4 ms·

Facebook is one of the most innovative software companies out there: - Cassandra - Hiphop VM - Flow - React - GraphQL - zstd - PyTorch - rocksdb I hate

Facebook is one of the most innovative software companies out there: - Cassandra - Hiphop VM - Flow - React - GraphQL - zstd - PyTorch - rocksdb I hate Facebook to my core, but this is pretty undeniable. You gotta re-examine your priors on this one.

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
Innovative software! Not product. React alone is a brilliant front end framework that changed the web. PyTorch as well. Amazon does not produce the same level of open source, or anywhere close, but the products are more varied and far better.
- netheril96 4y ago
  Asking engineers to innovate on the product side is the same as asking product managers to invent better programming languages.
  - pyb 4y ago
    There is such a thing as a product-minded engineer, but FB's interview process does not select for them.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  But your original post said: > I still, after all these years, hold the belief that facebook failed to innovate because the engineering interview is based on memorization. Having worked with those types of engineers, they can absolutely build exactly what is needed. I think the fact that so much engineering innovation has come out of Facebook absolutely disproves your thesis. Also, while I've interviewed for Amazon (but not FB), I don't think Amazon's technical interview questions were really any different from any other big tech companies I've interviewed at. They certainly didn't seem to optimize for any sort of "innovation" in their tech questions (to be clear, I'm not sure how you'd do that).
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
    Amazon is much easier from a raw algorithms perspective, but much harder from a behavioral interview perspective. I used to work at Amazon and conducted over 50 interviews. Amazon selects for a different personality type than Facebook. It's also true that alot of interview rejects at Facebook get into Amazon
- datavirtue 4y ago
  How did react change the web?
  - siquick 4y ago
    Creating highly interactive web applications is far easier using React (and the surrounding ecosystem) than using plain Javascript.
daveevad 4y ago
At least a few of these are derivative of other projects. I don't deny the engineering innovation of Facebook but it must be moderated to some extent by the way ideas are flowing between engineers at mega-corps, probably from at least Bell Labs, if not earlier.
dastbe 4y ago
I always forget that cassandra wasn't built by yahoo because it absolutely fits with their model of taking a whitepaper and building an unmaintainable heap out of it.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  No the working Cassandra was built by Amazon. It’s called dynamodb.

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago

Innovative software! Not product. React alone is a brilliant front end framework that changed the web. PyTorch as well. Amazon does not produce the same level of open source, or anywhere close, but the products are more varied and far better.

netheril96 4y ago
Asking engineers to innovate on the product side is the same as asking product managers to invent better programming languages.
- pyb 4y ago
  There is such a thing as a product-minded engineer, but FB's interview process does not select for them.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
But your original post said: > I still, after all these years, hold the belief that facebook failed to innovate because the engineering interview is based on memorization. Having worked with those types of engineers, they can absolutely build exactly what is needed. I think the fact that so much engineering innovation has come out of Facebook absolutely disproves your thesis. Also, while I've interviewed for Amazon (but not FB), I don't think Amazon's technical interview questions were really any different from any other big tech companies I've interviewed at. They certainly didn't seem to optimize for any sort of "innovation" in their tech questions (to be clear, I'm not sure how you'd do that).
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
  Amazon is much easier from a raw algorithms perspective, but much harder from a behavioral interview perspective. I used to work at Amazon and conducted over 50 interviews. Amazon selects for a different personality type than Facebook. It's also true that alot of interview rejects at Facebook get into Amazon
datavirtue 4y ago
How did react change the web?
- siquick 4y ago
  Creating highly interactive web applications is far easier using React (and the surrounding ecosystem) than using plain Javascript.

daveevad 4y ago

At least a few of these are derivative of other projects. I don't deny the engineering innovation of Facebook but it must be moderated to some extent by the way ideas are flowing between engineers at mega-corps, probably from at least Bell Labs, if not earlier.

dastbe 4y ago

I always forget that cassandra wasn't built by yahoo because it absolutely fits with their model of taking a whitepaper and building an unmaintainable heap out of it.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
No the working Cassandra was built by Amazon. It’s called dynamodb.