9 ms·

What I Hate About Working At Facebook

273 points by dshankar 14y ago

charlieok 14y ago
11. The stock price is too low The stock has been sliding in recent months. This sucks because stock options granted to people being recruited now will have a higher potential upside than similar grants made around the time of the IPO. New recruits should be the have-nots on the totem pole.
pspeter3 14y ago
Sounds pretty terrible to work there. On a serious note, it's awesome how much stuff gets converted from hackathons
- JasonYang 14y ago
  Used to think this is a great idea. But reality told me this could lead to chaos (way to much chaos), especially when the company is going through a finanancial crisis (hopefully not the case for FB for a really really long time). For most of the companies, leadership should be vital. Things like hackathons are luxury game rich people allow to play.
  - pspeter3 14y ago
    I was thinking more that you let your employees come up with new ideas every once in a while. Like Google 20% time or LinkedIn HackDays.
pedalpete 14y ago
It's tough to disagree when I don't actually have experience working there, but there are a few telltale signals that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. Though I'm also wondering if the whole thing is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek (if so, I'm barely getting it). #3 "Zuck is too involved" states that rather than planning the long-term strategy of the company, the CEO should be "pumping up the stock price". and #4, too much focus on short-term. That is the problem with most other companies, too much focus on short term, not thinking long-term about the company. A CEO's job is not to promote the company to investors, it's to move the business forward. That is done through products and marketing, not by 'pumping the stock price'.
- achompas 14y ago
  This article is clearly tongue-in-cheek. "Too much free food" is a dead giveaway.
  - chii 14y ago
    > "Too much free food" that might actually be bad - eating too much has been shown to be detrimental to the health of a programmer who hardly moves all day...
bethly 14y ago
#9 actually does sound hellish. The rest of it mostly comes across as snide, since it's not actually exaggerated enough to be satire.
mparlane 14y ago
I think this article needs to end in a ":P". I almost stopped reading at number 3.
tessr 14y ago
#5 needed to come sooner. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this--clever angle!
ghshephard 14y ago
Good grief people - It's satire. The entire thing is meant to be funny. I didn't even think it was particularly subtle so I'm not sure how others are seeing it any other way.
- mcphilip 14y ago
  Pretty obvious only an idiot would write up this rant on his personal blog while still employed at FB. I ignored the content immediately after realizing this. Click bait title. Lame.
  - AznHisoka 14y ago
    Exactly my thoughts. It would actually have been a worthwhile piece to read if it wasn't satire... As it is, it's just another geek trying to get attention.
  - pbiggar 14y ago
    Why did you ignore the contents? It's pretty good.
- Danieru 14y ago
  He had me until the second point's header. Overall it was a fantastic read if just for the moment of realization. Still it would have benefited with more subtly or fewer items. Some point's like #4 had great potential but needed less sarcasm.
  - akiselev 14y ago
    More subtlety would definitely have done this article well. As it stands, the satire is both obvious and contrived.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  Took me until point 4...
  - 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 14y ago
This guy is being sarcastic.
RollAHardSix 14y ago
I think it's sarcasm. Well mostly, but with some truth splayed in (because there probably are things that grate on the poster). No way this is real: The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in? - Some of us have to pay for our food by the way, all three meals, so if you would kindly save the complaining (and grab seconds). But also the bit about how it's code, code, code, ship, ship, ship, long-term product view, the engineers are involved, the company looks for innovation with the hack-a-thons. I do think it's mostly sarcasm. And with that, disclaimer: I could be wrong =D
dj2stein9 14y ago
I've had enough unbearable, corporate, cubicle, meeting-every-afternoon jobs that this list makes Facebook sound like a wonderful place to work.
rblion 14y ago
"There is a fully-working hot tub in the New York office that interviews are conducted in. I didn’t believe this until I saw the photos on Twitter. It was billed to me as a way to test candidates’ resilience under pressure. I was told that it’s used rarely, and only on exceptionally good candidates as a way to probe the extent of their mettle. This is about the least professional thing that I have ever heard of, and I’m sure it violates laws in several states." Not surprised.
- natrius 14y ago
  That probably does violate laws in several states.
msie 14y ago
I was expecting some real criticism of Facebook and not a recruitment piece. What a waste of my time.
jfoutz 14y ago
wrt #8, why no ads on mobile? isn't that, like, where all your money comes from?
marknutter 14y ago
I realized it was satire at point #5. Well played.
ricardobeat 14y ago
I went from "I disagree" to "This guy is a moron" to "Oh, thank god this is satire" at #3. It's amazing that they can keep this environment after growing so big.
austenallred 14y ago
Well done, combined efforts of Facebook's PR and HR departments. May you poach all of the engineers from your greatest competitors.
tehwebguy 14y ago
Look for the comment by Zechmann on the article, whoosh. > 4. Do not introduce banner ads that’s moving waaayy backwards...
the_cat_kittles 14y ago
Wouldn't this be better as "10 things I love about working at Facebook"? Why not just drop the "hilarious" satire angle and say what is awesome directly. I hope I don't sound like the death of fun... It sounds a little smug as it is now.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Satire is useful to detect people who have decided to agree or disagree before they've read what you've written.
  - the_cat_kittles 14y ago
    wow, that is actually a pretty slick move
  - thinkingisfun 14y ago
    Wait, what? You lost me at "Satire is useful to detect people". To me it seems like a passive-aggressive jab at those who complained about working at facebook, and left. "It's just a joke" is just a lame way of saying something, without anyone being able to actually call them on it. And to call this stuff satire is kind of extreme, too? Let's ignore the lameness for a sec: what, exactly, does it make fun of and shed light on?
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      I was making a broader point, not one about this piece in particular.
      - thinkingisfun 14y ago
        I still don't see how satire is supposed to detect anything other than who gets that it's satire, and who takes it at face value -- which is not even possible until you, uhhh, read or saw the satire. So that point of yours, it's lost on me unless you elaborate.
sbochins 14y ago
It would have been funnier if he took a few jabs at facebook. Good satire sometimes mixes actual insults with the satire. I don't know anything about the author, but this reads like something written by a third rate facebook recruiter.
datalus 14y ago
How far you make it down the list before you realize it's a troll is the quality of said troll... I give it a 4/10.
- pirateking 14y ago
  0/10. I knew it was steaming troll feed before clicking the link. If the title was "What I Hated..." instead of "What I Hate...", then we could have had some sweet juicy content.
syassami 14y ago
I was thinking to myself the whole time, "this is awesome" until it hit me
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
fchollet 14y ago
Reverse linkbait, let's hope that's not the new PR trend.
- philhippus 14y ago
  Judging from the success of this piece we have much more of it to which to look forward.
meanJim 14y ago
Yeah if it weren't for #5 I would've thought you were completely out of your mind.
coenhyde 14y ago
