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Facebook employees are now more willing to leave, tech recruiters say

• alexashka 5y ago
  For all the folks singing doom and gloom, please remember that Microsoft is doing better than ever.
• Jansen312 5y ago
  Should we be saying meta employees instead? Or it is just the FB part that employees leaving?
• ashleyn 5y ago
  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.
  • civilized 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        > 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 5y ago
      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).
      • civilized 5y ago
        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.
        • pedrosorio 5y ago
          > 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 5y ago
            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 5y ago
          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.
    • KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
      Their social networking product is YouTube. It's quite successful and it beat Facebook in video.
  • hungryforcodes 5y ago
    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.
    • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      "Demands diversity", really? You think people won't use FB's products as much if they don't hire enough older people?
      • dymk 5y ago
        Right now, “diversity” refers to skin color and occasionally gender
    • ldiracdelta 5y ago
      You yourself can always put the "quit" in "equity" if your skin color is the wrong shade.
  • User23 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
      • rightbyte 5y ago
        Well, I guess you would do a humanity a favour replacing Zuckerberg. In Ellisons shoes you can like, make Java hip again?
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > 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.
    • civilized 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          GMail, various chat things, GSuite, Google Brain, Google Translate. Maps, Android, and YouTube were all massively developed and scaled after the initial acquisition.
        • surajrmal 5y ago
          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 5y ago
            duo has been successful?
  • ramesh31 5y ago
    >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.
  • Tanjreeve 5y ago
    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.
  • pbourke 5y ago
    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.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  employees of all companies are more willing to leave lately. for this to be meaningful it needs to control for that.
  • gumby 5y ago
    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.
  • passivate 5y ago
    It's worse than that. We're assuming "X says [..]" is equivalent to a factual statement. Its the typical weasel wording by modern media which is simply looking to report click-bait/gossip (he says, she says), rather than expending any effort to verifying and reporting facts.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• tarr11 5y ago
  https://archive.md/2021.11.14-152530/https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-are-more-willing-to-leave-exodus-recruiters-say-2021-11 https://archive.md/2021.11.14-152530/https://www.businessins...
• colesantiago 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    In a sane world that would put them at a competitive disadvantage, and force them to clean up their act.
• platz 5y ago
  There is no such thing as Facebook employees. * Why the downvotes?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • otterley 5y ago
    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.
  • electrondood 5y ago
    I assume downvotes are because you seem to be equivocating based on the recent rebranding.
• jd115 5y ago
  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.
  • tenpies 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
        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 https://mashable.com/article/twitter-pew-study-echo-chambers
      • paulryanrogers 5y ago
• mkl95 5y ago
  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.
  • campbel 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      they pay 2-3x.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • throwawaysea 5y ago
      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.
    • meowkit 5y ago
      Same obsession as with the Ivy's/top schools. Its a status marker/credential.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Any automatic apply feature is going to get flooded with job applications. Those LinkedIn job posts all have an “Easy Apply” button.
  • foepys 5y ago
    Everybody compensating like FAANG does will find new hires. The question is: are they the best?
    • twobitshifter 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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.
        • rightbyte 5y ago
          Not really. You can also just buy contenders.
          • adjkant 5y ago
            Facebook is going to struggle to get the FTC to clear any acquisition in this political climate
• gfosco 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
    “empty, patronizing, virtue signaling” is basically why all office jobs used to expect employees to wear ties.
  • ramesh31 5y ago
    Ah yes, the "honest authenticity" of only hiring white and asian males. Those were the days.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • convolvatron 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Just so you know, the parent is the CTO of Gab.
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Perhaps expanding his hiring pool might lead to his site getting pwned less.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  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.
  • pedrosorio 5y ago
    > 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.
    • loeg 5y ago
      Yeah. Are these the real numbers or the gamed ones? All of FANG seems to play this game where they will not send you a formal offer until you informally accept their informal offer. All to juice the “percent accepted” numbers and to make it marginally harder to play competing offers off each other.
  • varjag 5y ago
    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.
    • paganel 5y ago
• 01100011 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I had the same observation.
    • michaelwda 5y ago
      Correlation with perf wrapping up? :)
  • dilyevsky 5y ago
    Eoy has not been slow ime - recruiters want to hit their annual kpis
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I think you mean bimodal. Binomial is something else completely
    • civilized 5y ago
      Indeed, binomial distributions are quite unimodal!
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      Lol, thanks, Sunday morning brain fart.
      • erect_hacker3 5y ago
        Haha fart
  • pm90 5y ago
    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…
• civilized 5y ago
  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.
• waltbosz 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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-box/ 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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
  The only good thing about facebook to me is creation of ReactJS.
