I see this sort of comment occasionally. If those engineers hadn't been assigned to work on the project, somebody else would have. It doesn't look like they did

I see this sort of comment occasionally. If those engineers hadn't been assigned to work on the project, somebody else would have. It doesn't look like they did that fantastic a job of it either. Also this was a front-end to managing the ad system, not the ad system itself, or the infrastructure it ran on, or the features of facebook that drew in the audience in the first place, etc, etc. Yes some engineers genuinely do make contributions that have unique value, but frankly most of us are guns for hire and if we're lucky enough to get on a fun, interesting and valuable project that's great, but frankly one out of three is the best we usually get.