I actually agree with #1. Code is the enemy of all codebases. Though i'm not arguing against the company culture that produces such productivity. It's just more a case of "with great power comes great responsibility".
blantonl 14y ago
Jeeze.. Facebook has taken it on the chin since it's IPO. It is great to see an insider's positive perspective from a satirical perspective.
stephenlambe 14y ago
turns out Su actually got the Seattle office a (waterless) hot tub http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2018545316_check_out_the_new_conference.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleys...
jamesvl 14y ago
Satire is well and good, but i can't grok #9. Interviews in a hot tub? So... even for the women? Or is it used preferentially for high pressure engineers only (whom of course are all men)? It may be just me, but I can't see the HR department in any state being okay with that. And if it's not for interviews... what's it for?
- coopdog 14y ago
  They say they only use it for high calibre candidates, who presumably already have the job our could otherwise just tell then to stop being silly
- JohnnyBrown 14y ago
  Are women allergic to hot tubs or something? I wasn't aware there was anything particularly masculine about a hot tub.
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    Do you seriously not understand how a hot tub could be inappropriate as part of a job interview? Not as bad as a casting couch or a swimsuit competition, but still bad. Obviously, indisputably bad. I just hope that part of the article was not inspired by truth.
    - reledi 14y ago
      Perhaps the post was edited later, but they don't actually use it for interviews (ever). See the photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458.491055.603416457 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458....
      - brown9-2 14y ago
        Read the paragraph again: There is a fully-working hot tub in the New York office that interviews are conducted in. I didn’t believe this until I saw the photos on Twitter. It was billed to me as a way to test candidates’ resilience under pressure. I was told that it’s used rarely... ... I installed a hot tub (non-functioning) as a conference room in Facebook Seattle. Interviews are never done in them.]
Empro 14y ago
Absolutely hilarious.
emmelaich 14y ago
I'd pretty much assumed that it was tongue in cheek from the title. I'm completely baffled as to how anyone can read more than a few lines without realising it's not serious. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?!
- chair6 14y ago
  Everyone else.
- jay_kyburz 14y ago
  Probably because the first 4 sound like they could be problems. Facebook is super buggy, perhaps they do need to slow down. I think a lot of the feature could be better designed. Zuck very well could too much of a micro manager. And yeah, the ad's aren't working so perhaps the should be thinking about how to make money.
kimmiller 14y ago
Too much code being committed? Too many decisions being made by engineers? Building a great product? Wow, talk about navel gazing. I get the satire point, but... This internally arrogant, externally ignorant attitude is why the stock is where it is. These ideals are not necessarily good for a mature business that needs to pay back the kind people that gave it money in the first place. Enjoy your free lunch, as there are none.
- kahawe 14y ago
  Facebook and "mature business"? But more seriously, I think this is an all-too-human trait - once you are successful you start to greatly approve of yourself and look for reasons in your very DNA why you are where you are and then you start marketing that... when really, it was all a lot of luck and people seem to forget that pure chance is the biggest innovator and the bigger part of what they have actually done right is NOT spoiling the success that luck has brought them. There are and were a ton of companies with the same culture, the same great benefits for developers, the same productive environment but you never heard of them and they are gone now.
- Evbn 14y ago
  The stock price is where it is because various players hyped a $40B company into a $100B valuation. If you think that is a failure for anyone working at Facebook (except very recent hires who believed the hype when they evaluated their comp package), you are mistaken.
crazygringo 14y ago
I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but #2 is actually worrisome: > There’s even a “no meeting Wednesday” meme in the company, which you might as well call a “failure to communicate” death wish. Software needs to be talked about and debated, not simply written. It’s lunacy to be writing and shipping code at a blistering pace, instead of letting things bake a bit in committees representing broad swaths of all semi-affected parties. There are a lot of companies where failure of communication is a very real thing, and where semi-affected (or totally affected) parties are completely ignored. In my experience, ideas for code do need to be talked about and debated, not simply written. Facebook has had a lot of very public privacy/other failures that could probably have been avoided if there was more communication going on. If you're just writing code at a blistering pace, without a lot of communication, there's a good chance you're not writing the right code.
- neilk 14y ago
  No meetings != no communication.
  - aloneinkyoto 14y ago
    Meetings != Communication (always avoid double negations)
    - petercooper 14y ago
      Except (No Meetings != No Communication) != (Meetings != Communication)
      - ninh 14y ago
        If you define "No meetings" as !meetings, and "No communication" as !communcation, which to me sounds reasonable, then they are in fact equivalent. This becomes apparent when you create a truth table for it: !meetings != !communication meetings | communication | expr F | F | F T | T | F T | F | T F | T | T This is the same truth table one would get with "meetings != communication" so they should be logically equivalent.
rweba 14y ago
The point is (1) Is all this stuff true? How true? (2) Is it really all good? Seems like they have a very free wheeling engineering culture. Are there downsides to this? Is it sustainable as Facebook grows? From what I've heard Google is considerably more controlled. Also I must say that as a daily Facebook user I haven't noticed most of these "thousands" of features being launched. They must be exceedingly subtle features or else they bundle them up for an annual release (which is actually a good idea).
utopkara 14y ago
Why make it impossible to read more than two lines, if the point is to show off how cool FB is? It is fascinating, that I really want to learn the good things, but I cannot get myself to read through the satire. Normally, I would be able to skim through it; even that triggers a gag reaction. Anybody has the same problem?
- thinkingisfun 14y ago
  yuppies and humour don't mix. people who can't laugh at themselves will never be funny.
tjholowaychuk 14y ago
not to mention the only portion of the site I use (photos) is couldn't possibly be worse :p
grahammather 14y ago
I see what you did there
beering 14y ago
A lot of this is believable (i.e. can be taken for real, not satire) if you don't read into each point, because a lot of it is quite different from how Google does things: 1. At Google, code has to be designed, written, tested, and reviewed. You can't just start writing and shipping stuff, partly because there's so much infrastructure, and partly because you pay for shoddy code later. Google has long outgrown the kind of "start-up" velocity that you feel at Facebook. 2. Arguably, software does need to be talked about and debated. Google and many others hold meetings to make sure teams don't end up with 5 incompatible siloed components when what they really needed was a server and multiple clients. Teams have been bitten in the past by the "shit, let's rewrite all this except with a good design" problem. Certainly, they try to keep engineers out of meetings as much as possible. 3. Google doesn't have Larry and Sergey micromanaging things, and PR has been something that Google's struggled with. The role of a CEO is debatable. 4. Sure, although a low stock price isn't without consequences. 5. Several design changes have been made to food at Google: healthier snacks on the snack shelves, color-coding snacks, more plates of the smaller variety in cafes. Some people do get the Noogler 15. 6. Engineers can be pretty bad at making certain kinds of decisions, especially because they spend a lot of time heads down on a small components. (Have you seen the typical engineer-designed UI?) Google PMs that work between teams focus a lot on product decisions that affect the users and other products. Remember criticism that Google just makes a bunch of random, disconnected products? 7. Facebook has had some embarrassing "launches" of Hackathon products. One poorly thought-out launch can mean multiple criminal investigations and loss of user trust. 8. Social is important to Google, but it's hard getting people to agree that it's important. 9. Does it drive away candidates? 10. Trust is all fun and games until you give people in your PRC office extensive privileges to the internal network.