  • bogwog 5y ago
    They actually have a lot of really good open source stuff.
  • coolspot 5y ago
    + React Native + Cassandra DB + pyTorch + Jest + GraphQL + Oculus Quest
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• perdid0 5y ago
  > 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??
  • svachalek 5y ago
    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_ 5y ago
    Please, not this again. Just go to levels.fyi and see for yourself.
  • bogwog 5y ago
    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.
    • erik_seaberg 5y ago
      I think benefits are as usual and the salary is making up for no equity. They do sell discounted shares (and apparently OOTM ten year LEAPs?)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • wtetzner 5y ago
    Well, they call it total compensation, and it includes salary, bonus, and RSUs.
• werber 5y ago
  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
• Gentil 5y ago
  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.
  • _fat_santa 5y ago
    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.
    • fallingknife 5y ago
      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.
• aborsy 5y ago
  As long as a company pays, I doubt many will leave. Even if they don’t approve of company.
• uptheroots 5y ago
  Behind a paywall very sad
• ferdowsi 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
    • adjkant 5y ago
      I think you're underestimating a few things here re React: 1. Before the React/Vue era, there was so much JS churn and many devs who went through that are not looking to change anytime soon. 2. Even if React goes into keep the lights on mode, what is going to compel someone to not choose React at this point? The uniformity of it in the JS world, the stability, and the flexibility make it a great fit for most use cases. What value proposition is it failing that would make it lose its place as the dominant front end framework? It would take a massive, worthwhile new paradigm shift to occur in the JS world to unseat React IMO, and I don't see that happening anytime in the next few years simply because there is no need. React works TM which is big.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
• Capira 5y ago
  just because Mark's visions are dystopian nightmares ?
• electrondood 5y ago
  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.
  • cm2012 5y ago
    Netflix pays an extra 100k, is that because of a reputation for dubious morals?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • ultra_nick 5y ago
      Does Netflix pay 100k extra total comp or salary?
      • coolspot 5y ago
        Netflix doesn’t pay RSU, all salary.
    • ggpsv 5y ago
      Your conclusion is not the point that the parent is making.
      • cm2012 5y ago
        Parent is assuming fb pays 20k more due to poor moral reputation. I am asserting that we don't know that at all.
    • solveit 5y ago
      No, it's because they're paying for the therapy you'll need after burning out in three years.
• qihqi 5y ago
  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.
• malloreon 5y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 5y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
    • i_heart_dang 5y ago
      Care to elaborate? What’s the ideology here?
      • dang 5y ago
        I don't know exactly, but the account has been doing nothing but hammering Facebook for months, and the profile makes it clear that it's an agenda account. That's the sort of battle agenda the site guidelines are asking people not to conduct here. The guiding value of this site is supposed to be curiosity, not smiting enemies. Lest anybody misunderstand, I'm not defending FB by that; just defending HN.
• throwaway47292 5y ago
  The bubble we (hn) live in, is turning against fb/google/evil corp for various reasons, but the truth is, like any corp they will have ups and downs, if this meta shit pays out (fortnite skins for 2 billion people is basically infinite money) they will just buy their way out. Or they will buy the devs in another way, like apple is buying them indirectly for 30% commission on their apps. Worse case, you get survivor bias of people without moral compass, as anyone who cares leaves. Let's see how the social dilemma will play out, if the devs are actually malicious. (edit: grammar)
  • lmilcin 5y ago
    The trouble for FB is that best developers have free choice of where they are going to work. Yes, when you need to pay your bills and FB is going to pay a shit ton of money, most people will rationalize, bend and accept FB's offer. But when people have basically free choice of where they can work this is when most of them actually start paying attention to non-financial aspects of their decision. FB's model requires them to be able to hire a lot of really good developers. It may take some time, but if they have trouble hiring really good developers they may start a vicious circle with end result that they will be open to being caught by competition.
    • throwaway47292 5y ago
      > The trouble for FB is that best developers have free choice of where they are going to work. Thats in most companies no? The builders build from their heart. Until they get convinced to move somewhere very important as victims of their success and burnout. But you get 2-3 years of people giving their hearts out. Its what I call 'paying with love'. You know how they say 'do what you love and never work a day in your life', but what they dont say, is that you consuming that love, little by little, some day you will make a compromise, like an artist forced to paint something they dont agree with, and then again, and again.. until you start hating your brush. > FB's model requires them to be able to hire a lot of really good developers. It may take some time, but if they have trouble hiring really good developers they will be starting to slide a slippery slope to mediocrity when they can easily be caught by competition. I am not sure I agree with that, I dont think anybody's model requires constant input of really good developers, most things will work with ok devs, some sharded mysql, lots of ram and a bunch of materialization jobs.
