6 ms·

Here's how things play out: Zuck gets some idea, he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men who say "yes, this will definitely change the world", then it turns into

Here's how things play out: Zuck gets some idea, he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men who say "yes, this will definitely change the world", then it turns into this optics game of kissing the ring. You ask yourself "how could they blow 80B on the Metaverse like that", this is how. DON'T JOIN META, no matter how fast the recruiters reply to your messages. No matter how cool the work sounds (the managers lie in team matching). There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years. It's a toxic and fear based culture. You join, the people around you are already thinking how to scapegoat you. People gatekeep actual work and save it for political favorites and everyone else on the outside is stuck cooking up bullshit projects. If you do manage to find work on your own, people will immediately start scheming to steal it

gerdesj 5mo ago
Is this supposition or first hand experience?
- menloshark 5mo ago
  The latter. I've seen so much unethical shit here, I'd love to give more detail but I'd probably dox myself
  - janussunaj 5mo ago
    Don't let it break you. Take whatever money you made and run. The rest of big tech isn't much better. Big G is less stressful, but you'll see vicious and cringey behavior left and right. Hyped large startups are cults and 100% cringe. Meta is kind of the worst of both worlds though. "But they pay so well". Yeah, also: life is short.
    - cindyllm 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - poopiokaka 5mo ago
      [dead]
mathgladiator 5mo ago
OR join meta, sell your soul, stay for 7 years, then retire and be done with work forever!!!
- whateveracct 5mo ago
  7 years at a toxic workplace is tough
  - somewhatgoated 5mo ago
    I’d rather be poor
    - voidfunc 5mo ago
      Id rather not. Ive never known poverty in my life and I will do _anything_ to avoid it.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - kelnos 5mo ago
        Fortunately there are many other options than "work at Meta" or "be poor".
      - shimman 5mo ago
        I'm sorry but if you can work at Meta you can work at any other company in the US. You're clearly making a choice. Lets not forget "I'm just following orders" wasn't a valid excuse.
    - whateveracct 5mo ago
      there's a middle ground i make good money but not FAANG. like quarter million a year + equity that is sometimes liquid for more. i do it remote and for a company that isn't so brutally antagonistic as meta. remote also means i don't commute, don't get trapped in an office for 40+ hrs/week, and can spend more time during the workday on my personal life than work itself. so i make less money in an absolute sense, but i am not in any pain or being surveilled or being bullied to work hard. and honestly i make more money per hour worked than a meta employee. so lower salary, higher effective hourly wage.
dlandis 5mo ago
> People gatekeep actual work and save it for political favorites and everyone else on the outside is stuck cooking up bullshit projects. If you do manage to find work on your own, people will immediately start scheming to steal it So this applies to even, say, mid-level developers? Wouldn't you get work assigned to you after you're hired, or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms?
- menloshark 5mo ago
  > or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms? This is how the company works on a fundamental level. On healthy teams, having something assigned to you (for levels under staff/6) is normal. On unhealthy teams, you're just a sitting duck and it's better to find your own work. Or else you'll be forced to work on bullshit projects with no upside. Side note: the "they" who does the assigning is not a manager, it's another IC. The ones that go out and find their own work. That could be at any level technically, but usually staff+ because they form little political mafias.
zmmmmm 5mo ago
It is hard to judge culture during a period of serial downsizing because it will always be toxic in that context. But what you tell aligns with what I have inferred over a period of many years observing, even during times when they were growing: at a high level, Zuck gives the right signals of a successful tech CEO. He's smart, insightful, talks well (now) and appears decisive and willing to back long term bets into the future. And he makes money like crazy. But looking at the track record there's a very concerning lack of execution around critical strategic objectives. Take metaverse - I know most people laugh at it because they think it was a bad idea to start with. I push that aside and look at the execution. They poured a startling amount of money into it, and the end result - technically - sucks. This is not good execution of a bad idea. This is incompetent execution of an untested idea. After 5 years of huge investment the characters in Horizon Worlds still look like cartoons. All the advertised features of hyper-realistic worlds, generative world building etc failed to materialise. They made a face saving pivot to mobile where they claim it is successful but I literally never heard of anyone using it. I think it will be entirely synthetic traffic driven from their existing properties. Then you can look at AI. You can say the jury is still out on their AI reboot, but it has been out a long time now, and it seems like at best they are just grading into being at par with leading AI labs. But I think that's being generous because so little has been released. What is certain is they went from a leading position right up to 2022-2023 to falling completely off the radar. Despite still holding the undisputed leading AI framework in PyTorch. I have to conclude there's a genuine culture and execution problem that probably centers on the fact that Zuck is simply not a good people manager. And his relationship with the next level down (Andrew Bosworth etc) is such that he doesn't enable them to be either. And this all permeates through to an organization that delivers at a fraction of what it should given the resources it is expending.
