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I worked at Meta for 2 years and the pressure to land features while keeping up on your code review/LoC metrics was a fucking nightmare during the boom times.

I worked at Meta for 2 years and the pressure to land features while keeping up on your code review/LoC metrics was a fucking nightmare during the boom times. I can only imagine how shitty it will get with the specter of layoffs floating around

ivraatiems 4y ago
Assuming LoC = lines of code... seriously? That's by far the dumbest metric for measuring software engineer productivity that exists.
- plantwallshoe 4y ago
  There is a graph of your submitted commits/LoC/code review comments over time, overlayed with the rest of your teams metrics. Managers will tell you that those metrics are not important to your performance review , but it is absolutely not true. They didn’t make the graph so it can be ignored.
  - pbalau 4y ago
    Before I've left fb, early 2018, loc/code review did not matter. Around 2016, there was a push to switch to management from within the engs. This did not go that well. After, since the company kept growing and there was a real need to get more managers, they started hiring from outside. One of these outside hires become my manager and he was the reason I left. Code review used to be on the same axis as onboarding, office hours, that sort of thing.
- AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  Typical middle management bs. The best engineers even delete far more code than they write.
dboreham 4y ago
> LoC metrics See: Goodhart's Law
bcrosby95 4y ago
Yeah, I know some people that worked for meta and they called it the most psychologically damaging environment they've ever worked in. And they were all originally game devs. One went back to game dev, one decided to retire early, and the other went to Google.
- plantwallshoe 4y ago
  Meta is very skilled at hiring smart, motivated, hard working people - then creating a perverse system of carrots and sticks to get those people to push themselves as hard as they can. I think the only thing that really bothers me about this is that it’s all for the purpose of increasing engagement with Reels or selling digital tshirts in the metaverse. If a company like Meta had 40,000 smart, highly motived people working themselves to death for the sake of solving climate change or homelessness, what a fucking world we might live in.
  - deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
    > creating a perverse system of carrots and sticks to get those people to push themselves as hard as they can If farmville were a job… my god, I think they’ve gone and done it. > people that worked for meta and they called it the most psychologically damaging environment they've ever worked in Just wait until they try using the platform they built. At least they have something in common with their users. Years ago, there was a Darwin Award for a man who removed the safety padding from a ski lift pole, carried it up the hill and then used it to sled back down on. He crashed into the pole he removed it from and died. So meta.
bagels 4y ago
Add on top of that huge pay cuts, Meta stock is down 50%. Doesn't sound pleasant.
rglover 4y ago
So in other words they don't have the slightest clue what they're doing.
perfecthjrjth 4y ago
Remember a Chinese SWE, who jumped off the fourth floor of a fb building: https://pandaily.com/a-chinese-facebook-engineer-commits-suicide-is-a-job-worth-dying-for/ https://pandaily.com/a-chinese-facebook-engineer-commits-sui...
nunez 4y ago
wait FB has LoC metrics?

ivraatiems 4y ago

Assuming LoC = lines of code... seriously? That's by far the dumbest metric for measuring software engineer productivity that exists.

plantwallshoe 4y ago
There is a graph of your submitted commits/LoC/code review comments over time, overlayed with the rest of your teams metrics. Managers will tell you that those metrics are not important to your performance review , but it is absolutely not true. They didn’t make the graph so it can be ignored.
- pbalau 4y ago
  Before I've left fb, early 2018, loc/code review did not matter. Around 2016, there was a push to switch to management from within the engs. This did not go that well. After, since the company kept growing and there was a real need to get more managers, they started hiring from outside. One of these outside hires become my manager and he was the reason I left. Code review used to be on the same axis as onboarding, office hours, that sort of thing.
AtNightWeCode 4y ago
Typical middle management bs. The best engineers even delete far more code than they write.

dboreham 4y ago

> LoC metrics See: Goodhart's Law

bcrosby95 4y ago

Yeah, I know some people that worked for meta and they called it the most psychologically damaging environment they've ever worked in. And they were all originally game devs. One went back to game dev, one decided to retire early, and the other went to Google.

plantwallshoe 4y ago
Meta is very skilled at hiring smart, motivated, hard working people - then creating a perverse system of carrots and sticks to get those people to push themselves as hard as they can. I think the only thing that really bothers me about this is that it’s all for the purpose of increasing engagement with Reels or selling digital tshirts in the metaverse. If a company like Meta had 40,000 smart, highly motived people working themselves to death for the sake of solving climate change or homelessness, what a fucking world we might live in.
- deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
  > creating a perverse system of carrots and sticks to get those people to push themselves as hard as they can If farmville were a job… my god, I think they’ve gone and done it. > people that worked for meta and they called it the most psychologically damaging environment they've ever worked in Just wait until they try using the platform they built. At least they have something in common with their users. Years ago, there was a Darwin Award for a man who removed the safety padding from a ski lift pole, carried it up the hill and then used it to sled back down on. He crashed into the pole he removed it from and died. So meta.

bagels 4y ago

Add on top of that huge pay cuts, Meta stock is down 50%. Doesn't sound pleasant.

rglover 4y ago

So in other words they don't have the slightest clue what they're doing.

perfecthjrjth 4y ago

Remember a Chinese SWE, who jumped off the fourth floor of a fb building: https://pandaily.com/a-chinese-facebook-engineer-commits-suicide-is-a-job-worth-dying-for/ https://pandaily.com/a-chinese-facebook-engineer-commits-sui...

nunez 4y ago

wait FB has LoC metrics?