• joelbondurant 5y ago
  Flagged for USA brand censorship fact purification.
• bottle_roket 5y ago
  I’m a FB employee and I’m giving my notice tomorrow. I interviewed with them in 2019 just so I could get a competing offer and had no intention of working there, but at the end of my interviewing run they were the only offer I had. It was 2x my current salary and it was too hard to turn it down when the money was right there in front of me. I had sincere moral issues with the company but I convinced myself their worst days were likely behind them, that they were committed to doing the work to to fix their reputation. The last 2 years have only gotten worse and it’s very clear the leadership has no interest in making meaningful changes to address social harm caused by the platform. I legit don’t like telling people what I do for a living when I meet someone new at a bar for fear they ask where I work. Couple this with a culture that has masterminded a set of carrots and sticks that gets people to push themselves very hard all of the time, I’m completely burnt out. My GF pretty much told me she can’t handle living with someone so stressed out all the time. I don’t have another job lined up but I’m not too worried. I’m excited for a reset. I’m taking through the end of the year to cool off and prep for interviews. I think it’s imperative at my next job that I at least somewhat believe in the product. I’ve learned that money isn’t enough to keep me going in the face of giving 0 fucks about the company mission.
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    It's a great way to look at peril (physical or moral) posts: "Will I make enough money over my current salary to (1) move substantially closer towards my financial life goals (funding kids' education, house, caring for parents, retirement, etc) & (2) fund my R&R, unemployed, for long enough to put my head and soul back together?" Often the answer is yes, but it's definitely a different way of looking at a job. Still trying to do a great job, but knowing there's a 1/2/4/8 year expiration date on your working there. And yes, at the hazard of putting it out there, I'd say believing in the mission vs not is worth ~25% salary to me.
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    Thanks for the inside perspective > Couple this with a culture that has masterminded a set of carrots and sticks that gets people to push themselves very hard all of the time, I’m completely burnt out. Can you say more about the work/life balance? I've heard Facebook's work life balance described as everything from a cushy "engineer retirement home" to a grueling crushing workload that few can handle. Obviously FB is a big company and it can vary from one manager to another, but I'm interested in hearing more of your perspective.
• makecheck 5y ago
  I recently turned down a FB recruiter on the spot without even finding out more about the job in question, telling them I just don’t like FB as a company. I’m lucky to have been around long enough, to be able to pick companies for my own reasons. Society isn’t set up to give most people that kind of choice; FB will therefore never really have any trouble finding people, I’m afraid. I would love to think that they take notes when receiving negative feedback from recruitment, using it as a clue to work on fixing a broken image problem. In reality, I think they just move on to the next person who will happily put up with them.
• troutmskreplica 5y ago
  Interviewed there a few years back. This was right after one of the many Facebook crises became public (sorry, forget which). I wasn’t super interested in the role or working there but was interested in seeing what an offer might look like. One of the interviewers was clearly going through a crises of conscience and told me he was thinking of leaving. All of the interviewers made it clear they didn’t personally use the product. Definitely the strangest interview of my life.
  • crate_barre 5y ago
    That’s just the reality of money. What self respecting talented engineer seriously uses any of this stuff? Now imagine everyone across enterprise, it’s even more of a shit show (literal evil industries). The duality creates a conundrum amongst a generation that often don’t settle down with a family until very later (if at all). If work is just for money, and you have nothing else in life, well shit, your ass is gonna be depressed. Maybe Zuckerberg gets it, maybe we do need the metaverse to fill this insane void. As for me, I literally look forward to chaos in the news at this point. Imagine that, how’d it come to this.
    • alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      > What self respecting talented engineer seriously uses any of this stuff Not Facebook itself, but Oculus is way ahead of any commercially viable competition right now and I don't see this changing anytime soon.
• throoo0ooowaway 5y ago
  I recently went through the interview processes for FB and another (non-FAANG) company mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and it was stunning how different the processes were. The recruiter for FB was incapable of conveying the simplest information in a period of time less than 30 minutes and constantly seemed to misremember what information they had already given me; they were constantly setting (and missing) deadlines to follow up with me with more information. Finally, after the on-site interview, they said FB would be making an offer, and then began this very strange dance (across the span of two full weeks) of trying to negotiate me down on % remote time and salary _without ever making me an actual offer_ or giving me any information about what the position I was interviewing for entailed. Meanwhile, the other company went from on-site interviews to an offer with firm numbers in two days. In the end, FB's recruiting process was so odious that I couldn't bring myself to wait long enough to even hear their offer to negotiate with (which, frankly, was the only reason I signed up to interview with FB). So much for "move fast".
