[HN Gopher] Facebook employees are now more willing to leave, te...
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Facebook employees are now more willing to leave, tech recruiters
say
Author : evo_9
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-11-14 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I have to wonder if job satisfaction at Facebook has a very
| binomial distribution. This is pretty much true at any large
| corp, where there can be a ton of variation between teams, but
| from the outside looking in it seems that Facebook basically has
| a dichotomy:
|
| On one hand you have teams working on interesting and industry-
| leading tech, like React, GraphQL, Oculus, etc. But on the other
| you have _legions_ of people working to make the money machine
| printing, and I 've got to think most of that work sucks: the
| nitty-gritty of keeping the site up, content moderation teams,
| all the ad plumbing. A lot of that stuff would be good for a new
| grad to learn how stuff works at such large scale, but that's the
| cohort who I think would be most turned off by Facebook's
| social/brand problems.
| treyfitty wrote:
| I think you mean bimodal. Binomial is something else completely
| civilized wrote:
| Indeed, binomial distributions are quite unimodal!
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Lol, thanks, Sunday morning brain fart.
| pm90 wrote:
| This is the case with most tech firms. Unless you're hired
| specifically to work on OSS stuff, your likely job role is
| "boring" stuff. If you're really good and deliver consistently,
| you get to work on projects with increasing scope and impact,
| and if you build a custom solution for a unique problem you
| face, you may open source it and it might end up solving other
| peoples problems...
| [deleted]
| sbrother wrote:
| I think it depends on the person. I have worked on "fun" tech
| at startups but ended up coming back to my role as a cog in
| Google's money printing machine (ad plumbing AND content
| moderation in fact!) The retention in my group is actually
| pretty great; it's trivial to have tremendous impact so career
| progression is fairly easy, and work-life balance is very
| reasonable. Personally I'm more motivated by this sort of
| environment and the ability to (slowly) make improvements that
| affect millions of companies and billions of people, than I am
| by hacking on greenfield tech that may or may not see users.
| But I know plenty of people who feel the opposite (as you
| allude to), and this sort of role wouldn't be a great fit for
| them.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > But on the other you have legions of people working to make
| the money machine printing, and I've got to think most of that
| work sucks: the nitty-gritty of keeping the site up, content
| moderation teams, all the ad plumbing.
|
| From technical point of view, things like keeping such a huge
| site up, or building ads backend can be very rewarding for
| infrastructure minded folks.
| uptheroots wrote:
| Very true, lots of fun distributed systems problems can be
| found working in infrastructure for FAANG companies.
| platz wrote:
| There is no such thing as Facebook employees.
|
| * Why the downvotes?
| [deleted]
| electrondood wrote:
| I assume downvotes are because you seem to be equivocating
| based on the recent rebranding.
| otterley wrote:
| Because to the general population there clearly is such a
| thing. The changing of the parent company name is a detail that
| most people just don't care about. And I believe Facebook
| remains a subsidiary of the new parent company that is writing
| its own separate paychecks.
|
| Finally, comments such as these don't really add any value to
| the discussion.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| When you have a large company that recruits in large part on
| comp, perks, security, and prestige, over time that will destroy
| the company culture no matter how good it was at the start.
| Because you're gonna attract bland, boring, competent but
| mediocre people by recruiting on those things, and their mid-tier
| mindsets will gradually pollute and dilute everything that might
| have been remarkable about the place in the early days. At some
| point it gets bad enough that even the mid-tier people want to
| leave because the culture and work have gotten too boring even
| for them, or the prestige/security side has eroded
| because,...well, because too many people like them have been
| there for too long. This problem isn't unique to Facebook...all
| the FAANG type companies share it to various degrees. It is
| ridiculous and shameful to blame Zuck. Zuck has fed and clothed
| half this industry for most of two decades
| whatshisface wrote:
| For most companies, getting people to care about the mission is
| impossible due to labor alienation ("we're working on creating
| fake test data for companies that provide cloud services for
| payroll automation for cloud service companies that vend fake
| test data"), and comp, perks, security and prestige are all you
| can offer.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Let's say you work for one of these companies - how do you tell
| whether you are one of the good ones or one of the "bland,
| boring, competent but mediocre" ones? And are there any
| companies out there right now that are still chock full of good
| people?
| whatshisface wrote:
| The test is really simple. Let's imagine that tomorrow you
| doubled your positive impact on the success of the company as
| a whole. Will your boss be twice as happy with you? If not,
| progression is basically political, or maybe in some cases
| based on the skillful execution of tasks unrelated to
| anything valuable, and people who are very friendly or are
| very unconcerned with the company they're working for (and
| consequently will not be bothered by wasting enormous amounts
| of brainpower on achieving pointless goals), respectively,
| will fill out the ranks in very little time.
|
| It is not that uncommon for the first step in success to be
| forgetting about what the company ostensibly exists to do to
| make room for the misaligned incentives, whatever they may
| be, that determine what it actually does. That's the
| essential element of the big company malaise. Anyone can be
| mediocre if they're not trying, or if they're trying
| extremely hard to do something that's ultimately pointless.
| david38 wrote:
| This simply isn't true. What attracts bad people is things like
| lack of promotion
| civilized wrote:
| Some people are excited about Oculus and the metaverse, but I
| can't stomach the idea of FB-owned VR. Social media already feels
| like a parasite and a drug thanks to FB, and putting an Oculus on
| feels like wrapping the vampire squid right across my face.
