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I agree. Maybe best at grinding LeetCode, best at playing office politics, best at tolerating toxic work environments... But likely not best in actually build

I agree. Maybe best at grinding LeetCode, best at playing office politics, best at tolerating toxic work environments... But likely not best in actually building good software. No doubt quite good at that, but probably not meaningfully different than any other tech company in the area hiring from a similar talent pool. And because the candidates also need to be optimized for the qualities mentioned in the first paragraph, likely there’s a trade off where average software development skill ends up being lower due to needing to maximize other personality factors first.

jstx1 4y ago
I get the desire to look down on leetcode or on Facebook generally but do you really think that Facebook would be able to operate at this scale if they didn't have good engineers? They have billions of customers using their products all the time. This isn't done by useless people who know only LC and office politics. They have to solve technical problems that most other software engineers don't even know exist. Having incredibly influential open source projects (React, PyTorch) is just a cherry on top of everything else they're doing from a software engineering point of view.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > do you really think that Facebook would be able to operate at this scale if they didn't have good engineers? They clearly have engineers that are good, but he questions if the engineers are better than the good engineers found at any other run-of-the-mill company. They aren't exactly performing sorcery over there, just solving problems like every other software business.
  - johnbellone 4y ago
    That’s beyond question and if you are asking it you’re fooling yourself. You can take a look at the output of their engineers as an example (React, Native, Cassandra). We are talking billions. Your run of the mill software company isn’t building this kind of tech. You can hate on Meta all you want. But let’s not deny the facts.
    - didibus 4y ago
      I think it's a decent question, assessing tech talent is hard, oftentimes, building great things like React or Cassandra is also a matter of opportunity, working at big companies means you have hard problems that require you to spend time designing such systems. It's hard to say that others couldn't have similarly solved it, or even done it better. That doesn't mean it's any less impressive of the people who did build all this, but I just don't think we need to compare, we can recognize the accomplishment on its own.
    - seer-zig 4y ago
      Could the fact that they have higher salaries have anything to do with it? Offer higher salaries and you'll attract stronger talent, regardless of the leetcode hoops they have to jump through.
      - epicureanideal 4y ago
        Yes, of course higher salaries incentivize people to grind leetcode and tolerate office politics who otherwise might not.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      This mischaracterization of the discussion is curious, but it is certain that no two companies have the same problems in need of solving. Of course certain technologies could only emerge out of a place like Facebook. Only a place like Facebook would have a need, particularly with respect to resources, to pour R&D into these technologies to solve their particular problems. But that's not what we're talking about. The question posed was if Facebook's good developers are better than good developers at run-of-the-mill companies. That is not clear. People at Facebook, with an average tenure of only 2.3 years, have almost certainly also worked at run-of-the-mill companies so that already suggests that you can find good developers all over the place. That developers at Facebook solved problems Facebook had doesn't prove no other developer could also solve Facebook's problems if they also worked at Facebook. Solving problems is literally the job of a developer, so it seems highly unlikely that all other developers outside of Facebook cannot also solve problems. Of course developers are only going to solve the problems in front of them.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  The projects you cite don't require 100s of FTE engineers. Due to the absurd amount of SWEs on Facebook, surely someone or a team happen to working there will score a huge FOSS hit sooner or later just due to the numbers.
  - jstx1 4y ago
    Like I said, the open source stuff is a nice bonus. The main testament to Facebook's engineering level is that they're successfully shipping several of the largest scale software products ever to billions of people. And you certainly need a large engineering headcount for that.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      WhatsApp didn’t need a big team. Just one counter example.
lurker619 4y ago
So there are no office politics or bad work environments outside FAANG? I've worked in both FAANG and run of the mill tech shops, and I vastly prefer the professionalism and less politics in FAANG environments. YMMV.

jstx1 4y ago

I get the desire to look down on leetcode or on Facebook generally but do you really think that Facebook would be able to operate at this scale if they didn't have good engineers? They have billions of customers using their products all the time. This isn't done by useless people who know only LC and office politics. They have to solve technical problems that most other software engineers don't even know exist. Having incredibly influential open source projects (React, PyTorch) is just a cherry on top of everything else they're doing from a software engineering point of view.

randomdata 4y ago
> do you really think that Facebook would be able to operate at this scale if they didn't have good engineers? They clearly have engineers that are good, but he questions if the engineers are better than the good engineers found at any other run-of-the-mill company. They aren't exactly performing sorcery over there, just solving problems like every other software business.
- johnbellone 4y ago
  That’s beyond question and if you are asking it you’re fooling yourself. You can take a look at the output of their engineers as an example (React, Native, Cassandra). We are talking billions. Your run of the mill software company isn’t building this kind of tech. You can hate on Meta all you want. But let’s not deny the facts.
  - didibus 4y ago
    I think it's a decent question, assessing tech talent is hard, oftentimes, building great things like React or Cassandra is also a matter of opportunity, working at big companies means you have hard problems that require you to spend time designing such systems. It's hard to say that others couldn't have similarly solved it, or even done it better. That doesn't mean it's any less impressive of the people who did build all this, but I just don't think we need to compare, we can recognize the accomplishment on its own.
  - seer-zig 4y ago
    Could the fact that they have higher salaries have anything to do with it? Offer higher salaries and you'll attract stronger talent, regardless of the leetcode hoops they have to jump through.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      Yes, of course higher salaries incentivize people to grind leetcode and tolerate office politics who otherwise might not.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    This mischaracterization of the discussion is curious, but it is certain that no two companies have the same problems in need of solving. Of course certain technologies could only emerge out of a place like Facebook. Only a place like Facebook would have a need, particularly with respect to resources, to pour R&D into these technologies to solve their particular problems. But that's not what we're talking about. The question posed was if Facebook's good developers are better than good developers at run-of-the-mill companies. That is not clear. People at Facebook, with an average tenure of only 2.3 years, have almost certainly also worked at run-of-the-mill companies so that already suggests that you can find good developers all over the place. That developers at Facebook solved problems Facebook had doesn't prove no other developer could also solve Facebook's problems if they also worked at Facebook. Solving problems is literally the job of a developer, so it seems highly unlikely that all other developers outside of Facebook cannot also solve problems. Of course developers are only going to solve the problems in front of them.
rightbyte 4y ago
The projects you cite don't require 100s of FTE engineers. Due to the absurd amount of SWEs on Facebook, surely someone or a team happen to working there will score a huge FOSS hit sooner or later just due to the numbers.
- jstx1 4y ago
  Like I said, the open source stuff is a nice bonus. The main testament to Facebook's engineering level is that they're successfully shipping several of the largest scale software products ever to billions of people. And you certainly need a large engineering headcount for that.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    WhatsApp didn’t need a big team. Just one counter example.

lurker619 4y ago

So there are no office politics or bad work environments outside FAANG? I've worked in both FAANG and run of the mill tech shops, and I vastly prefer the professionalism and less politics in FAANG environments. YMMV.