- marcosdumay 5mo ago
  > This is incompetent execution of an untested idea. VR will be huge some day. Maybe not as huge as the Metaverse hype, but huge nonetheless. But did you expect Facebook to have any competence on making it? Even if the timing was correct, what differentiator do they have? And then the CEO throws a world-changing amount of money without even an idea (because "a VR world!" isn't an idea). Did you expect any of that money not to be wasted? That's not how products are made. The Metaverse wasn't an organization failure. It was all Zuckenberg's incompetence, Facebook didn't even get the chance to try. The AI started different, but it's becoming the same thing again.
pfannkuchen 5mo ago
> There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years. Companies that hire a lot or hired a lot recently always have this. The 3 month people drag down the average. It isn’t necessarily due to turnover. Not disagreeing with the overall point, I’ve just seen people say this same thing about a lot of companies and it doesn’t always mean something.
jimbokun 5mo ago
This certainly fits with everything in the article.
voidfunc 5mo ago
Im joining meta for the total comp not because I give a shit about the company or products. Same as every company.
- BobbyJo 5mo ago
  OP was saying not to join because you'll have a shitty time, not because the products aren't inspirational enough.
  - voidfunc 5mo ago
    Ill join purely for the comp. I can take a lot of abuse, trust me.
- menloshark 5mo ago
  The total comp is a lie because the average tenure is <2 years, statistically speaking you won't get the full 4yr initial grant by the time you leave. Just one suggestion: don't stop interviewing and be very observant of whatever team you land in, be ready to jump ship if there are too many red flags. Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value. Be very discerning in team matching, where you land determines everything. You might be thinking "oh if I just work 7 days a week, I'll be safe". That's not true, it's all about where you land.
  - torton 5mo ago
    > Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value. "Did you enjoy Game of Thrones? You'll love working here!"
giancarlostoro 5mo ago
> DON'T JOIN META, no matter how fast the recruiters reply to your messages. No matter how cool the work sounds (the managers lie in team matching). There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years. I would be surprised if I even got through the interview hellscape that these companies put people through. I'm not interested in talking about algorithms and things that no dev in my entire decade+ time on the industry ever talks about, ever. To make matters worse, the things you should screen developers for nobody seems to do so, except exceptional shops that care about quality (ironically enough!). The only thing the algo questions do is push out "older" candidates who may not remember every little nuance anymore, because... they don't have to hand craft algorithms, every language worth its salt has sorting algorithms or lambdas (thinking of C#) to make sorting effortless.
- omgitspavel 5mo ago
  A decade+ is plenty of time to spend a few weeks brushing up on CS basics. There is really only a handful of algorithms and data sctructues and none of them are rocket science. And what's the alternative? Quizzing people on some random C# framework methods? The "I don't use algos in a day to day job" argument has been around forever, but nobody making it ever proposes a better filter.
  - dxdm 5mo ago
    The better filter is to spend the precious interview time talking about actual experience solving real work problems, it has a high signal to noise ratio, because it gives you information on many independent axes. I guess for candidates fresh out of school, you have to fall back to things they should know out of school as a proxy.
  - financltravsty 5mo ago
    Strong no hire for Staff+ signal from this post. Meta's leetcode gambit includes leetcode Hards and Mediums which aren't just "remember your hash maps and trees!" They're incredibly hard to brute force under time pressure if you haven't practiced similar problems before. Now do that for every interview -- exhausting. Alternative? Lol? System design. "Walk me through systems you've built." Have a conversation. If you can't then maybe you don't have the skill for interviewing or dare I say the skill to be an engineer.
udswagz 5mo ago
100% true, absolutely nailed it
kraf 5mo ago
They create toxic products that make the entire world more toxic. How they still manage to not have any responsibility while being editors and publishers is beyond me. I couldn't imagine how their insides wouldn't be toxic as well. Nice people don't do this.
Balgair 5mo ago
https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idealism/dp/1250391237 https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea... I mean, the book is just over a year old here people. It's not like this is new or out of date stuff.

