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I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the wh
by distrill 5y ago
I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the whole time that I've been there, and the company is pretty unpopular from a vocal population on here, but it's been really nice to work for.
We obviously have job security, and I've been very impressed with the management chain above me. At least on my team, they all come from eng for a few levels until you start hitting VP roles. The fact that they were at least fairly recently technical helps with understanding some of the traditional pain points I've run into in the past in dealing with management.
Everything is built in house, which does have some drawbacks but it's nice that we can interface directly with the people who are working on all of our tools. And everything has an API so there is a great amount of inter-tool integration. Developers get raises, on my team Eng has a big say in what the product is going to be, idk it seems like it checks all of the boxes you're asking about.
Also it's kind of fun to see the company I work for get mercilessly memed all the time.
- cliff_badger 5y agoI find this very interesting... 'I get paid a lot, and they treat me well, so who cares about anything else' Pull your head out of the sand and realize that when people talk about Facebook, they are talking about each and everyone of you. You are a representation of your company and your company is a representation of you.
- gaws 5y agoOP isn't the face of the company. He or she is likely a small yet well-paid cog in a large machine and doesn't need to worry about outside pressure. In this economy, I, and many people, would have no problem working at an unpopular company that leads to financial stability decades down the road.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- distrill 5y agoI don't have a problem with any of this.
- therealdrag0 5y agoNot everyone hates fb or cares that some people do.
- fartcannon 5y agoMemed? It's being accused of assisting with genocide abroad and culture destruction locally. Memeing is a bunny with a pancake on its head. Facebook is accused of helping dictatorships hunt and kill actual humans. Good paycheque though eh.
- araadt 5y agoRIP Oolong rabbit.
- distrill 5y agoit is also memed heavily. zuck with too much sunscreen, zuck in Congress drinking water, there are many
- n8cpdx 5y agoFor the folks reflexively downvoting because they don’t want it to be true… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/facebook-s-stance-on-myanmar-genocide-records-assailed-by-gambia https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/facebook-... I guess there is a difference between actively genociding and _just_ shielding genocidal regimes from facing justice.
- nickpeterson 5y agoFacebook fiddles while the world burns…
- therealdrag0 5y agoSome how I would guess hate speech would still be spreadable if fb didn't exist.
- somerando7 5y agoAgreed, liking it here so far. But you do have to make sure you get on an interesting team. I wouldn't want to be on a lot of different teams here.
- dack 5y agoWhich ones wouldn't you want to be on? Or at least is there a pattern to them?
- somerando7 5y agoThis is purely my preference, but anything customer facing would be a snoozefest for me. Most L6+ that I've met in infra are incredibly sharp, and there's tons of interesting problems being solved in infra/core systems right now. On top of this... the "move fast" motto really does ring true, compared to google, facebook speed is like riding a bike vs walking.
- loxias 5y agoIs it really true that once you pass the interview and orientation you get to choose the team you want to work on?
- somerando7 5y agoYes, if they have headcount, you should be good to go
- fbanon12341 5y agoFor general role hires, this is true, although it's a subset of all teams - teams with high priority roles pitch to you, you choose a couple to try out tasks for a few days. They stack rank, you stack rank, matches are made. Internal transfers after 1 year are pretty easy. I've seen people transfer earlier, if it's clear the fit between employee and team isn't there.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
- jonathankoren 5y agoIt also reorgs every six months. I was on Search. You either really like it, or you hate it. There's no middle ground.
- mydeskistoosm 5y ago> management... all come from eng for a few levels until you start hitting VP roles. And then where do they come from? Ivy league MBAs or IB? No shade at those guys, just curious. I'm early-career and I've got interests in finance and programming. It seems like I see fewer engineers running the show, as if committing to programming as a career tops-out at a certain point because you're missing certain experience. Though, I don't know enough to know what that special sauce is.
- distrill 5y agosome of them are still eng background but it's long enough ago that they're not really technical at all anymore. others are what you said, I guess for the most part. engineering and managing engineers are sort of similar, or at least you can see how one might be valuable to the other. engineering and managing managers are way further apart, so I'm not surprised that technical people have less presence the further up you go
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ryan_lane 5y ago[flagged]
- fbanon12341 5y agoIt is possible to work on efforts to prevent genocide and extremism. As a matter of fact, there are very few people who enable genocide! (Approaching 0.0000) Doesn't refusal to help only exacerbate the situation?
- ryan_lane 5y agoIf you're not allowed to work on the problem, you can't help. Management isn't prioritizing fixing the issue. They know it exists, and are prioritizing things that make them money, and in many cases know that the what makes them money is what's causing the extremism. By continuing to work there, you're enabling what they're doing.
- slut 5y agoWhat voice? Not everyone holds the same ideology as you.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack. It's particularly bad to attack someone who posts about the employer/work to HN. We want people to post on topics they know about, and for most of us, or work is the thing we know the most about. We don't want to disincentivize that, so please don't flame people for doing it, regardless of how you feel about their employer. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=... Edit: you've been posting a bunch of flamewar comments lately. Would you please stop that? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fbanon12341 5y agoSecond this. FB Corp treats its employees very well.
- freewilly1040 5y agoWhat is the employee sentiment towards Meta / metaverse products?
- distrill 5y agoeveryone I know is pretty excited
- hello4353 5y agoAgreed. I work for a company whose products are widely used but many might consider it morally wrong. On the bright side there is no guilt at getting raise at every opportunity possible.
- trhoad 5y agoInteresting take. Facebook is one of the few companies in the world I'd never work for.
- jeffyang 5y agoI used to work at Facebook. I understand the vitriol. It's very easy to paint that picture. It's a very one-sided picture though. Hands down, of all the companies I've worked for, I've never met so many rank and file people who cared about doing the right thing so much. Most jobs are just jobs. People do their jobs and they get money and sometimes they try to do a good job. And there are plenty of people like that at Facebook, the majority of people are like that. But, nowhere have I seen such a large percentage of people who actually care and who care strongly. It is honestly shocking, coming from jobs where people just do their job and avoid stirring up trouble. These people do stir up trouble. And it's hard work to fight the inertia. Sometimes they fail and become bitter and burnt out. Sometimes they succeed. And when they do they are rewarded. So that's what I wanted to say. Facebook is a big place but people do care about doing the right thing and doing the right thing is rewarded.
- ryloric 5y agoThis almost reads like someone paid you to write this.
- jeffyang 5y agoHa really? I mean, no one paid me, but thanks? Seriously, have you ever worked at a place where people (outside of leadership) care strongly about making sure the company does the right thing rather than just accepting the status quo? That's pretty rare I would say and it was very surprising to me. I'm not saying that Facebook is good. I'm just saying that people paint it like everyone who works at Facebook made a decision to support an evil empire, which does a disservice to all the people there who are working really hard to do the right thing.
- ryloric 5y agoI've worked at two of the FAANG companies before as an engineer, so I have some idea of the general culture. What I meant was that the average employee at any of them doesn't care about about doing the 'right thing' any more than employees at any other corporation care about doing the 'right thing'. I'm not saying employees at FB support an evil empire but neither are they revolutionaries who deeply care about the society and are fighting tirelessly to bring some positive change. They know what their products do and they still work there, so I'm pretty sure they're okay with the compensation-conscience tradeoff they made and I have nothing against that, we all do that; but to paint them as some deeply caring people who tirelessly strive to do the right thing is just disingenuous and like I said earlier it sounds like something a paid PR person would write.