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Any other company in their shoes would have had a mass exodus. Chris was a big part of making employees feel like they shared a piece of the dream. Whatever yo

by arunv 8y ago

Any other company in their shoes would have had a mass exodus. Chris was a big part of making employees feel like they shared a piece of the dream. Whatever your thoughts about Facebook, the fact that some of the smartest people have worked, and continue to work at a company "beset by scandal" should give you pause.

malvosenior 8y ago
All Silicon Valley companies are like this. Do you really think Chris Cox was better at feeding people kool-aid than Steve Jobs?
- arunv 8y ago
  1. Personally, I do. I think Jobs was a magician, but he was famously not the most personable guy. 2. Even if he wasn't, the fact that we're making the comparison reflects how important he was to FB.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    Well Jobs was the first that came to mind, but Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify (I know, not Valley)... all have this identical cult like culture where the employees are fully indoctrinated and feel their execs are the best in the world. Not to be rude, but this has been my universal experience in the tech industry for the past 20+ years.
    - chillacy 8y ago
      Ask some of your friends who work at these companies to see their internal Blind posts. It ranges from pretty upbeat to exceedingly negative, and it also seems to correlate with how the company performs financially. Which makes sense since these people have half a million dollars of RSUs on the line.
freyir 8y ago
Money. They pay many people salaries that they’d have trouble getting elsewhere. If these people stick around for the dream even after the money dries up, then I’ll be impressed. The sentiment I’ve heard so far is “let’s wait this out, and hope it goes back to business as usual.” The ethical have likely left already. Those who are most talented and in it for the money will likely be next out, if things don’t turn around. Then they’re left with the untalented and overpaid, who will cling on for as long as possible while the ship sinks.
- arunv 8y ago
  I personally know many people that stayed / have stayed 9-10 years at Facebook, long after the IPO and long after vesting. I think people really underestimate the value of sheer impact on end users. I know the news about FB hasn't been positive, but as an engineer a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to literally change the world every month.
  - atomical 8y ago
    How is Facebook changing the world? If anything, the world seems to be changing around Facebook.
  - freyir 8y ago
    Of course. After 9-10 years they probably make tremendous salaries. I guess they could take a pay cut and go somewhere else, or even retire, but that’s not for everyone. Facebook forgot that “change the world” isn’t the end goal. It’s to change the world for the better. At that, they have failed.
Fins 8y ago
Being "smartest" (whatever that means, and assuming it even is so; being good at coding has very little to do with being smart) is completely orthogonal to being a decent person.
bobdole12345 8y ago
Smartest people? Their tech stack is a dated cargo-culting of Google, hell, their newest thing is just using kubernetes with a thin wrapper. Their AI platform is a also ran in pretty much every aspect. Where exactly are the smart people?
- arunv 8y ago
  1. Judging how smart the people there are by their tech stack is like judging how much horsepower a car has based on how many miles it has. 2. Even humoring that assumption, you’re conveniently forgetting React, Hive (+Hbase, hipal), presto, rocksdb, Cassandra, graphql, oauth 2, open compute, phabricator, hhvm, buck, and that’s just the open source stuff.
  - bobdole12345 8y ago
    Sorry, I stopped considering your argument when you claimed the HHVM wasn't anything other than a crime against humanity. PHP could have died, but no, it got a new lease on life. Hive is a bad copy of a google tech. Buck is a bad copy of a google tech. Hbase is a bad copy of a google tech. Rocks is cute, but it's a bit sad that it's at the center of literally everything in the company. Phabricator isn't bad, but it's a pretty close copy to things at google. And I think Google only joined the open compute initiative to try and talk facebook out of it's weird ideas.
- solidasparagus 8y ago
  FAIR is one of the most advanced AI research labs in the world. PyTorch has massively growing adoption because it is substantially better than the competitors and FAIR work consistently pushes the state of the art forward. Calling their AI work 'also ran' is ridiculous.
  - bobdole12345 8y ago
    FAIR is just an advanced PUBLIC AI research lab. Just because they're the best ones talking about what they're doing, doesn't mean they're anywhere near the best.

by arunv 8y ago

malvosenior 8y ago

All Silicon Valley companies are like this. Do you really think Chris Cox was better at feeding people kool-aid than Steve Jobs?

arunv 8y ago
1. Personally, I do. I think Jobs was a magician, but he was famously not the most personable guy. 2. Even if he wasn't, the fact that we're making the comparison reflects how important he was to FB.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Well Jobs was the first that came to mind, but Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify (I know, not Valley)... all have this identical cult like culture where the employees are fully indoctrinated and feel their execs are the best in the world. Not to be rude, but this has been my universal experience in the tech industry for the past 20+ years.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Ask some of your friends who work at these companies to see their internal Blind posts. It ranges from pretty upbeat to exceedingly negative, and it also seems to correlate with how the company performs financially. Which makes sense since these people have half a million dollars of RSUs on the line.

freyir 8y ago

Money. They pay many people salaries that they’d have trouble getting elsewhere. If these people stick around for the dream even after the money dries up, then I’ll be impressed. The sentiment I’ve heard so far is “let’s wait this out, and hope it goes back to business as usual.” The ethical have likely left already. Those who are most talented and in it for the money will likely be next out, if things don’t turn around. Then they’re left with the untalented and overpaid, who will cling on for as long as possible while the ship sinks.

arunv 8y ago
I personally know many people that stayed / have stayed 9-10 years at Facebook, long after the IPO and long after vesting. I think people really underestimate the value of sheer impact on end users. I know the news about FB hasn't been positive, but as an engineer a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to literally change the world every month.
- atomical 8y ago
  How is Facebook changing the world? If anything, the world seems to be changing around Facebook.
- freyir 8y ago
  Of course. After 9-10 years they probably make tremendous salaries. I guess they could take a pay cut and go somewhere else, or even retire, but that’s not for everyone. Facebook forgot that “change the world” isn’t the end goal. It’s to change the world for the better. At that, they have failed.

Fins 8y ago

Being "smartest" (whatever that means, and assuming it even is so; being good at coding has very little to do with being smart) is completely orthogonal to being a decent person.

bobdole12345 8y ago

Smartest people? Their tech stack is a dated cargo-culting of Google, hell, their newest thing is just using kubernetes with a thin wrapper. Their AI platform is a also ran in pretty much every aspect. Where exactly are the smart people?

arunv 8y ago
1. Judging how smart the people there are by their tech stack is like judging how much horsepower a car has based on how many miles it has. 2. Even humoring that assumption, you’re conveniently forgetting React, Hive (+Hbase, hipal), presto, rocksdb, Cassandra, graphql, oauth 2, open compute, phabricator, hhvm, buck, and that’s just the open source stuff.
- bobdole12345 8y ago
  Sorry, I stopped considering your argument when you claimed the HHVM wasn't anything other than a crime against humanity. PHP could have died, but no, it got a new lease on life. Hive is a bad copy of a google tech. Buck is a bad copy of a google tech. Hbase is a bad copy of a google tech. Rocks is cute, but it's a bit sad that it's at the center of literally everything in the company. Phabricator isn't bad, but it's a pretty close copy to things at google. And I think Google only joined the open compute initiative to try and talk facebook out of it's weird ideas.
solidasparagus 8y ago
FAIR is one of the most advanced AI research labs in the world. PyTorch has massively growing adoption because it is substantially better than the competitors and FAIR work consistently pushes the state of the art forward. Calling their AI work 'also ran' is ridiculous.
- bobdole12345 8y ago
  FAIR is just an advanced PUBLIC AI research lab. Just because they're the best ones talking about what they're doing, doesn't mean they're anywhere near the best.