| werber wrote:
| I wonder how much is from being fatigued from friends. If I see
| news I don't like about any company I call whoever I'm friends
| with there to see what the tea is, but I might be a weirdo
| Capira wrote:
| just because Mark's visions are dystopian nightmares ?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| On the one hand, is this surprising? Once you get as big as FB,
| it is inevitable that it is no longer the same kind of work
| environment as it was when it was a hot startup or a new titan.
| FB is not new. It is no doubt changing on account of that,
| because the way the world reacts to it is changing. They wanted
| to start their own currency, which many startups do, but because
| they were FB, the governments of the world made it clear they
| would not be allowed to succeed in that. When you are big, you
| cannot "move fast and break things" without triggering a much
| larger backlash from the world around you, and this inevitably
| means you don't move as fast.
|
| On the other hand, I don't doubt that they are going to have to
| worry more about work-life balance and things like that, because
| they cannot just use their status as the new titan to recruit
| with (because they're no longer new). So, like many no-longer-new
| tech titans before them, they will have to change how they
| recruit and retain. FB is now more like Microsoft, IBM, or Intel
| than it is like the FB of old.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| People may be more willing to hop, but they'll be able find new
| hires. Check out the number of applicants to any "Meta" job
| opening on LinkedIn.
| bogwog wrote:
| Any automatic apply feature is going to get flooded with job
| applications. Those LinkedIn job posts all have an "Easy Apply"
| button.
| foepys wrote:
| Everybody compensating like FAANG does will find new hires. The
| question is: are they the best?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Competing question: Do you need the best?
|
| Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are built. They have their
| management systems and structures in place. It would be wrong
| to think that everyone at Facebook needs to be a genius for
| the company to succeed, and putting a genius into many of the
| roles that are needed to keep the company operating won't
| work out well for either the genius or the company.
| foepys wrote:
| Once you switch to maintenance mode, you have already lost.
| You will always need to innovate and for this you need
| smart people with good ideas and talent to make it work.
| waltbosz wrote:
| One of the recent thought experiments I've been pondering: "What
| if there was a blacklist that you would join by taking/continuing
| employment at facebook?"
|
| The idea being that companies would agree to a pact in which they
| would blacklist anyone who works for facebook. What would be the
| consequences?
|
| Some sub-questions:
|
| 1. Would a blacklist be legal? Do employment laws prohibit hiring
| decisions based on one's prior employment?
|
| 2. Would companies agree to join the pact? 2.a If tech workers
| were unionized, would the union have any power to persuade
| companies to join a pact?
|
| 3. What effect would a functioning blacklist have on facebook?
|
| * The only effect I can thing of is FB would have to start paying
| more to retain/attract employees.
|
| ....
|
| This is all just a thought experiment. A what-if question. I'm
| not seriously proposing a blacklist. I'm just curious about what
| would happen if one where implemented.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| I guess the consequence would be to have a list of pretty good
| engineer at (maybe) lower prices for other companies, which
| would results in a competitive disadvantage.
|
| It would also probably have a chilling effect on other
| potential hires : I know that I would think twice to work for a
| company that has this kind of blacklist. And if they do have a
| blacklist, I would think it thrice if they put in a company
| like Facebook, when other companies have a way more disastrous
| effect on the world in general, even if there is more publicity
| about facebook at the moment.
|
| Finally, it would definitely be illegal to have at least
| european people on this list, but hopefully it would also be
| illegal in other jurisdictions.
| erehweb wrote:
| What incentive would any individual company have to join such a
| blacklist? Re 1, California says you can't refuse to hire
| someone because of criminal history
| (https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/discrimination/ban-the-
| bo...), so refusing to hire b/c they worked for FB sounds like
| it would be doubtful.
| waltbosz wrote:
| I didn't really imagine any sort of incentive to join the
| pact. The motivation to join would be something akin to a
| protest against facebook's product. The goal would be to make
| it more difficult for facebook's product to exist.
|
| I did consider laws that prohibit asking about criminal
| history. I don't think those specific laws would apply, as
| they are designed to help the previously incarcerated re-
| enter society through employment.
|
| That said, I could see a court challenge to the blacklist
| with those laws being cited during arguments.
| revskill wrote:
| The only good thing about facebook to me is creation of ReactJS.
| bogwog wrote:
| They actually have a lot of really good open source stuff.
| jd115 wrote:
| While this is a trend across the board since the pandemic, for
| Facebook it is particularly troublesome because it's deeper
| rooted than at other companies. On an almost daily basis it is
| becoming more and more public knowledge that Facebook is in more
| legal trouble than it can handle and that the company no longer
| has much good standing in society (which, for a "social" media
| company, is a bit of a problem). Young people are not stupid, no
| one wants to work at a company with no future, even if it still
| pays well. The root of all these problems is, of course, the
| toxicity of Zuck.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| They've certainly faced an onslaught from the press, which has
| decided they are Philip Morris 2.0. It's very unclear if that
| is going to translate into actual legal trouble.
|
| If I was at FB I'd be more concerned with how young people are
| rejecting it.
| pm90 wrote:
| Facebook presents an existential threat to the business of
| most traditional news media and they have a platform that
| actively promotes misinformation. The Press is doing their
| job: finding out what goes on inside Facebook and reporting
| on it. As someone not really involved either way, the
| responses of Facebook to legitimate questions has been
| entirely unsatisfactory and justifies the negative coverage
| they've received.
| MikusR wrote:
| Facebook runs American tv and print media?
