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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

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.

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.