- jrockway 14y ago
  +1 I can kind of see the logic behind the author's first point. When I write code for fun, I don't write design docs or invite friends over for design reviews. I just do whatever I want, mostly typing in lines of code, until I can't stay awake anymore. And it is a lot of fun. The problem is, it's ignoring things like "making money" and "not annoying users" and things like that. When you need to engineer instead of play, then you need to think about things like: "how can I not write this code". And that's why you need design docs and design reviews and meetings: to learn, to share knowledge, and to ensure that your time spent programming is the best possible use of that time. If someone said, "your job is to write as much code as possible and push to production every eight seconds", that would be fun. I just don't think the company would last longer than ten years. At that point, that company would do nothing but extinguish fires, and a new upstart would be doing "more with less" and out-innovate them. Name the popular tech companies from twenty years ago that you interact with on a daily basis today. Yeah.
onan_barbarian 14y ago
The funny thing about this list is that a few of the items, while intended as satire, are actually spot-on. Especially item #1: "But the rate of source code commits continues to grow proportionally with the number of engineers. This is in clear violation of the law that Fred Brooks established nearly 40 years ago in The Mythical Man Month." Whoop de do. This might, just maybe, because no particular behavior of FB really matters all that much. You're not building a space shuttle launch program or even a spreadsheet that people rely on to give correct answers. I'm sure that a business model that can allow 80 godzillion developers to fling spaghetti at a wall in parallel with a view to seeing 'what sticks' is quite a bit less subject to Mythical Man Month type scaling problems. And is there anyone so naive that they don't understand the agenda behind "3 free meals"?
- jrockway 14y ago
  It's likely that the code is not coupled. Fred Brooks studied OS/360, which was essentially one big component. Facebook is, presumably, many separate components that don't depend on each other in any way, and so the "teams" are much smaller than "all of Facebook". If you watch velocity on individual components, you'll probably see sub-linear scaling as Brooks predicts.
  - javert 14y ago
    Facebook is, presumably, many separate components that don't depend on each other in any way How could that even be possible?
    - ninetax 14y ago
      The messaging back-end is probably completely decoupled from the stuff running other components of the site. I would imagine everything interfaces with each other, and as long as you don't break the interface, things could be changed pretty orthogonally.
      - jrockway 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ahi 14y ago
As a user, I'm not so sure #1 and #2 are haha funny. Things are being added and changed constantly, reducing usability. Features seem to be broken or at least temperamental all over the place.
jasonhitchcock 14y ago
Just read the bold in a sarcastic voice and it all makes sense. That being said,it reads like each point has a grain of truth.
soup10 14y ago
Real reasons why working at Facebook isn't that attractive in my opinion: 1. Giant php codebase. 2. All the excitement is gone post-IPO, they've reached an inflection point and growth is slowing down. 3. Mark Zuckerburg doesn't have great social skills/intelligence. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that he runs a giant social network. 4. The corporate mission of making the world more open and connected just doesn't seem very high impact. Facebook at it's core is a way to share photos and keep up with old friends, it doesn't really change social interactions. 5. Their focus is very narrow, they don't work on many novel exciting problems.
- jrockway 14y ago
  My favorite thing about Google is that I haven't seen a single "Keep calm and carry on" poster. Oh, except for one making fun of said poster.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    "Violate privacy and break things" perhaps?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - jojopotato 14y ago
    Sad to say I know where one is non ironically posted.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      Finally a use for my shinonome_nano template.
- flyt 14y ago
  re: growth. Facebook has one billion active users. There are seven billion humans in the world. There is a lot of growth left.
thomashillard 14y ago
It's important to create an awesome work environment. But in my experience it's usually a trade off, the downside of which can be having diminished social life outside of the office. You're also probably expected to sacrifice some compensation and the deal tends to be in favor of the employer.
Kishin 14y ago
why is this on the front page of HN?
timrpeterson 14y ago
fb culture is toolbagish
Uchikoma 14y ago
Must admit I've stopped after the firtst, but: With thousands of programmers, what real features have been released to facebook.com? I often ask myself what those thousands of programmers do, as a user (I know not customer in this case) I can't see it. All of them mobile? Ads? Image recognition? With thousands of programmers should't the output be (5 people dev teams, one feature a month) hundreds of features/stories per month? Could users live with that? I'd also think commits are not a productivity metric.
- nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
  A lot of our manpower goes into designing, implementing, and maintaining highly scalable systems and tools that allow the actual product teams to do their work. And of course there are plenty of teams that are simply focused on improving the scalability of existing features. It's hard work to scale something as complex and inter-dependent as Facebook when you're operating at the scale of almost a billion monthly active users.
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    How is productivity measured than? (OP)
    - nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
      Hell if I know; I've only been here for two months. I'm just reporting what I've seen as a production engineer in that time. :)
  - thinkingisfun 14y ago
    That still leaves the question about what features are there? It's not like you can search for people with common names, or organize your own profile in any meaningful way, or search it. You can add stuff to the stream and that's that. I remember when they rolled out the timeline, and what a joke that was/is.. I get it, scaling is hard. Do you get that scaling is only required when stuff is completely broken? If facebook was a protocol and free code, there would be no scaling problem, there would just be a lot of servers. So yeah, they don't fucking understand the internet and like money, so they create problems for themselves which they then solve. Awe-inspiring! That still leaves us with a set of features no CMS would be caught dead with.
nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