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Facebook presents an existential threat to the business
| of most traditional news media and they have a platform
| that actively promotes misinformation.
|
| They (FB and the news media) do indeed.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > Facebook presents an existential threat to the business
| of most traditional news media and they have a platform
| that actively promotes misinformation.
|
| That's mainstream media's job... that's why they're pissed.
| Anyone remember Mika Bres-whatever saying on national
| television, "They're telling people what to think! That-
| that's our job!"
|
| I do.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quU_Tbv96Wk
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I had never seen this clip before, thanks for sharing. Is
| there more context or a longer clip? I think I heard the
| woman say "that is your job" at the end but it wasn't
| clear who that was directed at.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Reposting parent since it was illegitimately flagged:
|
| > Facebook presents an existential threat to the business
| of most traditional news media and they have a platform
| that actively promotes misinformation.
|
| That's mainstream media's job... that's why they're
| pissed. Anyone remember Mika Bres-whatever saying on
| national television, "They're telling people what to
| think! That-that's our job!"
|
| I do.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quU_Tbv96Wk
| jd115 wrote:
| Facebook's legal troubles are certainly not imaginary. They
| are actual, they are ongoing, they are overwhelming and
| there's more and more coming out all the time. Zuck and Thiel
| themselves are named as defendents on multiple very serious
| lawsuits which money alone could not spare them from (and not
| for lack of trying - untold billions have been spent in the
| past 5 years to ensure Zuck's name didn't show up on
| lawsuits. Until it did.)
| [deleted]
| missinfo wrote:
| I don't think the root problem is any one person, given that
| Twitter is even more destructive to society. It's the users,
| it's the incentives of the platforms, it's bad actors. There's
| low trust, a breakdown of institutions, a raging culture war.
| It's complicated.
| jd115 wrote:
| When a company (like Facebook) or a nation state (like
| Russia) is deeply dysfunctional and it has for a very long
| time been ruled by only one person, it is in fact fairly
| reasonable to conclude that the root problem is, at present,
| that one specific person.
| chefkoch wrote:
| How so?
|
| Twitter has perhabs less than 10% of users as Facebook.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Twitter has out-sized influence.
| missinfo wrote:
| Right, it's where the mob is and where the journalists
| and politicians are. They use and watch Twitter very
| closely and it informs what actions they take. Companies
| too.
| tenpies wrote:
| > Facebook is in more legal trouble than it can handle and that
| the company no longer has much good standing in society (which,
| for a "social" media company, is a bit of a problem).
|
| Is it? I've always liked the perspective that Facebook's
| product, to governments, beyond mass surveillance, is societal
| stability (or lack there of).
|
| If there's one company that could almost single-handedly cause
| an actual insurrection in the United States, it's Facebook.
| That sort of power doesn't have to be stated explicitly and the
| mainstream Liberal media spent 4 years stating it quite openly.
| Nancy Pelosi is a well known Facebook investor.
|
| Any major issue from the government can just result in a "bug"
| that accidentally amplifies the opposition and just like that,
| the cause of the issue is voted out.
| azangru wrote:
| > If there's one company that could almost single-handedly
| cause an actual insurrection in the United States, it's
| Facebook
|
| Why not Twitter?
| travoc wrote:
| Facebook is (was?) used by the masses. Twitter is mostly
| the same group of influential people talking to each other.
|
| Source: https://mashable.com/article/twitter-pew-study-
| echo-chambers
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Twitter doesn't seem to have the market penetration. It's
| public by default permission also creates a different
| dynamic
| btown wrote:
| I imagine many FB employees also envisioned themselves working
| their way to levels of seniority where they could nudge policy
| and practices towards the better (however they might define
| that). After all, one might have said, there's no other place
| where an individual's career in tech can have greater impact on
| so many people's lives.
|
| Now, seeing how even senior people on dedicated integrity teams
| had little ability to steer the ship, and being constantly
| reminded of this by friends outside FB even if it had
| previously been whispered internally, must be sobering for many
| of these folks.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| What sort of ship steering do you think these employees
| wanted? More moderation and censorship? Or less? Or just
| different? Or is it more around reducing engagement based
| goals that drive addiction to social media? Or is it around
| targeting children?
| btown wrote:
| I suppose part of the problem is that even the employees
| likely don't know what sort of ship-steering they want, and
| hoped to gradually get enough context to eventually be able
| to see an optimal path forward. But unless conversations
| are happening constantly, that day will always be years in
| the future. And Facebook's internal framing that "those
| conversations should always play second fiddle to
| engagement" has effectively quashed any hopes of productive
| context-aware consensus.
|
| The question on everyone's mind, of course, is: did
| leadership intentionally prevent these conversations and
| from-research-to-practice pipelines from occurring, or was
| their ineffectiveness simply an unintended side effect of
| the laser focus on engagement? Based on the anecdotes
| shared with media of how much of the balance was driven by
| public-relations considerations, one imagines that the
| perception skews towards the former. And that's not a good
| place to be from a retention perspective.
| gfosco wrote:
| "Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity" poisoned everything in tech.
| Honest authenticity is a relic of the past, only the most empty,
| patronizing, virtue signaling pretenders can flourish there now.
| ben_w wrote:
| "empty, patronizing, virtue signaling" is basically why all
| office jobs used to expect employees to wear ties.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Ah yes, the "honest authenticity" of only hiring white and
| asian males. Those were the days.
| [deleted]
| convolvatron wrote:
| I'm a hardcore leftie. so I agree with the sentiment behind
| these initiatives, and also agree with you that the current
| treatment is somewhat facile and annoying.
|
| but really? if being offended by this is the most important
| thing about your choice of employment - maybe your priorities
| are a little skewed?
