
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #392

"Many workers immediately revolted. In online comments, they blasted the tracking as a privacy violation, ..." “How do we opt out?” - Meta employee Poetic justice, or "dogfooding"

You can opt out by clicking through those 9 pages, each with a confusing form and buttons. And on the next update we either just enable it again and make you go through the process again :)

...and at the end of the 9 pages you'll be added to the list of employes to let go next time layoff happen.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#433

Post by kelnos »

cybercatgurrl wrote: post #313
georgemcbay wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best PR is not being an asshole. I wonder if he's thought about it. There are a lot of people in the world who lack basic human empathy to such an extent that it is nearly impossible for them to just not be an asshole. I don't know for sure if this applies to Mark Zuckerberg but based on all the second-hand anecdotal information I've heard about him "empathy" as he understands it is a product branding feature r…

hard to do anything about when it’s in your genetics. it’s a form of neurodivergence just like any other. and to deny it is just furthering the stigma against people with high cognitive empathy and low affective empathy

Then perhaps people like that shouldn't be in charge of a company like Meta.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#434

Post by kelnos »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #370
asveikau wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago when following what Zuckerberg did occupied more space in my brain, it struck me that he can "hate leakers" but not look inward and change his behavior in a way that doesn't upset people and make them want to leak. He is a very reactionary guy, and not a "how can I be the change" or "what did I do to cause this" kind of guy. I thought of this during his various scandals at the end of the 2010s. Everything w…

He probably has the same thing as Elon Musk, aspbergers to be honest. Eh I just looked it up, and apparently he does. Come to think of it, maybe Steve Jobs as well, he was insanely eccentric.

"Eccentric" != "Asperger's"

(As an aside, Asperger's is not diagnosed anymore; it's been folded into autism spectrum disorder.)

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#435

Post by kelnos »

sidcool wrote: post #427

I still cannot fathom how Zuck continues to be the CEO after burning billions into misadventures. The Meta board must really like him.

The board has no choice; while Zuck doesn't have majority economic ownership, he has majority voting rights.

If the board fires him, he'll simply fire the board, hire a new board, and have them re-hire him.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#436

Post by epsteingpt »

Meta employees as a whole are highly insecure, both from a job security and a 'status' perspective. People jump ship to the latest thing (which was the Metaverse, now is the internal AI lab).

There's a massive restructuring going on - layoffs, reorgs - and an even more ruthless performance bar.

The internal spying is common across companies. The extent would shock most 'big company' employees.

The realization and angst IMO is more that the days of extremely great comp, job security (even if you're good) and career progression is over at Meta unless they figure this pivot out.

What will social media become when influencers aren't a thing, and "creators" is no longer a moat.

You imagine Mark must be sweating bullets right now, along with the rest of media.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#437

Post by ProfessorLayton »

treis wrote: post #100
Ifkaluva wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the difference between 200k/year and 800k/year didn't feel much day to day (other than the ability to buy a house or something, and feel safe with a retirement nest egg) I can’t believe I read this sentence, lol. 800k is the ability to buy a house and support a family on a single income. Do you see so many people lamenting the days when this was possible? So many memes about the lifestyle Homer Simpson could provid…

The real difference between 800k and 200k is the ability to work for 5 year and make 200k off interest for the rest of your life.

800k for 5y taxed at salary rates will not net you 200k/yr in perpetuity. Not even close. And certainly not in real dollars.

Assuming you manage to save every penny.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#439

Post by smrtinsert »

epsteingpt wrote: post #436

Meta employees as a whole are highly insecure, both from a job security and a 'status' perspective. People jump ship to the latest thing (which was the Metaverse, now is the internal AI lab). There's a massive restructuring going on - layoffs, reorgs - and an even more ruthless performance bar. The internal spying is common across companies. The extent would shock most 'big company' employees. The realization and ang…

From the third party perspective, it feels like gambling to me. I can't imagine being ok with knowing everything keystroke you make is being tracked to train a model, most likely to replace you. I can't imagine ever wanting to work there, thought that for a long time. "It's full of brilliant people". Well, the profession is quite honestly, there are plenty of places to work.

Re: Meta's embrace of AI is making its employees miserable

#440

Post by scabby »

jijji wrote: post #269

Facebook the web site reminds me of a really bad implementation of MySpace. MySpace was better, even in 2003. There are hundreds of usability bugs that exist on various parts of the platform that for over a decade remain unfixed. For a company that has 78,000 employees, you would think one of them might want to dig in and fix the web interface bugs. What's weird is in the age of Claude Code, it would probably take on…

What come to the UI bugs, I don’t think the users was never really in their focus in the sense of usability. Users are there only to make profit.
Post reply on HN