As a recent hire, I have to agree completely with everything he said. It's such a terrible working environment that I just might have to stay here for an inordinate amount of time so I can continue to complain about it.
xenen 14y ago
I was way too naive to expect a Facebooker to not actually be drunk on the cool-aid and actually bother to offer a comprehensive good/bad overview of FB.
- SqMafia 14y ago
  The thing is that had he actually did that, I would have a more positive view of working for FB. I would be impressed by the caliber of people who work there -- people who're capable of parsing out the nuances of a given situation and take a holistic view of the situation. Those people are the type who can work through difficult situations and salvage a bad one. Instead, I walk away with the impression that FB is full of immature toolbags.
  - xenen 14y ago
    Yup, pretty much. My view of FB prior to this was luke-warm because of their contribution to open source, but it's just gone in the toilet.
    - hackinthebochs 14y ago
      So your entire view of facebook was changed based on one blog post? It seems to me you were looking to justify your already negative view.
jyap 14y ago
You know things are all good and well when a company is doing well and pre-IPO but the truth is, Facebook will need to so major results quarter on quarter to prevent the stock from tanking. A little less satire and a little more business is what's needed. Given the state of Facebook's stock performance post-IPO, I would say the joke is on him.
thesash 14y ago
I can't believe the comments on that blog post are real. Apparently sarcasm isn't a language everybody speaks.
SqMafia 14y ago
A not-so-subtle pretend recruiting/bragging piece, except perhaps it had the reverse effect on me. #1 reason I won't want to work at Facebook so I can avoid smug, not-so-witty, immature douchebags like the author. With the stock price where it is, I guess FB might have to resort to these kinds of tactics to attract talent these days.
- nestlequ1k 14y ago
  And they're smart enough to make it corporate policy to upvote their shitty HR blog posts onto HN.
languagehacker 14y ago
"The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in?" Is he complaining that he's getting too fat from eating at Facebook's buffet?
franzus 14y ago
> specifically Zuck’s idealism (perhaps even naïveté) that focusing on building great products will lead to solid long-term businesses Nothing against that. Also I find it a good thinh that he's still involved in the products ... But what good products does he think does Facebook make? Quality does not really come to mind when I think about Facebook. This is common among my peers too. To us Facebook is the place where soccer moms get ripped off by clicking on pixel cows. That's also why I'd never work for them. It's something my hacker honor wouldn't allow.
- thinkingisfun 14y ago
  When someone talks, with a straight face, about - "building great products" - "solving interesting problems" - "changing the world" and/or "transforming the way people view/do X" It's pretty obvious they're just repeating what they learned in sophistry class. Or to paraphrase Zuckerberg: "they actually mean that. dumb fucks."
justindocanto 14y ago
I got about 5 points in before i realized this is actually 100% sarcasm. You had me pretty worked up for a minute there.
DanBC 14y ago
This explains the hideous broken interface, with options spread everywhere and auto-resetting choices.
msg 14y ago
An interesting litmus test. I caught the satire at 3 but double taked when I started wondering how this stuff would translate to my company of choice. True story, two weeks ago my team launched a feature and decreased latency. We hunted for an explanation and finally found out that some code that blew away our feature was launched coincidentally at the same time. It was a pretty unlikely scenario, and we have controls designed to prevent it, but it happened anyway. I wonder how many collisions like this Facebook will have to deal with as they expand. I would vote for free healthy food though.
redthrowaway 14y ago
I haven't felt the need to downvote a post since PG stripped us of our ability to do so, but this is unmitigated crap. A poor attempt at satire in service to some large corp is not something that should grace the front page, and the resulting conversation helps no one. It's blog spam in a different form.
- Lewton 14y ago
  That's what the flag function is for
  - hisyam 14y ago
    I don't see a flag button. Is this a feature that's only available after reaching a certain amount of points?
    - jamesbritt 14y ago
      I used to see it, then one day it vanished.
      - Lewton 14y ago
        hisyam: Yes, it's something you get after getting 20 points or something like that jamesbritt: I've heard of people losing their flag priviliges because of 'abuse' whatever that is
        jamesbritt 14y ago
        I suspect I flagged too many posts that ended up as popular so now I cannot flag anymore. If so then there's a serious flaw in that kind of strategy since it erodes counter-balances.
  - redthrowaway 14y ago
    I don't know that it's necessarily flagable, unless we extend the definition to "everything deserving of a downvote". If we do that, we've simply offloaded post moderation from the users to the mods.
marcamillion 14y ago
At first I wasn't sure if this was real - which is kinda scary. For those that have ADD, if they read perhaps just the first 3 - 4 points they could come away feeling like this is a real gripe about FB. Not sure it was executed as best as it could. Maybe this is one example of something that should have been 'peer-checked' before pushing to production. Just saying.
mda 14y ago
Just a recruitment propaganda piece. And actually what #1 tells me: "Come to Facebook, and have your share of ever growing giant smoking unmaintainable pile of (php) code."
- ojr 14y ago
  php is maintainable if you actually know it and not just put it on a resume, Drupal runs the whitehouse.gov, Wordpress runs 15% of all sites and Facebook has the largest member base in mankind history, PHP is not hieroglyphics it is actually has roots from C...
nestlequ1k 14y ago
Really? This guy is a tool. Happy that he's scored points with his manager though.
corwinstephen 14y ago
I can see why this guy got the job: he has the "I don't think the way you do" mentality that is so typical of silicone valley employees, I'm sure they probably loved him for it in his interview. That said, I think this guy is a misfiring canon. He's getting mad at all the wrong people for what seems to be his own dissatisfaction with not being in charge, ad he's getting mad at them for doing most of the things that have caused such dysfunction in traditional companies. Is like this guy's ideal work environment is an Innitech next to Michael Bolton and Samir. In my experience, companies that fight to boost their stock prices in the short term end up making them plummet further in the long run. It's the companies that have the restraint to accept a loss in order to build toward a bigger reward that end up changing the world. Look at Apple. They used to spend so much money on R and D that their stock prices were miserable. But shit, they got the iPod out of it, and look where it took them. If they had instead tried for short term profit, they probably would have ended up putting out another garbage iMac. Or a Zune. And finally, you can't be so shortsighted as to overlook the impact of encouraging creativity an freedom. If you force beaurocracy on your employees you might end up getting more done at first, but as they start to lose the excitement that comes with being enabled and excited by a company that believes in their ability to be autonomous, the quality of their work will start to decline. Short point: don't play devils advocate just because all your peers are stoked to work for Facebook. And especially don't do it to get hits on your blog.
ijobs-ly 14y ago
"What I hate about those working at Facebook"
ltcoleman 14y ago
I like the sarcasm and wished I worked there. Argghhh devs just want to code and be trusted to code.
nlz1 14y ago
"Decisions made by interns" = probably why FB is constantly raping user privacy. I hope.
jason3 14y ago
Too bad I don't use Facebook.