| monocasa wrote:
| Just so you know, the parent is the CTO of Gab.
| woodruffw wrote:
| FWIW, I think it's probably appropriate to disclose that you're
| the CTO of a reactionary social media competitor when you make
| a post like this.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Perhaps expanding his hiring pool might lead to his site
| getting pwned less.
| gfosco wrote:
| Sure. I also worked at Facebook for 7.5 years first, and
| witnessed this performative cancer growing in real-time.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Why don't you go add a few more SQL injection vulns to your
| Mastodon fork, Fosco?
|
| You and I worked together briefly and your incompetence was
| evident even then. You were unable to answer even the most
| basic questions about the area you were supposedly an SME
| in.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm not any particular fan of Facebook, but to run with the
| cancer analogy: normally a cancer consumes and destroys its
| host. To the best of my knowledge, Facebook's market
| valuation has basically only gone up for the last decade.
| The only (and very recent) bumps for then have been privacy
| related, which are closer to the core business than to any
| diversity initiatives they might have. So where, exactly,
| is the cancer?
| chris_wot wrote:
| Still killing its host.
| blihp wrote:
| To run further with the analogy: it can go years without
| being diagnosed. Right now Facebook is in the 'I feel
| fine, I don't need to go to the doctor' phase. By the
| time the market starts penalizing a company things are
| usually on the decline, if not in free fall.
| Gentil wrote:
| I don't have much data points to share. But I've been seeing
| responses to people working FB have been horrible since for a
| while now.
|
| It has been a common trend that when someone I know posts a job
| position in FB, nobody replies to it. At least not publicly
| (publicly means replying to tweet, replying to slack message in a
| well knit/known group of people). Even if they are replying
| personally and privately, that in itself shows a problem.
|
| When I see someone working in FB, I can't deny that I am judging
| them. At this point, there is no reason to give a benefit of the
| doubt to how bad FB is to people, democracy and humanity in
| general. Sure, you can argue with technical meritocracy of some
| tech they produce. But how long can you sell yourself that excuse
| really when on the other side, adverse effects are mounting up?
|
| As nerdy and smart as tech workers are, we are still in need of
| validation from others right? There definitely should be some
| effect on people being perceived as a bad person for working for
| a bad company even if it is paying a ton. FAANG engineers should
| be more than equipped to look elsewhere because of it.
| sershe wrote:
| Anecdotally, just last week I've seen someone I know on senior
| (IC) level actually amplify their transition to Facebook on
| LinkedIn ("so happy to have worked in X, so happy to join Y,
| blah blah"), and another former coworker messaged me about
| their team in FB that they joined in the past year. Also I get
| much more Amazon/Google/random startup recruiting than FB, so
| they don't seem desperate.
|
| I had a couple friends who joined FB 5-7 years ago and reported
| horrible WLB, so I was avoiding it, but if the trend you are
| describing is correct (and that person from last week claimed
| WLB was fine), maybe I should consider it some day.
|
| I think there's nothing really wrong with the company, and I
| would view a somewhat lower level of "caring about social
| issues"/"wokeness" per-employee to be a small positive :)
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > amplify their transition to Facebook on LinkedIn
|
| That's just humble bragging on LinkedIn. It's so common on
| that platform to humble brag everything that I wouldn't read
| too much into that one.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Facebook's biggest problem in the next few years is going to be
| that it will struggle to attract new talent. Simply put if
| you're a senior SWE, even the possibility of FB putting a stain
| on your resume is going to drive you away, because there are so
| many other options out there. It's not worth the risk of always
| having to explain your time there because everyone has an
| opinion on the company these days. It's not that Facebook isn't
| a great place to work, it probably is. It's the fact that if
| you're at the level where you can get hired by Facebook, there
| are many many other options to reach for and the vast majority
| of people at that level are just going to reach for those other
| companies that are just as prestigious but carry none of the
| stigma.
| Gentil wrote:
| This is a huge possibility. They are already struggling. The
| reality is I don't see Zuck backtracking on anything. Meta
| and the new tech coming around it is a good example of it.
| They are actually looking into doubling down on surveillance
| and being invasive.So them struggling should be a good point.
| Or a good thinng IMHO.
|
| They could use AI to tackle this in the future now that we
| have Copilot of the sorts. It would be interesting to see how
| the cope up with it.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Facebook may be a dying company, slowly slowly slowly on the
| IBM timescale.
|
| Facebook is definitely on the downslide. They staved off
| facebook's slide by successfully picking the next social
| network in instagram, but now that is probably going to lose
| its shine. If Tiktok is the next #1... That can't be easily
| acquired due to Chinese ownership...
|
| They'll try the "metaverse" but man that is a big leap, and
| they are already poisoning their metaverse with stupid things
| like "must have a facebook account" which signals they are
| doomed to failure.
|
| Facebook knows this. It's why they changed their name. Maybe
| the recruiting struggles signaled the death of the "Facebook"
| brand.
| fallingknife wrote:
| On the other hand, I would personally find some sanctimonious
| interviewer asking me to defend my previous employment
| history from a perceived position of moral superiority a
| great screening tool for companies I would never want to work
| for.
| squiffsquiff wrote:
| So I'm an engineer at my org. I'd never want to work for
| Facebook. If I'm interviewing you then yes I will ask you
| why you chose to work there when by definition you had
| other options.
| shric wrote:
| Is it really a screening tool for the company? It more
| likely just says something about that particular
| interviewer. It's not like a company has a policy of
| telling interviewers to scrutinize past job appointments.
