10 ms·

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

by malermeister 4y ago

abdabab 4y ago
Shouldn’t that take only a few minutes?
- malermeister 4y ago
  Haha, not in the codebase I was working in at the time. Paddings being manipulated programmatically all over the place. Also, what a clear signal the CEO is not focusing on what matters. This was during the time the Cambridge Analytica thing broke... There's really nothing more important that needed his attention?
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Maybe he needed something to direct his stress into and distract himself. I'm not saying what he did was right, BTW.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      That was kind of my read too. Focus on the small things you can control to make up for the loss of control over the big things. I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.
      - bayindirh 4y ago
        > I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy. That's a very fair need. Hope your life turns out better than you ever hope it to be.
- frankincense 4y ago
  At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Why not? It's his company. He can do what he wants.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      Should not, not must not. He can do what he wants, but he shouldn't.
    - onion2k 4y ago
      His company pays design and UX experts a huge amount of money to come up with designs that work for users, not for him personally. Meta isn't Zuckerberg's toy. Ignoring that expertise, and designing for himself instead of users, is failing the shareholders by wasting money and not maximizing revenue. The parallel to Steve Jobs is a fair one, except that Steve was brilliant at design and UX and got things right. He wasn't bothered about tiny details like the padding on a single button but rather the design of the entire system, and he picked up on things that didn't sit in the overall architecture brilliantly. He also drove people to leave Apple, and that was a bad thing. Things aren't right or justifiable just because they're like things Steve did. Sometimes he got things wrong, particularly when it came to managing people.
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        CEOs dog fooding their products and leaving feedback on them is not failing shareholders. Would you prefer a CEO to completely ignore everything their company makes and just trust others to tell him how things are going?
        jjav 4y ago
        A wise CEO doesn't bypass the product and engineering process he's delegated to be put in place. Bypasing the process not only interferes with someones sprint and product roadmap, but more importantly, tells the people who own the process that they don't really own it after all. Which leads to people quitting.
- trhway 4y ago
  It takes a few minutes once, it takes a few minutes another time, ... and now you have an exec who is like Pavlov's dog got used to prompt completion of his/her caprices. That isn't a way to a happy life for you (well, until you a one of those who thrive in execs' attention). Instead you wait until second or third reminder (if it is important the exec would remind, if not - then there wasn't a reason to bother to start with, and given the ferret like attention span of a typical exec...), you similarly wait for reminders another time, ... and now you have an exec frustrated by such an impedance mismatch and who as a result would move their attention to somebody else to promptly care for his/her caprices :)
bagels 4y ago
Is this literally true?
forgingahead 4y ago
But why was your padding work so shoddy?
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
  He's a low performer; it's just one of his immutable and context-independent properties. /s
- malermeister 4y ago
  Cause i was modifying the shoddily built codebase of the feature we were modifying. Turns out "move fast and break things" doesn't make for maintainable code.
- kayamon 4y ago
  Padding work is hard and the benefits are often marginal.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
You self selected because he turned up the heat on those buttons, and you know what? He’s okay with that (Being facetious)

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

abdabab 4y ago

Shouldn’t that take only a few minutes?

malermeister 4y ago
Haha, not in the codebase I was working in at the time. Paddings being manipulated programmatically all over the place. Also, what a clear signal the CEO is not focusing on what matters. This was during the time the Cambridge Analytica thing broke... There's really nothing more important that needed his attention?
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Maybe he needed something to direct his stress into and distract himself. I'm not saying what he did was right, BTW.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    That was kind of my read too. Focus on the small things you can control to make up for the loss of control over the big things. I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy. That's a very fair need. Hope your life turns out better than you ever hope it to be.
frankincense 4y ago
At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Why not? It's his company. He can do what he wants.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    Should not, not must not. He can do what he wants, but he shouldn't.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    His company pays design and UX experts a huge amount of money to come up with designs that work for users, not for him personally. Meta isn't Zuckerberg's toy. Ignoring that expertise, and designing for himself instead of users, is failing the shareholders by wasting money and not maximizing revenue. The parallel to Steve Jobs is a fair one, except that Steve was brilliant at design and UX and got things right. He wasn't bothered about tiny details like the padding on a single button but rather the design of the entire system, and he picked up on things that didn't sit in the overall architecture brilliantly. He also drove people to leave Apple, and that was a bad thing. Things aren't right or justifiable just because they're like things Steve did. Sometimes he got things wrong, particularly when it came to managing people.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      CEOs dog fooding their products and leaving feedback on them is not failing shareholders. Would you prefer a CEO to completely ignore everything their company makes and just trust others to tell him how things are going?
      - jjav 4y ago
        A wise CEO doesn't bypass the product and engineering process he's delegated to be put in place. Bypasing the process not only interferes with someones sprint and product roadmap, but more importantly, tells the people who own the process that they don't really own it after all. Which leads to people quitting.
trhway 4y ago
It takes a few minutes once, it takes a few minutes another time, ... and now you have an exec who is like Pavlov's dog got used to prompt completion of his/her caprices. That isn't a way to a happy life for you (well, until you a one of those who thrive in execs' attention). Instead you wait until second or third reminder (if it is important the exec would remind, if not - then there wasn't a reason to bother to start with, and given the ferret like attention span of a typical exec...), you similarly wait for reminders another time, ... and now you have an exec frustrated by such an impedance mismatch and who as a result would move their attention to somebody else to promptly care for his/her caprices :)

bagels 4y ago

Is this literally true?

forgingahead 4y ago

But why was your padding work so shoddy?

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
He's a low performer; it's just one of his immutable and context-independent properties. /s
malermeister 4y ago
Cause i was modifying the shoddily built codebase of the feature we were modifying. Turns out "move fast and break things" doesn't make for maintainable code.
kayamon 4y ago
Padding work is hard and the benefits are often marginal.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

You self selected because he turned up the heat on those buttons, and you know what? He’s okay with that (Being facetious)