gerdesj 5mo ago

Is this supposition or first hand experience?

menloshark 5mo ago
The latter. I've seen so much unethical shit here, I'd love to give more detail but I'd probably dox myself
- janussunaj 5mo ago
  Don't let it break you. Take whatever money you made and run. The rest of big tech isn't much better. Big G is less stressful, but you'll see vicious and cringey behavior left and right. Hyped large startups are cults and 100% cringe. Meta is kind of the worst of both worlds though. "But they pay so well". Yeah, also: life is short.
  - cindyllm 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - poopiokaka 5mo ago
    [dead]

mathgladiator 5mo ago

OR join meta, sell your soul, stay for 7 years, then retire and be done with work forever!!!

whateveracct 5mo ago
7 years at a toxic workplace is tough
- somewhatgoated 5mo ago
  I’d rather be poor
  - voidfunc 5mo ago
    Id rather not. Ive never known poverty in my life and I will do _anything_ to avoid it.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - kelnos 5mo ago
      Fortunately there are many other options than "work at Meta" or "be poor".
    - shimman 5mo ago
      I'm sorry but if you can work at Meta you can work at any other company in the US. You're clearly making a choice. Lets not forget "I'm just following orders" wasn't a valid excuse.
  - whateveracct 5mo ago
    there's a middle ground i make good money but not FAANG. like quarter million a year + equity that is sometimes liquid for more. i do it remote and for a company that isn't so brutally antagonistic as meta. remote also means i don't commute, don't get trapped in an office for 40+ hrs/week, and can spend more time during the workday on my personal life than work itself. so i make less money in an absolute sense, but i am not in any pain or being surveilled or being bullied to work hard. and honestly i make more money per hour worked than a meta employee. so lower salary, higher effective hourly wage.

dlandis 5mo ago

> People gatekeep actual work and save it for political favorites and everyone else on the outside is stuck cooking up bullshit projects. If you do manage to find work on your own, people will immediately start scheming to steal it So this applies to even, say, mid-level developers? Wouldn't you get work assigned to you after you're hired, or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms?

menloshark 5mo ago
> or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms? This is how the company works on a fundamental level. On healthy teams, having something assigned to you (for levels under staff/6) is normal. On unhealthy teams, you're just a sitting duck and it's better to find your own work. Or else you'll be forced to work on bullshit projects with no upside. Side note: the "they" who does the assigning is not a manager, it's another IC. The ones that go out and find their own work. That could be at any level technically, but usually staff+ because they form little political mafias.

zmmmmm 5mo ago

It is hard to judge culture during a period of serial downsizing because it will always be toxic in that context. But what you tell aligns with what I have inferred over a period of many years observing, even during times when they were growing: at a high level, Zuck gives the right signals of a successful tech CEO. He's smart, insightful, talks well (now) and appears decisive and willing to back long term bets into the future. And he makes money like crazy. But looking at the track record there's a very concerning lack of execution around critical strategic objectives. Take metaverse - I know most people laugh at it because they think it was a bad idea to start with. I push that aside and look at the execution. They poured a startling amount of money into it, and the end result - technically - sucks. This is not good execution of a bad idea. This is incompetent execution of an untested idea. After 5 years of huge investment the characters in Horizon Worlds still look like cartoons. All the advertised features of hyper-realistic worlds, generative world building etc failed to materialise. They made a face saving pivot to mobile where they claim it is successful but I literally never heard of anyone using it. I think it will be entirely synthetic traffic driven from their existing properties. Then you can look at AI. You can say the jury is still out on their AI reboot, but it has been out a long time now, and it seems like at best they are just grading into being at par with leading AI labs. But I think that's being generous because so little has been released. What is certain is they went from a leading position right up to 2022-2023 to falling completely off the radar. Despite still holding the undisputed leading AI framework in PyTorch. I have to conclude there's a genuine culture and execution problem that probably centers on the fact that Zuck is simply not a good people manager. And his relationship with the next level down (Andrew Bosworth etc) is such that he doesn't enable them to be either. And this all permeates through to an organization that delivers at a fraction of what it should given the resources it is expending.

