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“This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

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Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#81

Post by flyinRyan »

anonymous592053 wrote: post #35
anonymous592053 wrote: post #34

> This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook. My > experience here has been incredibly transformative: I joined > Facebook after dropping out of college having never faced the > challenges that I've seen during my time here. At this point, I've > worked through these challenges for longer than 4/5 of the people at > the company and thought I would share some of my insights in hopes > that other engineer…

[Continuing because of HN's length restrictions] > In the code base that you live in, you quickly develop an > understanding of how the components fit together. Use this > knowledge: instead of only fixing a bug you're assigned, consider > how you can prevent that class of bug from ever happening > again. Instead of implementing a new feature, consider how you can > create a common abstraction between the new and old…

This sounds more like what I would expect working at Facebook to be like.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#82

Post by alttab »

calinet6 wrote: post #75
anon12345678 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that working on those projects was a privilege and that we had to perform at our jobs (minus any output from hackathons) before we could work on the stuff we wanted to. I think it's a sensible strategy. Hackathons do keep engineers on the edge and excited about work, but you want to avoid it distracting from the core focus too much.

Hackathons are bullshit, period. If you're working, producing anything of value to the company, even if that be simply "worker engagement," it better be on company time. Simple as that.

Agreed. Unpaid labor is not "culture" its slavery.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#83

Post by [deleted] »

alttab wrote: post #80
smegel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, quite a few similar stories. I wonder how indicative they are of fb as a whole, or just particular teams. Does anyone have any positive experiences to relay?

Gotta love a social company run by a kid that was so incapable of making friends he had to build a website and make everyone want to be there.

[deleted]

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#84

Post by myko »

alttab wrote: post #80
smegel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, quite a few similar stories. I wonder how indicative they are of fb as a whole, or just particular teams. Does anyone have any positive experiences to relay?

Gotta love a social company run by a kid that was so incapable of making friends he had to build a website and make everyone want to be there.

I think this is a bit unfair. I'm not sure you know Mark well enough to know that.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#85

Post by gridmaths »

eyeareque wrote: post #69
anonymous592053 wrote: post #34

> This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook. My > experience here has been incredibly transformative: I joined > Facebook after dropping out of college having never faced the > challenges that I've seen during my time here. At this point, I've > worked through these challenges for longer than 4/5 of the people at > the company and thought I would share some of my insights in hopes > that other engineer…

I disabled my Facebook account over a month ago. It was tough to do at first, but as time went by I felt much happier about being disconnected. I've enjoyed having less distractions and false reassurances. I no longer need to keep up with everyday posts from people I don't know that well or rarely see. In this time away from the site I've realized that real friends will still be your friends even if you don't have a…

I tend to agree, and read recently that young people feel its no longer hip but are kind of locked in [ how I felt leaving M$ dev products for open source back when ]

I use FB periodically, and recently quite a few things in the UI dont seem to function [ logical bugs as opposed to say whether I like the feature design ]

I see this as a kind of bitrot setting in, maybe its just hard for large organisations to continue to innovate. Maybe it needs to move more slowly and focus on polish/robustness now. Do people like FB feature changes? I've found them to be annoying with no added value as a user.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#86

Post by specialist »

anonfbemp wrote: post #40
anonymous592053 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Continuing because of HN's length restrictions] > In the code base that you live in, you quickly develop an > understanding of how the components fit together. Use this > knowledge: instead of only fixing a bug you're assigned, consider > how you can prevent that class of bug from ever happening > again. Instead of implementing a new feature, consider how you can > create a common abstraction between the new and old…

I can confirm the same experience as a non-engineer. I worked in a group that was not engineering, and had the same schizophrenic experience with respect to what I was told was the culture, what was expected and what the reality was. The culture of facebook is that of a pretentious enclave of people who think that simply their being at facebook is validation of their any actions or motivations. While the benefits of…

Ambiguous rules, ruthlessly enforced. Been there, been done like that.

Swimming With Sharks captures the pathos pretty well, for hollywood. Definitely painful to watch. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114594

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#87

Post by pseut »

masklinn wrote: post #65
nilkn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting they effectively treat the first six weeks of employment as little more than an "extended interview" and fire anybody who doesn't make their cultural fit in that time frame?

That seems acceptable though it's really shitty if you end up not making the cut. FWIW most european countries allow 1-6 months probation periods (for non-temp jobs, temp jobs have either no probation or much shorter ones). During probation, either side can terminate the contract without most of the restrictive clauses applying, it's essentially a short period of "at-will" to check fit between the company and the new…

It's one thing if it's made clear that there's a probationary period; I've worked in (non-tech) companies where that was the case, although very different than what's been portrayed above.

If it's not clear that's the case, which seems to have been the case in these anecdotes, it would be pretty unacceptable.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#88

Post by bcbrown »

calinet6 wrote: post #75
anon12345678 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that working on those projects was a privilege and that we had to perform at our jobs (minus any output from hackathons) before we could work on the stuff we wanted to. I think it's a sensible strategy. Hackathons do keep engineers on the edge and excited about work, but you want to avoid it distracting from the core focus too much.

Hackathons are bullshit, period. If you're working, producing anything of value to the company, even if that be simply "worker engagement," it better be on company time. Simple as that.

I like the way my company does it. We have periodical "hack weeks", where for the entire work week, you can work on whatever you want that's at least loosely related to company technology or objectives.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#89

Post by fizzbar »

officemonkey wrote: post #67
masklinn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems acceptable though it's really shitty if you end up not making the cut. FWIW most european countries allow 1-6 months probation periods (for non-temp jobs, temp jobs have either no probation or much shorter ones). During probation, either side can terminate the contract without most of the restrictive clauses applying, it's essentially a short period of "at-will" to check fit between the company and the new…

New federal government employees also have to serve a 1-year "probation" where they can be let go for pretty much no reason. I've seen agencies exercise that right rarely, but it does happen.

I'd suspect that in more "mature" working environments the probation period is used more as a fail-safe mechanism, as opposed to being integral to the actual hiring process (which is what it sounds like at FB).

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#90

Post by dustingetz »

understand temporary solutions and the priorities that necessitate them, but don't accept a decision that you feel is wrong without raising the issue and getting a better understanding. This is your company (your garden) and if you let people pull in the wrong direction the entire plan will fall into disarray.

i'm interested in hearing experiences about what happens when you actually achieve this level of control. I love my garden so much, and have been given sufficient responsibility over it, that I care very much when people pull in the wrong direction. Refusing to accept incorrect decisions -- decisions that will absolutely cause technical debt, overtime, and significant stress and a smaller bonus for us all later in the product lifecycle -- can lead to some interesting and complex social dynamic and this is the biggest thing I struggle with today. Its actually even more complicated because while I feel I am usually correct (who doesn't), there are times when I'm wrong and there are other times where I don't realize I'm wrong.

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