5 ms·
The company is most comfortable being at war. That's the first thing I noticed when I started working there. People glorified the days when they were fighting h
by amasad 8y ago
The company is most comfortable being at war. That's the first thing I noticed when I started working there. People glorified the days when they were fighting head-to-head with Google or before that with the other social networks. They reminse with pride about the "lockdown" periods when everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it.
However, I don't think it's the best environment to be creative, that's why I think FB has to rely on acquisitions to keep the growth going (except that on the infrastructure side of Facebook it is very creative and has the time and space for innovation, hence all their awesome open source stuff).
- plazmatic 8y agoSpoken like a true former employee.
- adamnemecek 8y ago> everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it. This is such a Stockholm syndrome. How productive are you if you haven’t slept for three days? I really don’t care about what Facebook does but these are just such blatant examples of mismanagement and I don’t want them to spread.
- spiderfarmer 8y agoThe people downvoting you probably are people who are "hustling" right now and maybe actually enjoying it. For every sadist there is a sadomasochist so I'm not suprised there are people that enjoy working their ass off for above average wages while neglecting other parts of an "average" life. There's more to life than work and money people. Once you realise that you'll look back and agree with the poster above.
- rock_hard 8y agoNot leaving office != not sleeping
- isoskeles 8y agoCan we at least agree it means not changing your underwear?
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoEven then it's a kind of perverse modern slavery.
- mulmen 8y agoIt is in no way slavery. Making that connection just undermines legitimate criticism of modern corporate workloads.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y agoPlease don't trivialize the horrors of actual slavery by throwing around the term for 6-digit-salaried folks hustling for something they enjoy doing.
- barrow-rider 8y agoIndeed, world's smallest violin, definitely not slavery. Like, I don't know if they enjoy doing it, but if they're getting FAANG salaries and the name recognition that comes with working in such places then they likely have options, and can easily find a less insane gig if/when that's too much for them.
- krageon 8y agoYou're right, it's more like the formation of a cult. The money presented to them really doesn't matter very much, what we should consider is the mindset this sort of thing creates and whether or not it is a good thing to have it spreading to the rest of society. There's a real societal impact to having large companies getting more and more powerful and their employees being fanatically devoted to it's well-being.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoI was baffled at first by this comment, but then I realized it's the recent tend in the USA to somehow make up for the mistakes of the past, hence the attempts to erase words like "master/slave" that are perceived as sad reminders of unfortunately not-so-distant past. In Europe, we don't see this way as we don't have this particular trauma. We did have different forms of slavery centuries ago, but it was newer a thing in mainland Europe (although the feudal system was close to it). So this word is not that emotionally marked for us. It's quite normal to say that someone is a slave to something (fashion, fear, alcohol). Some people even use it in a positive way, e.g. a slave to God. All these figurative uses are quite common and are not intended to trivialize the original meaning.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y agoIn most other contexts, a burst of activity towards achieving some goal would be congratulated, or at least not derided. If you heard that a mathematician suddenly struck upon an idea and spent the next 3 days and nights working it out, I am sure that story would be shared here on HN with everyone sharing their own favorite anecdote of when they were highly driven about something. But when it comes to startups or $hated_megacorps, suddenly it is a stupid and evil thing?
- adamnemecek 8y agoSorry to break this to you but this idea of working on something for 3 days nonstop is stupid. Your productivity decreases very fast without sleep. Like the problem is still gonna be there. You'll be a lot wiser tomorrow. It's double stupid if you forgo sleep for the sake of your employeer's profits.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y agoWhen people say they are working on something non-stop it doesn't necessarily mean they are literally not eating sleeping shitting or whatever for 72 hours. It usually means they are in a period of heightened activity when they are not doing much of anything else. Maybe you haven't experienced that kind of thrill so far, which is fine. But it is a very real thing if / when it does happen.
- adamnemecek 8y agoI have however i can't imagine being forced be in the office. That is the most certain way to break that flow.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago> i can't imagine being forced to do this by being forced to be in the office. Just because you can't imagine it doesn't make those who think / experience otherwise victims of Stockholm Syndrome...
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
- randomsearch 8y agoWhat about people with families and other responsibilities? Were they exempt from the “lockdown”? If they were, did they create a division between those who stayed and perhaps would have been labelled as dedicated or part of the core workers, and those who could not? I’d be concerned that any such policy would discriminate against people with responsibilities outside of software development.
- spiderfarmer 8y agoIt's an American company so they probably said screw you and your life outside work.
- sAbakumoff 8y agoThe excerpt from Chaos Monkeys book about lockdown that happened in Facebook when MZ decided to take down G+: In what was perceived as a kindly concession to the few employees with families, it was also announced that families were welcome to visit on weekends and eat in the cafés, allowing the children to at least see daddy (and yes, it was mostly daddy) on weekend afternoons.
- barrow-rider 8y agoWhat did the call the money they used to pay when people lived in company towns in the 1800s? Scrip? You lived in company housing and got paid company scrip and could only spend it at the company store, at outrages rates. This sounds like step 1 of returning to that sort of system. Hyperbole to some degree, but it already happened once...