marcosdumay 5mo ago
> This is incompetent execution of an untested idea. VR will be huge some day. Maybe not as huge as the Metaverse hype, but huge nonetheless. But did you expect Facebook to have any competence on making it? Even if the timing was correct, what differentiator do they have? And then the CEO throws a world-changing amount of money without even an idea (because "a VR world!" isn't an idea). Did you expect any of that money not to be wasted? That's not how products are made. The Metaverse wasn't an organization failure. It was all Zuckenberg's incompetence, Facebook didn't even get the chance to try. The AI started different, but it's becoming the same thing again.

pfannkuchen 5mo ago

> There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years. Companies that hire a lot or hired a lot recently always have this. The 3 month people drag down the average. It isn’t necessarily due to turnover. Not disagreeing with the overall point, I’ve just seen people say this same thing about a lot of companies and it doesn’t always mean something.

jimbokun 5mo ago

This certainly fits with everything in the article.

voidfunc 5mo ago

Im joining meta for the total comp not because I give a shit about the company or products. Same as every company.

BobbyJo 5mo ago
OP was saying not to join because you'll have a shitty time, not because the products aren't inspirational enough.
- voidfunc 5mo ago
  Ill join purely for the comp. I can take a lot of abuse, trust me.
menloshark 5mo ago
The total comp is a lie because the average tenure is <2 years, statistically speaking you won't get the full 4yr initial grant by the time you leave. Just one suggestion: don't stop interviewing and be very observant of whatever team you land in, be ready to jump ship if there are too many red flags. Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value. Be very discerning in team matching, where you land determines everything. You might be thinking "oh if I just work 7 days a week, I'll be safe". That's not true, it's all about where you land.
- torton 5mo ago
  > Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value. "Did you enjoy Game of Thrones? You'll love working here!"

giancarlostoro 5mo ago

> DON'T JOIN META, no matter how fast the recruiters reply to your messages. No matter how cool the work sounds (the managers lie in team matching). There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years. I would be surprised if I even got through the interview hellscape that these companies put people through. I'm not interested in talking about algorithms and things that no dev in my entire decade+ time on the industry ever talks about, ever. To make matters worse, the things you should screen developers for nobody seems to do so, except exceptional shops that care about quality (ironically enough!). The only thing the algo questions do is push out "older" candidates who may not remember every little nuance anymore, because... they don't have to hand craft algorithms, every language worth its salt has sorting algorithms or lambdas (thinking of C#) to make sorting effortless.

omgitspavel 5mo ago
A decade+ is plenty of time to spend a few weeks brushing up on CS basics. There is really only a handful of algorithms and data sctructues and none of them are rocket science. And what's the alternative? Quizzing people on some random C# framework methods? The "I don't use algos in a day to day job" argument has been around forever, but nobody making it ever proposes a better filter.
- dxdm 5mo ago
  The better filter is to spend the precious interview time talking about actual experience solving real work problems, it has a high signal to noise ratio, because it gives you information on many independent axes. I guess for candidates fresh out of school, you have to fall back to things they should know out of school as a proxy.
- financltravsty 5mo ago
  Strong no hire for Staff+ signal from this post. Meta's leetcode gambit includes leetcode Hards and Mediums which aren't just "remember your hash maps and trees!" They're incredibly hard to brute force under time pressure if you haven't practiced similar problems before. Now do that for every interview -- exhausting. Alternative? Lol? System design. "Walk me through systems you've built." Have a conversation. If you can't then maybe you don't have the skill for interviewing or dare I say the skill to be an engineer.

udswagz 5mo ago

100% true, absolutely nailed it

kraf 5mo ago

They create toxic products that make the entire world more toxic. How they still manage to not have any responsibility while being editors and publishers is beyond me. I couldn't imagine how their insides wouldn't be toxic as well. Nice people don't do this.

Balgair 5mo ago

https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idealism/dp/1250391237 https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea... I mean, the book is just over a year old here people. It's not like this is new or out of date stuff.