5 ms·

Ask HN: Meta/FB layoffs a year later – where are you now?

Hopefully you have found yourself in a better place after this spin around the Sun.

Shindi 3y ago
I left big tech to start a company. The timing worked out great in my case. I was already trying to leave and the layoffs gave me an "angel round" to be able to pursue ideas. The biggest surprise was the uncertainty and amount of hours you have to work at a 0-1 company. Current idea is taking off. I'm solving a global problem that affects literally every company. We have early design partners but looking to team up with a cofounder before we get further along. If you're a big tech worker who was laid off an actively exploring ideas and want to team up, hmu! Email + twitter in my bio
- lgkk 3y ago
  Cool! What is your company doing? Can you explain more?
- dheera 3y ago
  TBH reach out to your former coworkers in your cofounder search. Have a bunch of coffee chats with them, you never know who might also be thinking about doing a startup. Avoid people you haven't worked with. A lot of shit happens to every company and you need to have built some foundation of trust to get through those situations.
Backslasher 3y ago
While interviewing post-FB to other companies as an SRE-type-engineer, it seemed to me that outside of FANN it's not common to give engineers a very wide scope. One company asked me whether I'd like to join the monitoring team or the container team, to which I replied "why can't I work in whatever team needs me the most, and switch whenever needed?". They didn't like that. After trying and failing to find a part-time position I like (can expand on it if interesting), I ended up joining as an architect to a "fixer-upper" company, where I have a lot of things I can improve and wide scope. The money isn't up to par with FB, but I feel I'm doing meaningful work and making the world better, which was missing from the last couple of months at FB.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > One company asked me whether I'd like to join the monitoring team or the container team, to which I replied "why can't I work in whatever team needs me the most, and switch whenever needed?" Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change. This means that you are being only hired as a headcount in a reporting chain, not as a versatile engineer that can be help boost a company. They'll impose ineffective policies such as you cannot switch teams before 18 months, or a manager can sabotage your mobility with some reviews. All of this is designed to keep the corporate structure inflexible. It is a structural problem in most American corporations, that they are unable to get past. Faang, and specifically Facebook, encouraged so much mobility - and it showed in the way they completely smashed larger competitors like Google, Microsoft in the last decade.
  - outworlder 3y ago
    > Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change Well said. I'll just say that all companies (at least, large US-based ones) are like that. Every single one of them. The trick is to have a 'management empire' that's large enough that it spans most of the required functions. That way at least some engineers are able to move inside the fiefdom and not bump heads against some other high level manager's domain.
    - aprdm 3y ago
      Not true. There's a lot of exceptions to the rule. I was lucky enough to work on a couple on my 2 decades career so far.
    - userinanother 3y ago
      Very well said it’s a company within a company. You want to be in the most diverse sub company
- websap 3y ago
  I'll work with whichever team most sounds like you don't want to commit. It takes at least a year to gather enough details about use-cases, issues, expansion opportunities. If the company really needs you to move they will ask you. You sound non-committal. Also, not sure where in FAANG you had such wide scope. At FAANG either teams are mostly organized by business. For e.g. engineers working on Photos at Facebook, can't suddenly decide they want to work on implementing a feature for container orchestration at Facebook works.
markwaldron 3y ago
"Impacted" by layoffs on May 24th. Took a nice 3-4 month break before I even started my search. Just started at DoorDash this week. A lot of former Meta/FB folks here
- great_psy 3y ago
  How many years of experience, and how was the job search experience like ?
  - markwaldron 3y ago
    10+ years of experience. Job search was easy this time around. I marked myself as available to opportunities on LinkedIn and within two weeks my inbox was flooded with opportunities. Most of them were not what I was looking for at all, but a few of them were. I probably applied to a total of 20 places outside of the companies that reached out to me. Most resulted in some form of auto rejection, but a few turned into recruiter calls or more. The role I ended up taking at DoorDash was from a recruiter reaching out to me back in August.
    - catlover76 3y ago
      Curious: at your level of experience, what is the interview process like? For example, for DoorDash, for a mid or junior, they would do Leetcode style + Systems Deisgn right? Did they do stuff like that for you?
_exmetamate 3y ago
I was already interviewing when I got the layoff notice, formally accepted an offer at a large startup the same week I was laid off. I probably wouldn't have accepted that offer if I hadn't just been laid off. I make about 60% as much (depending on how you calculate the stock). I work about 30% as much. I don't miss working there, I didn't like their tools or their culture. But I feel something, perhaps insulted, that I was laid off. It can be weird.. disconnecting maybe.. seeing so many people work with such conviction toward goals that defy understanding. Just imagine tons of brilliant and motivated people with middling communication/organization all working toward some unclear goal (building a metaverse on NFTs?) in the largest PHP codebase you've ever seen, all without batting an eye.