273 points by dshankar 14y ago

11. The stock price is too low The stock has been sliding in recent months. This sucks because stock options granted to people being recruited now will have a higher potential upside than similar grants made around the time of the IPO. New recruits should be the have-nots on the totem pole.

pspeter3 14y ago

Sounds pretty terrible to work there. On a serious note, it's awesome how much stuff gets converted from hackathons

JasonYang 14y ago
Used to think this is a great idea. But reality told me this could lead to chaos (way to much chaos), especially when the company is going through a finanancial crisis (hopefully not the case for FB for a really really long time). For most of the companies, leadership should be vital. Things like hackathons are luxury game rich people allow to play.
- pspeter3 14y ago
  I was thinking more that you let your employees come up with new ideas every once in a while. Like Google 20% time or LinkedIn HackDays.

pedalpete 14y ago

It's tough to disagree when I don't actually have experience working there, but there are a few telltale signals that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. Though I'm also wondering if the whole thing is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek (if so, I'm barely getting it). #3 "Zuck is too involved" states that rather than planning the long-term strategy of the company, the CEO should be "pumping up the stock price". and #4, too much focus on short-term. That is the problem with most other companies, too much focus on short term, not thinking long-term about the company. A CEO's job is not to promote the company to investors, it's to move the business forward. That is done through products and marketing, not by 'pumping the stock price'.

achompas 14y ago
This article is clearly tongue-in-cheek. "Too much free food" is a dead giveaway.
- chii 14y ago
  > "Too much free food" that might actually be bad - eating too much has been shown to be detrimental to the health of a programmer who hardly moves all day...

bethly 14y ago

#9 actually does sound hellish. The rest of it mostly comes across as snide, since it's not actually exaggerated enough to be satire.

mparlane 14y ago

I think this article needs to end in a ":P". I almost stopped reading at number 3.

tessr 14y ago

#5 needed to come sooner. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this--clever angle!

ghshephard 14y ago

Good grief people - It's satire. The entire thing is meant to be funny. I didn't even think it was particularly subtle so I'm not sure how others are seeing it any other way.

mcphilip 14y ago
Pretty obvious only an idiot would write up this rant on his personal blog while still employed at FB. I ignored the content immediately after realizing this. Click bait title. Lame.
- AznHisoka 14y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. It would actually have been a worthwhile piece to read if it wasn't satire... As it is, it's just another geek trying to get attention.
- pbiggar 14y ago
  Why did you ignore the contents? It's pretty good.
Danieru 14y ago
He had me until the second point's header. Overall it was a fantastic read if just for the moment of realization. Still it would have benefited with more subtly or fewer items. Some point's like #4 had great potential but needed less sarcasm.
- akiselev 14y ago
  More subtlety would definitely have done this article well. As it stands, the satire is both obvious and contrived.
andrewfelix 14y ago
Took me until point 4...
- 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sjg007 14y ago

This guy is being sarcastic.

RollAHardSix 14y ago

I think it's sarcasm. Well mostly, but with some truth splayed in (because there probably are things that grate on the poster). No way this is real: The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in? - Some of us have to pay for our food by the way, all three meals, so if you would kindly save the complaining (and grab seconds). But also the bit about how it's code, code, code, ship, ship, ship, long-term product view, the engineers are involved, the company looks for innovation with the hack-a-thons. I do think it's mostly sarcasm. And with that, disclaimer: I could be wrong =D

dj2stein9 14y ago

I've had enough unbearable, corporate, cubicle, meeting-every-afternoon jobs that this list makes Facebook sound like a wonderful place to work.

rblion 14y ago

"There is a fully-working hot tub in the New York office that interviews are conducted in. I didn’t believe this until I saw the photos on Twitter. It was billed to me as a way to test candidates’ resilience under pressure. I was told that it’s used rarely, and only on exceptionally good candidates as a way to probe the extent of their mettle. This is about the least professional thing that I have ever heard of, and I’m sure it violates laws in several states." Not surprised.

natrius 14y ago
That probably does violate laws in several states.

msie 14y ago

I was expecting some real criticism of Facebook and not a recruitment piece. What a waste of my time.

jfoutz 14y ago

wrt #8, why no ads on mobile? isn't that, like, where all your money comes from?

marknutter 14y ago

I realized it was satire at point #5. Well played.

ricardobeat 14y ago

I went from "I disagree" to "This guy is a moron" to "Oh, thank god this is satire" at #3. It's amazing that they can keep this environment after growing so big.

austenallred 14y ago

Well done, combined efforts of Facebook's PR and HR departments. May you poach all of the engineers from your greatest competitors.

tehwebguy 14y ago

Look for the comment by Zechmann on the article, whoosh. > 4. Do not introduce banner ads that’s moving waaayy backwards...

the_cat_kittles 14y ago

Wouldn't this be better as "10 things I love about working at Facebook"? Why not just drop the "hilarious" satire angle and say what is awesome directly. I hope I don't sound like the death of fun... It sounds a little smug as it is now.

tedunangst 14y ago
Satire is useful to detect people who have decided to agree or disagree before they've read what you've written.
- the_cat_kittles 14y ago
  wow, that is actually a pretty slick move
- thinkingisfun 14y ago
  Wait, what? You lost me at "Satire is useful to detect people". To me it seems like a passive-aggressive jab at those who complained about working at facebook, and left. "It's just a joke" is just a lame way of saying something, without anyone being able to actually call them on it. And to call this stuff satire is kind of extreme, too? Let's ignore the lameness for a sec: what, exactly, does it make fun of and shed light on?
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    I was making a broader point, not one about this piece in particular.
    - thinkingisfun 14y ago
      I still don't see how satire is supposed to detect anything other than who gets that it's satire, and who takes it at face value -- which is not even possible until you, uhhh, read or saw the satire. So that point of yours, it's lost on me unless you elaborate.

sbochins 14y ago

It would have been funnier if he took a few jabs at facebook. Good satire sometimes mixes actual insults with the satire. I don't know anything about the author, but this reads like something written by a third rate facebook recruiter.

datalus 14y ago

How far you make it down the list before you realize it's a troll is the quality of said troll... I give it a 4/10.

pirateking 14y ago
0/10. I knew it was steaming troll feed before clicking the link. If the title was "What I Hated..." instead of "What I Hate...", then we could have had some sweet juicy content.

syassami 14y ago

I was thinking to myself the whole time, "this is awesome" until it hit me

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

fchollet 14y ago

Reverse linkbait, let's hope that's not the new PR trend.

