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I love management and, after over 17 years in an IC capacity, find that it fulfills me in a way that writing code stopped doing. I was also a manager at Meta i

I love management and, after over 17 years in an IC capacity, find that it fulfills me in a way that writing code stopped doing. I was also a manager at Meta in a past life, and really didn't love the experience due to the nature of the company and roles of manager. I do think I'd really like being an IC there, due to the high level of autonomy and focus on doing impactful work.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
[flagged]
- ketzo 4y ago
  To be slightly less cynical, I think they just mean that individual engineers at Meta are responsible for large chunks/vertical slices of work, so your work has a lot of individual impact on getting things out into the world.
  - fatnoah 4y ago
    This is the "correct" interpretation. Of course, it's sometimes a perverse incentive since getting something out and moving a needle or getting another team to use your work is also "impactful", and leads to many of the negative (intentional or not) issues caused by the apps.
- ianlevesque 4y ago
  Okay I'll feed the troll. There are only a few places where if you implemented, for example, an effort to reduce "body dysmorphic disorder", it could instantly improve the lives of 3 billion users worldwide. Meta is one of those places.
  - artifaxx 4y ago
    I don't see their comment as trolling. Reducing the negative impact Meta already has is a more accurate description. Given their track record so far, you'd be a tiny minority to even get to work on that instead of ad/user engagement optimization for example.
    - omeze 4y ago
      For every teen with poor body image issues there are likely 5 people served by Facebook in some way that they deeply appreciate. I talk to family members in Algeria who I'd never be able to reliably keep in touch with otherwise, and friends in Europe love FB marketplace. Yes, a service for 2-3 billion people has drawbacks. It's disingenuous to say that it doesn't improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, though.
      - istjohn 4y ago
        Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? Do you talk to family members in Algeria through FB or WhatsApp? WhatsApp would have been just fine if Zuckerberg didn't buy it before US regulators rolled out of bed. I think it's hard to argue that anyone's life is improved by a company that shows such a lack of respect for its users. We could have social networks that respect us, but Zuckerberg systematically purchased them or squashed them in the cradle.
        dchftcs 4y ago
        >Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? FB marketplace didn't cause those bad things. FB has done bad things due to perverse incentives, but for individuals working at the company you can't deny that at least some people can have a positive experience making positive impact to the world.
        istjohn 4y ago
        The lungs plead their innocence, “We give life!" But the blood they oxygenate feeds the mitochondria that fuel the muscles that power the claws that tear into the lamb's soft belly.
- bityard 4y ago
  Somebody at Meta worked really hard to make sure that when I'm using Facebook on my phone to read someone's post or comment thread, it punishes me for taking a call or answering a text message by reloading my feed with a set of completely different posts when I re-enter the app, and then making it impossible to find the previous post or thread again. No other app has gone to such extraordinary lengths to make sure you can only view a piece of content once, and then hide it from you forever after.
  - gryn 4y ago
    have you met the desktop version of tiktok ? they went out of their way to make it not possible to click multiple suggested videos in new tabs and all others kind of anti desktop measures.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    I use FB via browser and have not experienced this behavior there. But I do see it in the LinkedIn app all the time. Even if you click into a posted article, when you exit from the article you won't be able to find the post so you can comment on it!
    - heleninboodler 4y ago
      I use FB via browser and this is constant on iOS. If I am going through my feed and I click a link to another site, it opens a new tab and when I return to the FB tab I see it reload the page and I lose my spot. If I try to scroll down to find the same item I clicked on (because for example I feel like commenting), it's almost always gone. Nowadays I just take it as a reminder that FB is either deliberately manipulating me or just doesn't care about the UX, so I close the FB tab. I'm not doing extra work to make up for their user-hostile decisions.
- dqpb 4y ago
  Meta created pyTorch
  - benatkin 4y ago
    Tensorflow FTW
- fortituded0002 4y ago
  Meta's has a corporate value for "Focus on long-term impact" which is trying to counter short-term gains that don't produce over time. They also talk about how you can make a "big impact" as an IC there, which from what I know is true since you can work on big projects, but they aren't necessarily the projects you'd want to work on if you have some form of value system that includes empathy. Years ago, I met someone that boasted about doing auto-play for videos in your feed so that get sucked into related video after related video. He was particularly proud of implementing a feature (he worked it out with the PM) where you could only delete one video at a time from your history instead of in batch. The goal was to make it harder to purge your data and frustrate the customer so they give up. Ultimately they wanted more data on you so that they could further "optimize" the app to better suit/manipulate you. Pretty sure this is what they mean by their company core value of "focus on long-term impact."
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  Even if you don't think that some people find value in Meta apps, Meta engineers work on all types of project, lots of them are open source (see https://opensource.fb.com https://opensource.fb.com) and are impactful beyond just supporting Instagram.
  - benatkin 4y ago
    We know about that page. I use it to find what libraries & frameworks (including ones where they lie and call it a library like React) to avoid.
- ahahahahah 4y ago
  Schools have caused many millions more teenagers to have such disorder, is there no impactful work to be done in schools? In fact, the same research that likely was used to see such an opinion for you about Instagram in fact showed that it was more likely to improve stuck disorders than to make them worse.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  > There must be something else which you are thinking about when wording it with this positive connotation? A surprising number of teams are NOT involved in things like news feed, story ranking, "engagement", etc. Some teams, like my own, were building foundational technology for things like AR/VR, wearable devices, mapping & navigation, etc. A concrete example of "impactful" work done by such teams was just posted on LinkedIn, which is a focus on building maps geared towards pedestrians walking around, not cars driving. This is a building block for eventual AR use cases, among other things. The team building this then enables other teams up the food chain to use this in building what eventually becomes part of an end-user product.
  - RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
    Thank you for taking the time to answer my question! :) I suppose it's a matter of weighing "a set of many small utilities which make life a bit easier for N people" against "two big dangerous social networks which make life a lot harder for M people". Because the money from the former helps the latter as well. How you decide to judge this is up to you :)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago

[flagged]

ketzo 4y ago
To be slightly less cynical, I think they just mean that individual engineers at Meta are responsible for large chunks/vertical slices of work, so your work has a lot of individual impact on getting things out into the world.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  This is the "correct" interpretation. Of course, it's sometimes a perverse incentive since getting something out and moving a needle or getting another team to use your work is also "impactful", and leads to many of the negative (intentional or not) issues caused by the apps.
ianlevesque 4y ago
Okay I'll feed the troll. There are only a few places where if you implemented, for example, an effort to reduce "body dysmorphic disorder", it could instantly improve the lives of 3 billion users worldwide. Meta is one of those places.
- artifaxx 4y ago
  I don't see their comment as trolling. Reducing the negative impact Meta already has is a more accurate description. Given their track record so far, you'd be a tiny minority to even get to work on that instead of ad/user engagement optimization for example.
  - omeze 4y ago
    For every teen with poor body image issues there are likely 5 people served by Facebook in some way that they deeply appreciate. I talk to family members in Algeria who I'd never be able to reliably keep in touch with otherwise, and friends in Europe love FB marketplace. Yes, a service for 2-3 billion people has drawbacks. It's disingenuous to say that it doesn't improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, though.
    - istjohn 4y ago
      Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? Do you talk to family members in Algeria through FB or WhatsApp? WhatsApp would have been just fine if Zuckerberg didn't buy it before US regulators rolled out of bed. I think it's hard to argue that anyone's life is improved by a company that shows such a lack of respect for its users. We could have social networks that respect us, but Zuckerberg systematically purchased them or squashed them in the cradle.
      - dchftcs 4y ago
        >Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth? FB marketplace didn't cause those bad things. FB has done bad things due to perverse incentives, but for individuals working at the company you can't deny that at least some people can have a positive experience making positive impact to the world.
        istjohn 4y ago
        The lungs plead their innocence, “We give life!" But the blood they oxygenate feeds the mitochondria that fuel the muscles that power the claws that tear into the lamb's soft belly.
bityard 4y ago
Somebody at Meta worked really hard to make sure that when I'm using Facebook on my phone to read someone's post or comment thread, it punishes me for taking a call or answering a text message by reloading my feed with a set of completely different posts when I re-enter the app, and then making it impossible to find the previous post or thread again. No other app has gone to such extraordinary lengths to make sure you can only view a piece of content once, and then hide it from you forever after.
- gryn 4y ago
  have you met the desktop version of tiktok ? they went out of their way to make it not possible to click multiple suggested videos in new tabs and all others kind of anti desktop measures.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I use FB via browser and have not experienced this behavior there. But I do see it in the LinkedIn app all the time. Even if you click into a posted article, when you exit from the article you won't be able to find the post so you can comment on it!
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    I use FB via browser and this is constant on iOS. If I am going through my feed and I click a link to another site, it opens a new tab and when I return to the FB tab I see it reload the page and I lose my spot. If I try to scroll down to find the same item I clicked on (because for example I feel like commenting), it's almost always gone. Nowadays I just take it as a reminder that FB is either deliberately manipulating me or just doesn't care about the UX, so I close the FB tab. I'm not doing extra work to make up for their user-hostile decisions.
dqpb 4y ago
Meta created pyTorch
- benatkin 4y ago
  Tensorflow FTW
fortituded0002 4y ago
Meta's has a corporate value for "Focus on long-term impact" which is trying to counter short-term gains that don't produce over time. They also talk about how you can make a "big impact" as an IC there, which from what I know is true since you can work on big projects, but they aren't necessarily the projects you'd want to work on if you have some form of value system that includes empathy. Years ago, I met someone that boasted about doing auto-play for videos in your feed so that get sucked into related video after related video. He was particularly proud of implementing a feature (he worked it out with the PM) where you could only delete one video at a time from your history instead of in batch. The goal was to make it harder to purge your data and frustrate the customer so they give up. Ultimately they wanted more data on you so that they could further "optimize" the app to better suit/manipulate you. Pretty sure this is what they mean by their company core value of "focus on long-term impact."
yodsanklai 4y ago
Even if you don't think that some people find value in Meta apps, Meta engineers work on all types of project, lots of them are open source (see https://opensource.fb.com https://opensource.fb.com) and are impactful beyond just supporting Instagram.
- benatkin 4y ago
  We know about that page. I use it to find what libraries & frameworks (including ones where they lie and call it a library like React) to avoid.
ahahahahah 4y ago
Schools have caused many millions more teenagers to have such disorder, is there no impactful work to be done in schools? In fact, the same research that likely was used to see such an opinion for you about Instagram in fact showed that it was more likely to improve stuck disorders than to make them worse.
fatnoah 4y ago
> There must be something else which you are thinking about when wording it with this positive connotation? A surprising number of teams are NOT involved in things like news feed, story ranking, "engagement", etc. Some teams, like my own, were building foundational technology for things like AR/VR, wearable devices, mapping & navigation, etc. A concrete example of "impactful" work done by such teams was just posted on LinkedIn, which is a focus on building maps geared towards pedestrians walking around, not cars driving. This is a building block for eventual AR use cases, among other things. The team building this then enables other teams up the food chain to use this in building what eventually becomes part of an end-user product.
- RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to answer my question! :) I suppose it's a matter of weighing "a set of many small utilities which make life a bit easier for N people" against "two big dangerous social networks which make life a lot harder for M people". Because the money from the former helps the latter as well. How you decide to judge this is up to you :)