Hopefully you have found yourself in a better place after this spin around the Sun.

I left big tech to start a company. The timing worked out great in my case. I was already trying to leave and the layoffs gave me an "angel round" to be able to pursue ideas. The biggest surprise was the uncertainty and amount of hours you have to work at a 0-1 company. Current idea is taking off. I'm solving a global problem that affects literally every company. We have early design partners but looking to team up with a cofounder before we get further along. If you're a big tech worker who was laid off an actively exploring ideas and want to team up, hmu! Email + twitter in my bio

lgkk 3y ago
Cool! What is your company doing? Can you explain more?
dheera 3y ago
TBH reach out to your former coworkers in your cofounder search. Have a bunch of coffee chats with them, you never know who might also be thinking about doing a startup. Avoid people you haven't worked with. A lot of shit happens to every company and you need to have built some foundation of trust to get through those situations.

Backslasher 3y ago

While interviewing post-FB to other companies as an SRE-type-engineer, it seemed to me that outside of FANN it's not common to give engineers a very wide scope. One company asked me whether I'd like to join the monitoring team or the container team, to which I replied "why can't I work in whatever team needs me the most, and switch whenever needed?". They didn't like that. After trying and failing to find a part-time position I like (can expand on it if interesting), I ended up joining as an architect to a "fixer-upper" company, where I have a lot of things I can improve and wide scope. The money isn't up to par with FB, but I feel I'm doing meaningful work and making the world better, which was missing from the last couple of months at FB.

nine_zeros 3y ago
> One company asked me whether I'd like to join the monitoring team or the container team, to which I replied "why can't I work in whatever team needs me the most, and switch whenever needed?" Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change. This means that you are being only hired as a headcount in a reporting chain, not as a versatile engineer that can be help boost a company. They'll impose ineffective policies such as you cannot switch teams before 18 months, or a manager can sabotage your mobility with some reviews. All of this is designed to keep the corporate structure inflexible. It is a structural problem in most American corporations, that they are unable to get past. Faang, and specifically Facebook, encouraged so much mobility - and it showed in the way they completely smashed larger competitors like Google, Microsoft in the last decade.
- outworlder 3y ago
  > Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change Well said. I'll just say that all companies (at least, large US-based ones) are like that. Every single one of them. The trick is to have a 'management empire' that's large enough that it spans most of the required functions. That way at least some engineers are able to move inside the fiefdom and not bump heads against some other high level manager's domain.
  - aprdm 3y ago
    Not true. There's a lot of exceptions to the rule. I was lucky enough to work on a couple on my 2 decades career so far.
  - userinanother 3y ago
    Very well said it’s a company within a company. You want to be in the most diverse sub company
websap 3y ago
I'll work with whichever team most sounds like you don't want to commit. It takes at least a year to gather enough details about use-cases, issues, expansion opportunities. If the company really needs you to move they will ask you. You sound non-committal. Also, not sure where in FAANG you had such wide scope. At FAANG either teams are mostly organized by business. For e.g. engineers working on Photos at Facebook, can't suddenly decide they want to work on implementing a feature for container orchestration at Facebook works.

markwaldron 3y ago

"Impacted" by layoffs on May 24th. Took a nice 3-4 month break before I even started my search. Just started at DoorDash this week. A lot of former Meta/FB folks here

great_psy 3y ago
How many years of experience, and how was the job search experience like ?
- markwaldron 3y ago
  10+ years of experience. Job search was easy this time around. I marked myself as available to opportunities on LinkedIn and within two weeks my inbox was flooded with opportunities. Most of them were not what I was looking for at all, but a few of them were. I probably applied to a total of 20 places outside of the companies that reached out to me. Most resulted in some form of auto rejection, but a few turned into recruiter calls or more. The role I ended up taking at DoorDash was from a recruiter reaching out to me back in August.
  - catlover76 3y ago
    Curious: at your level of experience, what is the interview process like? For example, for DoorDash, for a mid or junior, they would do Leetcode style + Systems Deisgn right? Did they do stuff like that for you?

_exmetamate 3y ago

I was already interviewing when I got the layoff notice, formally accepted an offer at a large startup the same week I was laid off. I probably wouldn't have accepted that offer if I hadn't just been laid off. I make about 60% as much (depending on how you calculate the stock). I work about 30% as much. I don't miss working there, I didn't like their tools or their culture. But I feel something, perhaps insulted, that I was laid off. It can be weird.. disconnecting maybe.. seeing so many people work with such conviction toward goals that defy understanding. Just imagine tons of brilliant and motivated people with middling communication/organization all working toward some unclear goal (building a metaverse on NFTs?) in the largest PHP codebase you've ever seen, all without batting an eye.