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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, Cass

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.

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.