| That can be done by the recruiter if desired.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But I've been seeing responses to people working FB have been
| horrible since for a while now.
|
| This might be more indicative of your bubble than anything.
|
| Facebook isn't having a hard time hiring, despite whatever the
| headlines are trying to imply. There will always be a steady
| stream of applicants for high paying FAANG jobs.
|
| Being able to choose exactly _which_ ultra-high-paying tech job
| you take or being able to walk away from one of those highly
| paid jobs is a massive privilege that not everybody shares.
| [deleted]
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Twitter is just as dangerous as Facebook as far as I can tell.
| So much outrage that's spilled into riots and bloodshed has
| been fomented on there in broad daylight with little
| repercussion. Do you judge people who work at Twitter too?
| dgfitz wrote:
| Yup. I also judge people who use Twitter but I doubt that
| will go over well here.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Twitter is not The Internet for a massive population of the
| globe; facebook is. If you doubt this, keep it in mind that
| "internet.org" redirects to FB.
| mkl95 wrote:
| This is an entirely subjective take, but in the last few years FB
| seem to have evolved from one the coolest places for an engineer
| to being at the bottom of FAANG. I wonder if a significant amount
| of those people are looking for positions at Google/Amazon or
| they are taking their expertise somewhere else.
| dustingetz wrote:
| all of fang has lost brand power, all sufficiently large
| megacorps are clusterfucks
| fallingknife wrote:
| That's just not true (well the clusterfuck part is). Big tech
| dominates the top of the list for most well regarded brands.
|
| https://fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies/
|
| https://morningconsult.com/most-loved-brands-2020/
| echelon wrote:
| Startups stepping into the unicorn status territory are a
| much better bet. Their stock grants have value since the
| companies are getting closer to exit, and there's a real
| chance that the stock will 10-100X.
|
| Your four year vest of $250k could be worth $2.5M - $25M in
| the future.
|
| These are the best jobs. They can be extremely lucrative,
| and the work is exciting and palpable. Scaling a company to
| the point of IPO is fun.
|
| Look at the market the company is entering. How big? Is the
| company growing like crazy? What's the competition? How's
| the leadership and culture? And do you like the work?
| lordnacho wrote:
| These kinds of studies have all sorts of issues. The main
| one is it's cheap to answer a study. Nobody has any skin in
| the game. What do you think of Apple? Oh great phones, very
| nice UX.
|
| Where it matters is when you're asked to spend money, for
| one. And the other one is what we're discussing here, where
| do you want to work? The natural experiment of choice is
| more telling than what a bunch of people can recall about
| some name that they barely know anything about.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Oh delusional amazonians thinking they can successfully prevent
| those in the know for lobbying for their removal from "FAANG".
|
| Amazon is _by far_ the lowest of the FAANG. Horrific WLB, worse
| pay than all others listed (esp the vesting schedule), toxic
| culture, terrible benefits (lol bananas). Don 't delude
| yourself, Facebook is a great place to work and actually
| deserves to stay in the acronym
| campbel wrote:
| I've never understood obsession with FAANG. Seems like it is
| only meaningful to younger folks in the industry looking to
| establish themselves. You want FAANG on your resume so you can
| get the job you really want.
| marstall wrote:
| they pay 2-3x.
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The obsession is simply around getting a high pay and great
| benefits at a very stable company. FAANG seems like a high
| confidence path to more money than employees probably ever
| wanted or expected. The reasons behind that are worth
| considering. We live in an economy that is increasingly
| consolidated, where massive capital sits with a few giants,
| where new innovators are easily copied by those giants, where
| network effects and shady practices discourage new
| competition.
|
| If we had a more competitive economy, with functioning anti
| trust law, and protections for small innovators rather than
| giant conglomerates, I think talent might be distributed
| differently. But otherwise it is rational to look at the
| situation, realize nothing will be done, and to just work at
| FAANG and let the dollars roll in.
| [deleted]
| aborsy wrote:
| As long as a company pays, I doubt many will leave. Even if they
| don't approve of company.
| uptheroots wrote:
| Behind a paywall very sad
| qihqi wrote:
| Since no one mentioned so far: The LOD law suit made FB unable to
| get any approved green card app since last few months of Trump.
| This is the top reason why Indians & Chinese are not taking FB
| roles. It has been recently resolved. If hiring gets better for
| them I'd attribute it to green cards than the rename.
| electrondood wrote:
| I think it really says something that Facebook has to pay
| 20k/year extra in base salary for the same level compared to
| other FAANG companies to attract developers.
|
| I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but when someone lists that
| they work at FB on their dating profile, I assume they either
| aren't paying attention or have dubious morals.
| ashleyn wrote:
| This bodes very poorly for Facebook. The money may still come in
| but forward-thinking younger talent can be the crucial difference
| between a trendy company like Facebook and a corporate monolith
| like Oracle.
| pbourke wrote:
| At a certain size, big tech develops efficient systems to
| transmute forward-thinking younger talent into slightly jaded
| mid career pros excited for 1% improvements and 30s off the
| build. The world needs both types of people and companies need
| them both in different measures at different points in their
| trajectories.
| User23 wrote:
| Oracle is doing just fine. And if I had to trade places with
| Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison, well, I'd say it's not even
| close, but that implies there's a metric at all.
| ben_w wrote:
| Which would you choose?
|
| If I had to trade places with one of those two, I'd pick
| Ellison. I didn't even bother to look up their (theoretical)
| net worths, because at that scale it no longer makes a
| difference; what does make a difference to me is Ellison's
| face isn't regularly in the news attached both to stories
| about how they engage in censorship by removing people who
| break the site rules, and to other stories about how they
| take sides by failing to remove politicians who violate the
| site rules.
