9 ms·

Not surprising really. Cultural problem. Sony = decades of experience on gaming hardware and games (and everything else) Meta = decades of experience running

• latency-guy2 4y ago
  Meta hired people that specifically had experience in hardware, wearables, and games for this big bet. Sure, you can say that maybe Meta's infrastructure is in it's infancy in this field, but so is everyone else's because, quite literally, Meta was the only (big) player in this field in the first place.
  • echevil 4y ago
    Meta hired them and required them to fit into Meta's culture
  • tjpnz 4y ago
    Can a game dev be productive in that sort of environment? What does the interview even look like? Being able to do LeetCode hard under pressure is even less meaningful when hiring good game devs.
  • BoorishBears 4y ago
    Except Meta also filtered with the same filters they used to form an engineering org around serving ads. I have pretty extensive experience in the embedded Android space and have worked on products everyone here knows, Meta reached out to me very excitedly, and when I let the recruiter know I don't do Leetcode they assured me the coding phone screen was a merely a formality and I'd do great. It took all my willpower not to leave the moment the interviewer dropped some generic LC merge sorted lists problem, though I don't think I did was that much better their eyes (poked at it for about all of 5 minutes, called it, and asked them some questions) They actually tried to set me up with a second phone screen but I declined, even on the principle of it, I don't like working at places that filter by LC. In cutting edge stuff like wearables especially, I'm sure you'll find a ton of people with no time for jumping through LC circus. I'm sure I could take a few months and grind out those problems in my sleep (or rather I've been told that), but I'd rather work on interesting and novel things.
    • hnav 4y ago
      merging sorted lists is not a leetcode nightmare interview question though, if you can't manage it in an interview, chances are you can't program very well IMO
      • jackblemming 4y ago
        OP didn't go into detail about the problem, so we have no idea what the actual problem or solution was. Empirical research has found many people don't do well in high stakes problem solving situations while being watched (shocking).
        • engmgrmgr 4y ago
          Many people also don’t do well in high stakes problem solving situations even when not being watched. I’m not suggesting OP is dumb, but if someone is setting hiring criteria and thinks they need X skillset judged by Y, I think there’s a good chance they’re directionally correct. I get it, I’ve bombed interviews I was excited about and rationalized it anywhere and everywhere. Once I started hiring folks, my opinions evolved significantly. How else do you hire someone out of a pool of people that are all knowledgeable and likable? A bad hire, even if they’re super smart and just the wrong fit, is worse than not hiring anyone at all. If you climb the management ladder, you’ll likely be graded on your org’s hiring outcomes. If 10 people all seemed qualified, I’m going to burn down the risk as much as possible. If I’m wrong 1 time for this, but it not obviously wrong 9 others, I’ll call it a win. For context: this is coming from tiny startups to billion dollar companies and different things in between.
          • notacoward 4y ago
            What if there's solid evidence (e.g. visible work in open source) that all ten can code? The problem is not that coding interviews exist at all but that they're mandatory for all levels and roles. At L5+ coding isn't even the most important skill, so LC-style coding interviews introduce a risk of false negatives without providing any actually useful information. BTW those false negatives occur disproportionately for some demographics, and it only takes a single mention of "culture fit" to make one wonder if that's the whole point.
  • hef19898 4y ago
    In which case Meat got, best case, competent people. Since those people started from scratch in an organization that never did what those new folks planned to do, as an organization Meta was still incompetent in that field compared to others. Now, being Meta and having all those new people, and the budget, could have built a proper org for hardware. Something that would require quite a cultural change so. And that latter bit is hard.
    • registeredcorn 4y ago
      I formally propose facebook's new name to be "Meat". :)
      • hef19898 4y ago
        Damn, I didn't catch that until your comment!
      • sebastien_b 4y ago
        Nah, I like “Meta” since it’s appropriately short for “Metastasize”.