  • ryan_lane 5y ago
    The negotiating without an offer thing is a normal (and very annoying) tactic used by recruiters to give you an offer that you immediately accept, while being able to avoid giving you an actual offer that you may reject. Recruiters have metrics they need to hit that include acceptance/rejection on offers, and this is a way they juice their metrics.
    • throoo0ooowaway 5y ago
      I gave FB the exact breakdown of my other offer with plenty of time to react to it, and got only silence in response. They had all the tools to put together a superior compensation package and just didn't. (It's possible that based on my interview performance, FB didn't want to match the level I was offered at the other company. But if that were the case, you'd think they would cut bait and move onto a more promising candidate rather than half-assing an attempt to get me to join regardless.)
• tqi 5y ago
  This is a pretty weak article. The trend is sourced from an unspecified number of "tech recruiters and other industry source," but not quantified at all. Quitting is up across the board[1], but there is no attempt to baseline against industry overall. The whole thing is basically an "X stock is up because of Y reason" article. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/a-record-4point4-million-people-quit-jobs-in-september-great-resignation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/a-record-4point4-million-peo...
• spoonjim 5y ago
  Just hired a guy from FB for less than half of his FB comp.
• miked85 5y ago
  How many engineers actually want to work for Facebook? I am sure many do just for the money, but I doubt it is a first choice for most.
• PradeetPatel 5y ago
  I'm not a technical person, can someone explain to this layman what is Facebook doing that the other FAANG companies are not doing?
• annadane 5y ago
  To me, the question would be if it's general job dissatisfaction or something people don't like in Facebook itself? It's true every company has problem points. But when you have someone like Zuck who lies constantly, buys up Instagram and Whatsapp and then covers it all with this Metaverse idea, I can see people finally deciding enough is enough. It's clear what management wants isn't what's good for the world
• kotxig 5y ago
  I refuse to ever work for facebook or have a facebook account. I regret having a whatsapp account, created before it was acquired. Still migrating friends+family onto signal. I get it, Facebook has scale and some cool hard problems to solve, and comp packages that are hard to ignore. I'm sure slavery looked pretty attractive too (don't get me wrong, I'm not equating the severity of these things). I just can't imagine having to explain to people in 20 years time how or why I put profit and personal gain ahead of legitimate social issues. How is it defensible? I probably clocked the issues a bit earlier than some, which is why I never created an account. Please just leave facebook and delete your accounts.
• michellesans142 5y ago
  https://scrumteams.us https://scrumteams.us are the most essential service that now a days companies want for outsourcing development teams.
• efleurine 5y ago
  I am looking forward to fill an open position in the future.
• alexeiz 5y ago
  The company is having trouble recruiting? Maybe Facebook should insist on their employees to be vaccinated.
• voz_ 5y ago
  ITT: people who didn't pass the bar
• xwowsersx 5y ago
  How does the author know this is due to specific issues at Facebook and isn't just due to the job market being as competitive as it has recently become? Perhaps it was difficult get people at facebooks to leave, but now, with the market as tight as is it and with compensation everywhere soaring, perhaps it's reached a level where even Facebook is seeing attrition.
• 2143 5y ago
  Is the problems with Facebook only a big problem at their Menlo Park, or American offices? What's the situation in their other offices, like UK, Europe, and Canada? Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but could it be true that their morally questionable decisions happen at their headquarters, rather than at their Dublin office for instance?
  • ramblerman 5y ago
    I don't get the distinction. It's like saying is it ok to work at HR of Phillip Morris, because I'm not involved directly in selling cigarettes.
    • 2143 5y ago
      Oh, okay. Never been anywhere near these places, so, yeah. Pardon me.
    • 2143 5y ago
      I see stories about so many people quitting FB recently. Is that happening only at their headquarters, or is it happening globally across all their offices?
  • ConSeannery 5y ago
    The culture is a bit different in different offices. Most of the stress from working at FB is from your twice yearly perf reviews, where managers have to go and argue with other managers over what rating their direct reports' performance deserves. If your manager is not assertive or does not have much clout, doesn't really like you, doesn't get to give their shpeal before all the "exceeds+" are given out, or simply gets paired with one or more a-holes, then all that shit is going to roll downhill (your meets expectations will turn into a meets-most, and you will have a PIP in front of you soon for example). Cultural differences in conflict, negotiation, and corporate drive can make this more or less stressful for the managers and as a result for the employees. As such, you can predict more stress in the US and less in Europe+Canada. The Irish office for example is a bit more laid back but also can be more passive aggressive. Per decision making around immoral things, all those decisions happened in the US when I worked there.