philhippus 14y ago
Judging from the success of this piece we have much more of it to which to look forward.

meanJim 14y ago

Yeah if it weren't for #5 I would've thought you were completely out of your mind.

coenhyde 14y ago

I actually agree with #1. Code is the enemy of all codebases. Though i'm not arguing against the company culture that produces such productivity. It's just more a case of "with great power comes great responsibility".

blantonl 14y ago

Jeeze.. Facebook has taken it on the chin since it's IPO. It is great to see an insider's positive perspective from a satirical perspective.

stephenlambe 14y ago

turns out Su actually got the Seattle office a (waterless) hot tub http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2018545316_check_out_the_new_conference.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleys...

jamesvl 14y ago

Satire is well and good, but i can't grok #9. Interviews in a hot tub? So... even for the women? Or is it used preferentially for high pressure engineers only (whom of course are all men)? It may be just me, but I can't see the HR department in any state being okay with that. And if it's not for interviews... what's it for?

coopdog 14y ago
They say they only use it for high calibre candidates, who presumably already have the job our could otherwise just tell then to stop being silly
JohnnyBrown 14y ago
Are women allergic to hot tubs or something? I wasn't aware there was anything particularly masculine about a hot tub.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  Do you seriously not understand how a hot tub could be inappropriate as part of a job interview? Not as bad as a casting couch or a swimsuit competition, but still bad. Obviously, indisputably bad. I just hope that part of the article was not inspired by truth.
  - reledi 14y ago
    Perhaps the post was edited later, but they don't actually use it for interviews (ever). See the photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458.491055.603416457 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458....
    - brown9-2 14y ago
      Read the paragraph again: There is a fully-working hot tub in the New York office that interviews are conducted in. I didn’t believe this until I saw the photos on Twitter. It was billed to me as a way to test candidates’ resilience under pressure. I was told that it’s used rarely... ... I installed a hot tub (non-functioning) as a conference room in Facebook Seattle. Interviews are never done in them.]

Empro 14y ago

Absolutely hilarious.

emmelaich 14y ago

I'd pretty much assumed that it was tongue in cheek from the title. I'm completely baffled as to how anyone can read more than a few lines without realising it's not serious. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?!

chair6 14y ago
Everyone else.
jay_kyburz 14y ago
Probably because the first 4 sound like they could be problems. Facebook is super buggy, perhaps they do need to slow down. I think a lot of the feature could be better designed. Zuck very well could too much of a micro manager. And yeah, the ad's aren't working so perhaps the should be thinking about how to make money.

kimmiller 14y ago

Too much code being committed? Too many decisions being made by engineers? Building a great product? Wow, talk about navel gazing. I get the satire point, but... This internally arrogant, externally ignorant attitude is why the stock is where it is. These ideals are not necessarily good for a mature business that needs to pay back the kind people that gave it money in the first place. Enjoy your free lunch, as there are none.

kahawe 14y ago
Facebook and "mature business"? But more seriously, I think this is an all-too-human trait - once you are successful you start to greatly approve of yourself and look for reasons in your very DNA why you are where you are and then you start marketing that... when really, it was all a lot of luck and people seem to forget that pure chance is the biggest innovator and the bigger part of what they have actually done right is NOT spoiling the success that luck has brought them. There are and were a ton of companies with the same culture, the same great benefits for developers, the same productive environment but you never heard of them and they are gone now.
Evbn 14y ago
The stock price is where it is because various players hyped a $40B company into a $100B valuation. If you think that is a failure for anyone working at Facebook (except very recent hires who believed the hype when they evaluated their comp package), you are mistaken.

crazygringo 14y ago

I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but #2 is actually worrisome: > There’s even a “no meeting Wednesday” meme in the company, which you might as well call a “failure to communicate” death wish. Software needs to be talked about and debated, not simply written. It’s lunacy to be writing and shipping code at a blistering pace, instead of letting things bake a bit in committees representing broad swaths of all semi-affected parties. There are a lot of companies where failure of communication is a very real thing, and where semi-affected (or totally affected) parties are completely ignored. In my experience, ideas for code do need to be talked about and debated, not simply written. Facebook has had a lot of very public privacy/other failures that could probably have been avoided if there was more communication going on. If you're just writing code at a blistering pace, without a lot of communication, there's a good chance you're not writing the right code.

neilk 14y ago
No meetings != no communication.
- aloneinkyoto 14y ago
  Meetings != Communication (always avoid double negations)
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Except (No Meetings != No Communication) != (Meetings != Communication)
    - ninh 14y ago
      If you define "No meetings" as !meetings, and "No communication" as !communcation, which to me sounds reasonable, then they are in fact equivalent. This becomes apparent when you create a truth table for it: !meetings != !communication meetings | communication | expr F | F | F T | T | F T | F | T F | T | T This is the same truth table one would get with "meetings != communication" so they should be logically equivalent.

rweba 14y ago

The point is (1) Is all this stuff true? How true? (2) Is it really all good? Seems like they have a very free wheeling engineering culture. Are there downsides to this? Is it sustainable as Facebook grows? From what I've heard Google is considerably more controlled. Also I must say that as a daily Facebook user I haven't noticed most of these "thousands" of features being launched. They must be exceedingly subtle features or else they bundle them up for an annual release (which is actually a good idea).

utopkara 14y ago

Why make it impossible to read more than two lines, if the point is to show off how cool FB is? It is fascinating, that I really want to learn the good things, but I cannot get myself to read through the satire. Normally, I would be able to skim through it; even that triggers a gag reaction. Anybody has the same problem?

thinkingisfun 14y ago
yuppies and humour don't mix. people who can't laugh at themselves will never be funny.