| Tanjreeve wrote:
| Is this actually true? I'm not sure what younger means but
| pretty much every anecdote of innovation i know is mostly late
| 20s early 30s engineers with a few YOE and a couple exceptions
| of whizzkids straight out of college (e.g Facebook). Genuinely
| quite interested if there is evidence round age and innovation
| in Tech.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > forward-thinking younger talent can be the crucial difference
|
| Are engineers really the ones driving at the company? I think
| that has not been true in "the industry" for a decade now.
| Marketing, upper-management are the ones steering the ships now
| -- engineers just row.
| kwere wrote:
| i dont think a tech company will move away from a engineer
| centric focus, everyone which dared disappeared. Oracle as
| patent company is a different story
| civilized wrote:
| Maybe that's why Google has made a few dozen amazing things
| while FB has made basically one thing and acquired the rest.
| A culture that respects engineering leadership.
| svachalek wrote:
| It's hard to think of something amazing from Google that
| they didn't acquire other than the search engine. Maps,
| YouTube, Android were all acquisitions. Most Google
| internal projects are future entries in the "Google
| graveyard". The better stuff I can think of is mostly deep
| technical stuff like Map Reduce built to support search.
| Facebook has also done fairly well with things that are
| pillars to support the (formerly) namesake product.
| civilized wrote:
| GMail, various chat things, GSuite, Google Brain, Google
| Translate. Maps, Android, and YouTube were all massively
| developed and scaled after the initial acquisition.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Chrome, Gmail, drive, Chromecast, duo, call screening.
| There are plenty of entirely home grown products that
| have succeeded. Discounting products which have had the
| vast majority of their growth and featureset built out
| while under Google is also a but dismissive of it's role
| in making them successful.
| tibyat wrote:
| duo has been successful?
| pyb wrote:
| Most of their post-2000 successful products stem from
| acquisitions: Docs, Maps, Waymo...
| civilized wrote:
| Docs was an acquisition? From where?
| mattkevan wrote:
| Started out as a product called Writely in the mid-2000s.
| Got bought by Google not long afterwards.
|
| Not sure if it's still the case but until fairly recently
| you could still see writely in the different domains Docs
| cycles through when logging in.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Writely. Company was called Upstartle.
| bradneuberg wrote:
| Version 1 was from a company named Writely. Google
| massively refactored and rewrote it afterwards though.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >forward-thinking younger talent can be the crucial difference
| between a trendy company like Facebook and a corporate monolith
| like Oracle.
|
| Oracle is still one of the most profitable companies on earth.
| I highly doubt they care about being trendy.
| civilized wrote:
| FB is already a legacy company in my opinion. It makes no
| products I am interested in using and gives no indication of
| ever doing so. I will never call them Meta and it's going to be
| funny when no one else does either. They haven't earned it.
|
| Google, whatever its problems, gives some indication of keeping
| up with the times. Aside from undisputed leadership in AI,
| there are the little things: they recently overhauled their
| chat tooling (again) and (finally) added Slack-style emoji
| reactions. If they still had some of their mid-2000s mojo, it
| would be neat to see them try again with a social network
| product.
| philovivero wrote:
| That's an interesting take. Most everyone I know find
| Google's chat changes utter shit, and have found
| alternatives. Personally, I dumped it and joined a Slack
| community of the one person I talked with most on it.
|
| Besides being a complete disaster, UI-wise, it freezes up and
| ceases working constantly in the web UI. The remaining people
| I know who stay on Google's chat... I simply cannot talk to
| anymore. I send them email or use an alternative chat service
| they're on.
|
| You might consider a different example of how you feel Google
| is keeping up with the times.
| civilized wrote:
| > You might consider a different example of how you feel
| Google is keeping up with the times.
|
| Nah, it's okay that I feel differently about a feature than
| you and say so publicly.
| fullshark wrote:
| The metaverse bet you shrug off but adding emoji reactions
| impresses you? Google is in "accumulate capital to deploy the
| next technological shift" mode, Facebook is trying to make
| that shift a reality (Waymo excepted).
| indymike wrote:
| > The metaverse bet you shrug off but adding emoji
| reactions impresses you?
|
| I'm not sure the metaverse play really is anything other
| than continuing the same thinking that led to Facebook
| login required for Oculus. The idea is probably to roll out
| VR no differently than rolling out emoji reactions. It's
| what you do when you get big. 1B users * 10% using new
| feature = BIG NEW USER BASE and you get to report growth
| for years as 10% turns into 20%.
| civilized wrote:
| Google keeps a large suite of in-house built, enormously
| useful products alive and still manages to move them
| forward incrementally. FB has done nothing useful for me
| since I signed up in 2004. Given that, why would I care if
| they made a video about the incredible things they will do
| in the future? If I'm to believe they will deliver,
| shouldn't they have a track record by now?
|
| And Google has led in AI for the past decade so I'm not
| sure how you got the impression that FB is doing and Google
| is just sitting on cash. Looks exactly opposite to me.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > Google keeps a large suite of in-house built,
| enormously useful products alive and still manages to
| move them forward incrementally. FB has done nothing
| useful for me since I signed up in 2004.
|
| I despised Facebook before everyone else but seriously:
|
| Google is extremely well known for killing useful stuff
| that people love, not for moving them forward
| incrementally.
|
| I can't remember Facebook killing off anything since
| parsley or whatever it was called.