tjholowaychuk 14y ago

not to mention the only portion of the site I use (photos) is couldn't possibly be worse :p

grahammather 14y ago

I see what you did there

beering 14y ago

A lot of this is believable (i.e. can be taken for real, not satire) if you don't read into each point, because a lot of it is quite different from how Google does things: 1. At Google, code has to be designed, written, tested, and reviewed. You can't just start writing and shipping stuff, partly because there's so much infrastructure, and partly because you pay for shoddy code later. Google has long outgrown the kind of "start-up" velocity that you feel at Facebook. 2. Arguably, software does need to be talked about and debated. Google and many others hold meetings to make sure teams don't end up with 5 incompatible siloed components when what they really needed was a server and multiple clients. Teams have been bitten in the past by the "shit, let's rewrite all this except with a good design" problem. Certainly, they try to keep engineers out of meetings as much as possible. 3. Google doesn't have Larry and Sergey micromanaging things, and PR has been something that Google's struggled with. The role of a CEO is debatable. 4. Sure, although a low stock price isn't without consequences. 5. Several design changes have been made to food at Google: healthier snacks on the snack shelves, color-coding snacks, more plates of the smaller variety in cafes. Some people do get the Noogler 15. 6. Engineers can be pretty bad at making certain kinds of decisions, especially because they spend a lot of time heads down on a small components. (Have you seen the typical engineer-designed UI?) Google PMs that work between teams focus a lot on product decisions that affect the users and other products. Remember criticism that Google just makes a bunch of random, disconnected products? 7. Facebook has had some embarrassing "launches" of Hackathon products. One poorly thought-out launch can mean multiple criminal investigations and loss of user trust. 8. Social is important to Google, but it's hard getting people to agree that it's important. 9. Does it drive away candidates? 10. Trust is all fun and games until you give people in your PRC office extensive privileges to the internal network.

jrockway 14y ago
+1 I can kind of see the logic behind the author's first point. When I write code for fun, I don't write design docs or invite friends over for design reviews. I just do whatever I want, mostly typing in lines of code, until I can't stay awake anymore. And it is a lot of fun. The problem is, it's ignoring things like "making money" and "not annoying users" and things like that. When you need to engineer instead of play, then you need to think about things like: "how can I not write this code". And that's why you need design docs and design reviews and meetings: to learn, to share knowledge, and to ensure that your time spent programming is the best possible use of that time. If someone said, "your job is to write as much code as possible and push to production every eight seconds", that would be fun. I just don't think the company would last longer than ten years. At that point, that company would do nothing but extinguish fires, and a new upstart would be doing "more with less" and out-innovate them. Name the popular tech companies from twenty years ago that you interact with on a daily basis today. Yeah.

onan_barbarian 14y ago

The funny thing about this list is that a few of the items, while intended as satire, are actually spot-on. Especially item #1: "But the rate of source code commits continues to grow proportionally with the number of engineers. This is in clear violation of the law that Fred Brooks established nearly 40 years ago in The Mythical Man Month." Whoop de do. This might, just maybe, because no particular behavior of FB really matters all that much. You're not building a space shuttle launch program or even a spreadsheet that people rely on to give correct answers. I'm sure that a business model that can allow 80 godzillion developers to fling spaghetti at a wall in parallel with a view to seeing 'what sticks' is quite a bit less subject to Mythical Man Month type scaling problems. And is there anyone so naive that they don't understand the agenda behind "3 free meals"?

jrockway 14y ago
It's likely that the code is not coupled. Fred Brooks studied OS/360, which was essentially one big component. Facebook is, presumably, many separate components that don't depend on each other in any way, and so the "teams" are much smaller than "all of Facebook". If you watch velocity on individual components, you'll probably see sub-linear scaling as Brooks predicts.
- javert 14y ago
  Facebook is, presumably, many separate components that don't depend on each other in any way How could that even be possible?
  - ninetax 14y ago
    The messaging back-end is probably completely decoupled from the stuff running other components of the site. I would imagine everything interfaces with each other, and as long as you don't break the interface, things could be changed pretty orthogonally.
    - jrockway 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ahi 14y ago

As a user, I'm not so sure #1 and #2 are haha funny. Things are being added and changed constantly, reducing usability. Features seem to be broken or at least temperamental all over the place.

jasonhitchcock 14y ago

Just read the bold in a sarcastic voice and it all makes sense. That being said,it reads like each point has a grain of truth.

soup10 14y ago

Real reasons why working at Facebook isn't that attractive in my opinion: 1. Giant php codebase. 2. All the excitement is gone post-IPO, they've reached an inflection point and growth is slowing down. 3. Mark Zuckerburg doesn't have great social skills/intelligence. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that he runs a giant social network. 4. The corporate mission of making the world more open and connected just doesn't seem very high impact. Facebook at it's core is a way to share photos and keep up with old friends, it doesn't really change social interactions. 5. Their focus is very narrow, they don't work on many novel exciting problems.

jrockway 14y ago
My favorite thing about Google is that I haven't seen a single "Keep calm and carry on" poster. Oh, except for one making fun of said poster.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  "Violate privacy and break things" perhaps?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- jojopotato 14y ago
  Sad to say I know where one is non ironically posted.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Finally a use for my shinonome_nano template.
flyt 14y ago
re: growth. Facebook has one billion active users. There are seven billion humans in the world. There is a lot of growth left.

thomashillard 14y ago

It's important to create an awesome work environment. But in my experience it's usually a trade off, the downside of which can be having diminished social life outside of the office. You're also probably expected to sacrifice some compensation and the deal tends to be in favor of the employer.

Kishin 14y ago

why is this on the front page of HN?

timrpeterson 14y ago

fb culture is toolbagish

Uchikoma 14y ago

Must admit I've stopped after the firtst, but: With thousands of programmers, what real features have been released to facebook.com? I often ask myself what those thousands of programmers do, as a user (I know not customer in this case) I can't see it. All of them mobile? Ads? Image recognition? With thousands of programmers should't the output be (5 people dev teams, one feature a month) hundreds of features/stories per month? Could users live with that? I'd also think commits are not a productivity metric.

nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
A lot of our manpower goes into designing, implementing, and maintaining highly scalable systems and tools that allow the actual product teams to do their work. And of course there are plenty of teams that are simply focused on improving the scalability of existing features. It's hard work to scale something as complex and inter-dependent as Facebook when you're operating at the scale of almost a billion monthly active users.
- Uchikoma 14y ago
  How is productivity measured than? (OP)
  - nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
    Hell if I know; I've only been here for two months. I'm just reporting what I've seen as a production engineer in that time. :)
- thinkingisfun 14y ago
  That still leaves the question about what features are there? It's not like you can search for people with common names, or organize your own profile in any meaningful way, or search it. You can add stuff to the stream and that's that. I remember when they rolled out the timeline, and what a joke that was/is.. I get it, scaling is hard. Do you get that scaling is only required when stuff is completely broken? If facebook was a protocol and free code, there would be no scaling problem, there would just be a lot of servers. So yeah, they don't fucking understand the internet and like money, so they create problems for themselves which they then solve. Awe-inspiring! That still leaves us with a set of features no CMS would be caught dead with.

nuclear_eclipse 14y ago

As a recent hire, I have to agree completely with everything he said. It's such a terrible working environment that I just might have to stay here for an inordinate amount of time so I can continue to complain about it.

xenen 14y ago

I was way too naive to expect a Facebooker to not actually be drunk on the cool-aid and actually bother to offer a comprehensive good/bad overview of FB.