|
| Google has also been going backwards since I don't know,
| 2009 or something? (Back in the day it used to be that
| search results somewhat reliably contained the the you
| searched for. Today Google is in my opinion a copy of the
| competitors they outcompeted: customer hostile ads, poor
| results.)
|
| Facebook is the ugly thing it has been since I don't know
| when.
| civilized wrote:
| Google has _killed_ about 5x more things people love than
| FB has _created_. But they still keep a lot of core
| products alive.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Ok, I admit you have a good point. I counted the ones I
| can remember:
|
| - search (although this one barely qualifies in my
| opinion)
|
| - GMail/GSuite (once provided ever increasing storage,
| also killed free GSuite etc etc but I'll count it, it
| exists and has even expanded a bit)
|
| - YouTube
|
| - Ads
|
| - Android
|
| - Chrome
|
| Quite a portfolio actually. Says something about how much
| I dislike them when I had to think long and hard to admit
| it.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > FB has done nothing useful for me since I signed up in
| 2004. Given that, why would I care if they made a video
| about the incredible things they will do in the future?
|
| Have you used a few VR devices over the last decade,
| including the last Quest?
| civilized wrote:
| No. I can't imagine putting on anything that would
| exacerbate my neck strain. Screen, stay where you are and
| I'll decide what angle to look at you from.
|
| Maybe when they scale it down to the size and heft of
| swimming goggles.
| achenatx wrote:
| facebook groups and marketplace are huge. Marketplace
| will be the craigslist killer if they can fix their
| scammer problems.
|
| Groups compete well with reddit.
|
| As they build a 'metaverse' groups, marketplace, and
| walls can form the foundation
|
| you wall is your own personal space. Your groups and the
| marketplace become places that you go to.
| civilized wrote:
| I respect that hypothesis. They've got their bite of the
| market with those products.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| Their social networking product is YouTube. It's quite
| successful and it beat Facebook in video.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Not sure about that. I think management and culture would be
| the deciding factor. In fact our age demands diversity in the
| workplace and age is one of those dimentions.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| You yourself can always put the "quit" in "equity" if your
| skin color is the wrong shade.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| "Demands diversity", really? You think people won't use FB's
| products as much if they don't hire enough older people?
| dymk wrote:
| Right now, "diversity" refers to skin color and
| occasionally gender
| perdid0 wrote:
| > _Out of more than 1,100 votes, the person was urged to take the
| Netflix job, where he said he was being offered $580,000 a year._
|
| Are these real salaries? How??
| bogwog wrote:
| 580k per year is reasonable considering the value that one
| engineer can provide to a company that large.
|
| _also_ , I've heard that Netflix salaries in particular are
| higher than most other tech giants because they don't offer any
| other benefits.
| [deleted]
| svachalek wrote:
| I know people getting packages well in excess of that. The
| difference between the bottom and top of software job pay
| packages is starting to resemble athletes or actors.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Please, not this again. Just go to levels.fyi and see for
| yourself.
| endisneigh wrote:
| employees of all companies are more willing to leave lately. for
| this to be meaningful it needs to control for that.
| gumby wrote:
| Normally I'd agree with you but I think this article topic is
| fair. FB is a high profile company that has been an
| aspirational employer for many people (esp outside the valley)
| over several years. For that to change is interesting.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I would guess people evaluate their job on money/work/stink axes.
|
| All of FAANG pays well, so what's left is whether the work is
| interesting/important/fulfilling and whether the company has
| integrity/evil issues. Eg you might think F1 has interesting
| problems despite glorifying fossil fuel cars, or you might think
| drones are technically challenging despite being used to kill
| people. Loads of people become nurses and teachers because they
| want to help people, even though they don't get paid much.
|
| What you're less likely to do is work in an area where your work
| isn't interesting, contributes nothing significant, and rots
| people's minds.
|
| I found it interesting that only half their job offers are taken
| up, that's super surprising to me. I suppose it's possible that
| people with one FAANG offer have more than one? If that's the
| case, all the rest of FAANG would likely have less stink than FB
| at the moment, and also wins on the work axis.
| mrbowow wrote:
| I accepted a diff offer because of rumors about not so great
| WLB.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > only half their job offers are taken up, that's super
| surprising to me
|
| It would be interesting to get some stats on this. But the
| common advice when applying for jobs is to "get competing
| offers" so you can negotiate. I wouldn't be surprised if people
| who are getting offers at FB, can get a few very high quality
| offers at other places as well.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I imagine some people who don't want to work at a FAANG still
| apply to leverage that offer somewhere else. It helps a lot in
| salary negotiations to be able to say "Facebook offered me $X,
| but I like you guys more, so how about we try to find a way to
| make that work"
| varjag wrote:
| I assume they genuinely struggle with recruiting. Getting cold
| recruiting mails from FB lately despite being on the wrong
| continent. They must be scraping the bottom.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| The biggest thing turning me off when they email is that to
| work for Facebook you MUST have a Facebook account. I deleted
| mine years ago.
| new_guy wrote:
| Dogfooding the product you're working on isn't that unusual
| even if it is FB. It dramatically improves quality when
| you're 'forced' to use the same product you're developing.
| billylindeman wrote:
| LOL if you can't get your own employees to want to you
| use your product you might have a problem .
| jakear wrote:
| In general, yes absolutely.
|
| It becomes more questionable when that product is on the
| backend of hundreds of thousands of engineer-hours
| dedicated to optimizing engagement. Bit like saying
| "sorry bud, we don't want your chemical engineering
| talent in our meth shop unless you are a meth addict,
| surely you understand self-hosting enables us to make a
| superior product"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Maybe you just shouldn't work in meth shops at all.
| david38 wrote:
| Why? Nothing is stopping you from having a name_job
| account. Never add any friends other than coworkers, only
| use a specific browser, etc.
| erehweb wrote:
| Being willing to use your employer's product is a really
| low bar in compatibility.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| There's no reason for it if I'm doing back end DevOps. I
| don't want to work on "the product".
| lupire wrote:
| Facebook uses Facebook for internal comms as an
| alternative to GMail/Office. Would you use that if you
| worked there?
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Yes I know. That's part of the problem. I don't want to
| be in that eco system. Even just to apply for a job at
| Facebook they expect you to already have a Facebook
| account. The arrogance of the whole thing is just
| problematic.
| [deleted]
| sorenjan wrote:
| I wonder if Ferrari needs more programmers.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| They _finally_ called me. So yep, bottom of the barrel.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I've been contacted by a FAANG (or is it MANGA?) company
| too recently, one of the traditionally better ones.
|
| Earlier I'd fallen ober myself for that but I ended up not
| following through. I love my current. I'm hesitant to work
| in a place where I can get thrown under the bus for being a
| man. I'm not sure I want to contribute to the surveillance
| economy etc.
|
| Maybe another day I'll answer yes, but...
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > I'm hesitant to work in a place where I can get thrown
| under the bus for being a man
|
| This is not a thing.
| skinkestek wrote:
| ok, good to know. But it still doesn't feel safe.
| qcoh wrote:
| Same here. The universe tipped back into balance when they
| didn't bother to reply after me asking about the role. :)
| thawSeh6s2p wrote:
| > Loads of people become nurses and teachers because they want
| to help people, even though they don't get paid much
|
| I know it's not the primary point of the post, but define
| "much". An RN makes around 80k on average, they're also hourly
| and can generally pick up overtime whenever they want. Nurse
| anesthetists make double that at minimum, practitioners are
| north of 120k. It may not be as much as a FAANG position but
| I'd consider that decent pay, especially for such a stable
| position with decent WLB(omitting pandemic). Up until the past
| few years RN only required a 2 year degree.
|
| Teachers don't make as much, but average pay in my lower cost
| of living area, just crossed 60k. That's not terrible,
| especially considering they only work 9/12 months and can get
| more for summer school or many of them find side jobs.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The US healthcare system is a bit special. I tend to think
| about Europe, since I'm from there. Nurses don't make nearly
| as much from what I gather.
| chillacy wrote:
| FAANG senior engineers get in around 350-400k and with recent
| stock appreciation some are hitting 400-600 depending on
| tenure and company performance.
|
| Source: levels.fyi
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is an exceptional level relative to just about
| everyone except execs at larger public companies. It's by
| no means remotely normal.
| tarr11 wrote:
| https://archive.md/2021.11.14-152530/https://www.businessins...
| colesantiago wrote:
| meh, facebook / meta will just raise the salary, enticing some
| would be employees to come or come back and they are already
| spending billions on this 'metaverse' thing.
|
| they will always come back in the end.
| bogwog wrote:
| In a sane world that would put them at a competitive
| disadvantage, and force them to clean up their act.
| malloreon wrote:
| every single person looking to leave FB should be asked a large
| number of questions in the mold of "when did you stop beating
| your spouse?" re:
|
| sex trafficking white supremacy genocide causing depression in
| teenagers throwing parties for judges who assault women
|
| specifically: you were comfortable with your employer
| monetizing/engendering these things and part of your large
| compensation coming from them up until now.
|
| Why are you now against these things? what changed your mind?
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily (in fact,
| exclusively, it seems) for ideological battle. That's not
| allowed on HN because it destroys what the site is supposed to
| be for.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| 01100011 wrote:
| If my inbox is any indication, hiring has picked back up in the
| last month. Tons of interest from big companies (Google, FB, door
| dash, and lots of smaller companies). It seems a bit odd to me as
| I thought the end of the year was usually a slow time for
| staffing.
| dsabanin wrote:
| I had the same observation.
| michaelwda wrote:
| Correlation with perf wrapping up? :)
| ferdowsi wrote:
| As the negative perception of Facebook engineering picks up it'll
| be interesting to see where this heads. There's been precious
| little conversation about the stewardship model of React.JS, in
| which Facebook has an outsized role.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if there was an effort to divest React
| from Facebook, given the potential reputational risk to the React
| project.
| maxpert wrote:
| I think React is pretty soon gonna share same fate as jQuery.
| Svelte is slowly picking some steam, and with recent move of
| original author to Vercel I am more confident than ever that
| momentum is shifting. My friend directly got to work with
| Carmack, and him moving away directly from project should tell
| a lot about what the future of the hardware holds with FB.
|
| Microsoft had to rewire itself in order to recover from
| Windows. Facebook (or Meta) needs same. Microsoft had to bring
| in a new leader, I think Zuck should step down, and bring
| somebody different before it's too late. I can imagine a fight
| for throne happening inside already.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| On what timeline though? Vue was looking to be a very strong
| contender to passing up React, but that has dwindled and it's
| a solid second alternative but won't end up usurping React.
| Next.js is one of the biggest hotnesses around web
| development in general right now, bigger than Svelte, and
| based on React. While Svelte is nice and shows promise, it's
| still in the "early Vue" stage and has a long long way to go
| to make React into a jQuery. Not to mention how ubiquitous
| jQuery still is.
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