SqMafia 14y ago
The thing is that had he actually did that, I would have a more positive view of working for FB. I would be impressed by the caliber of people who work there -- people who're capable of parsing out the nuances of a given situation and take a holistic view of the situation. Those people are the type who can work through difficult situations and salvage a bad one. Instead, I walk away with the impression that FB is full of immature toolbags.
- xenen 14y ago
  Yup, pretty much. My view of FB prior to this was luke-warm because of their contribution to open source, but it's just gone in the toilet.
  - hackinthebochs 14y ago
    So your entire view of facebook was changed based on one blog post? It seems to me you were looking to justify your already negative view.

jyap 14y ago

You know things are all good and well when a company is doing well and pre-IPO but the truth is, Facebook will need to so major results quarter on quarter to prevent the stock from tanking. A little less satire and a little more business is what's needed. Given the state of Facebook's stock performance post-IPO, I would say the joke is on him.

thesash 14y ago

I can't believe the comments on that blog post are real. Apparently sarcasm isn't a language everybody speaks.

SqMafia 14y ago

A not-so-subtle pretend recruiting/bragging piece, except perhaps it had the reverse effect on me. #1 reason I won't want to work at Facebook so I can avoid smug, not-so-witty, immature douchebags like the author. With the stock price where it is, I guess FB might have to resort to these kinds of tactics to attract talent these days.

nestlequ1k 14y ago
And they're smart enough to make it corporate policy to upvote their shitty HR blog posts onto HN.

languagehacker 14y ago

"The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in?" Is he complaining that he's getting too fat from eating at Facebook's buffet?

franzus 14y ago

> specifically Zuck’s idealism (perhaps even naïveté) that focusing on building great products will lead to solid long-term businesses Nothing against that. Also I find it a good thinh that he's still involved in the products ... But what good products does he think does Facebook make? Quality does not really come to mind when I think about Facebook. This is common among my peers too. To us Facebook is the place where soccer moms get ripped off by clicking on pixel cows. That's also why I'd never work for them. It's something my hacker honor wouldn't allow.

thinkingisfun 14y ago
When someone talks, with a straight face, about - "building great products" - "solving interesting problems" - "changing the world" and/or "transforming the way people view/do X" It's pretty obvious they're just repeating what they learned in sophistry class. Or to paraphrase Zuckerberg: "they actually mean that. dumb fucks."

justindocanto 14y ago

I got about 5 points in before i realized this is actually 100% sarcasm. You had me pretty worked up for a minute there.

DanBC 14y ago

This explains the hideous broken interface, with options spread everywhere and auto-resetting choices.

msg 14y ago

An interesting litmus test. I caught the satire at 3 but double taked when I started wondering how this stuff would translate to my company of choice. True story, two weeks ago my team launched a feature and decreased latency. We hunted for an explanation and finally found out that some code that blew away our feature was launched coincidentally at the same time. It was a pretty unlikely scenario, and we have controls designed to prevent it, but it happened anyway. I wonder how many collisions like this Facebook will have to deal with as they expand. I would vote for free healthy food though.

redthrowaway 14y ago

I haven't felt the need to downvote a post since PG stripped us of our ability to do so, but this is unmitigated crap. A poor attempt at satire in service to some large corp is not something that should grace the front page, and the resulting conversation helps no one. It's blog spam in a different form.

Lewton 14y ago
That's what the flag function is for
- hisyam 14y ago
  I don't see a flag button. Is this a feature that's only available after reaching a certain amount of points?
  - jamesbritt 14y ago
    I used to see it, then one day it vanished.
    - Lewton 14y ago
      hisyam: Yes, it's something you get after getting 20 points or something like that jamesbritt: I've heard of people losing their flag priviliges because of 'abuse' whatever that is
      - jamesbritt 14y ago
        I suspect I flagged too many posts that ended up as popular so now I cannot flag anymore. If so then there's a serious flaw in that kind of strategy since it erodes counter-balances.
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  I don't know that it's necessarily flagable, unless we extend the definition to "everything deserving of a downvote". If we do that, we've simply offloaded post moderation from the users to the mods.

marcamillion 14y ago

At first I wasn't sure if this was real - which is kinda scary. For those that have ADD, if they read perhaps just the first 3 - 4 points they could come away feeling like this is a real gripe about FB. Not sure it was executed as best as it could. Maybe this is one example of something that should have been 'peer-checked' before pushing to production. Just saying.

mda 14y ago

Just a recruitment propaganda piece. And actually what #1 tells me: "Come to Facebook, and have your share of ever growing giant smoking unmaintainable pile of (php) code."

ojr 14y ago
php is maintainable if you actually know it and not just put it on a resume, Drupal runs the whitehouse.gov, Wordpress runs 15% of all sites and Facebook has the largest member base in mankind history, PHP is not hieroglyphics it is actually has roots from C...

nestlequ1k 14y ago

Really? This guy is a tool. Happy that he's scored points with his manager though.

corwinstephen 14y ago

I can see why this guy got the job: he has the "I don't think the way you do" mentality that is so typical of silicone valley employees, I'm sure they probably loved him for it in his interview. That said, I think this guy is a misfiring canon. He's getting mad at all the wrong people for what seems to be his own dissatisfaction with not being in charge, ad he's getting mad at them for doing most of the things that have caused such dysfunction in traditional companies. Is like this guy's ideal work environment is an Innitech next to Michael Bolton and Samir. In my experience, companies that fight to boost their stock prices in the short term end up making them plummet further in the long run. It's the companies that have the restraint to accept a loss in order to build toward a bigger reward that end up changing the world. Look at Apple. They used to spend so much money on R and D that their stock prices were miserable. But shit, they got the iPod out of it, and look where it took them. If they had instead tried for short term profit, they probably would have ended up putting out another garbage iMac. Or a Zune. And finally, you can't be so shortsighted as to overlook the impact of encouraging creativity an freedom. If you force beaurocracy on your employees you might end up getting more done at first, but as they start to lose the excitement that comes with being enabled and excited by a company that believes in their ability to be autonomous, the quality of their work will start to decline. Short point: don't play devils advocate just because all your peers are stoked to work for Facebook. And especially don't do it to get hits on your blog.

ijobs-ly 14y ago

"What I hate about those working at Facebook"

ltcoleman 14y ago

I like the sarcasm and wished I worked there. Argghhh devs just want to code and be trusted to code.

nlz1 14y ago

"Decisions made by interns" = probably why FB is constantly raping user privacy. I hope.

jason3 14y ago

Too bad I don't use Facebook.