4 ms·

time to quit and do something real.

by GuidMor 13y ago

gkoberger 13y ago
Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur or working at a site that ends with .org in order to be happy, feel successful or make a difference.
onedev 13y ago
Your job must be so miserable that you feel the need to make a comment like this. I'm so sorry about that, but some people have exciting, amazing jobs, and that's no reason to get jealous.
- ericd 13y ago
  Having a miserable job and thinking that Facebook is largely a waste of great engineering talent are orthogonal things. I think a lot of good knowledge on the scaling front comes out of it, but I wouldn't say that it's the most efficient societal use of our best engineers by a long shot. I think it's everyone's right to choose how they spend their time, even if it squanders their potential impact, but we generally shouldn't feel proud when we squander it.
  - onedev 13y ago
    Right, changing the way billions of people interact every single day isn't impactful?
    - ericd 13y ago
      Of course it has an impact, I just don't think it's a net positive one.
      - onedev 13y ago
        Why not? Without FB, I wouldn't be able to connect as much with all the people I've met in multiple places around the world. All people that I care about. I've also met a ton of new people that I otherwise wouldn't have met (e.g. from groups). I connect with the CS community at my school through FB. I connect with people in my class through FB. A lot of discussion happens on FB that I'd otherwise miss or not have the chance to participate in (everyone is extremely busy)
        ericd 13y ago
        I think the result is probably a larger number of shallower friendships than you'd have otherwise, or at least that's the pattern I've noticed, and I don't think that's necessarily better. The rest of most people's time on there is generally spent idly browsing the trivia of other peoples' lives. I just don't think it's a very effective use of users' or engineers' time. I used to use FB a lot, especially in college, but aside from being great for organizing parties, I've found that I like the old ways a lot better. For actually communicating and having conversations with people, IM and email are actually more robust/effective/universal, and aren't engineered and A/B tested to hell to suck up attention as effectively as possible.
        onedev 13y ago
        Doesn't matter if you think they're shallow. I care about these people. I want to know more about them and I want to stay connected with them in hopes that we cross paths again some day (for those that I don't live near).
encoderer 13y ago
Say what you want, but I left my entire, close-knit family behind in Ohio when I moved to San Francisco for better opportunities on better engineering teams. Nothing in my life keeps me connected with them the way Facebook does. Nothing else draws together an audience as broad. From my teenage age cousins who use FB their way, to my Baby Boomer parents, to my Greatest Generation grandparents. They're all there in one place. Also, they've faced enormous engineering challenges. Yes, Facebook style problems have great fanout results. You can almost accuse it of being easy in that way. But at their size and with their growth rate, nothing is easy. I'm not a big facebook user. I didn't touch it until i moved away and my family over time started using it. But your slur here is absurd. Facebook has given a lot of great engineering back to the community. Thrift. Cassandra. Open Source networking hardware, etc.
- 23david 13y ago
  Yes the Facebook product has some utility. And they do have big engineering challenges, and have contributed to open-source. These are not unique to Facebook, and if these are the criteria for working there, I can think of a lot of other places to work at that: a) Have products that my friends and family would enjoy/use. b) Have interesting engineering challenges that a new employee can work on. c) Allow employees to contribute back to open-source and maintain their open-source projects on company time, with significant engineering resources. The OpenCompute project is pretty unique to only Facebook, so if hacking on data center hardware is your thing, Facebook is pretty unique in that regard. Would be curious to know how many people are in that group though... I imagine it's pretty small compared to their general software engineering workforce. You can do similar work at Google, but they don't let you release your work Open Source. :-) Trade secrets and such...

time to quit and do something real.

by GuidMor 13y ago

time to quit and do something real.

Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur or working at a site that ends with .org in order to be happy, feel successful or make a difference.

onedev 13y ago

Your job must be so miserable that you feel the need to make a comment like this. I'm so sorry about that, but some people have exciting, amazing jobs, and that's no reason to get jealous.

ericd 13y ago
Having a miserable job and thinking that Facebook is largely a waste of great engineering talent are orthogonal things. I think a lot of good knowledge on the scaling front comes out of it, but I wouldn't say that it's the most efficient societal use of our best engineers by a long shot. I think it's everyone's right to choose how they spend their time, even if it squanders their potential impact, but we generally shouldn't feel proud when we squander it.
- onedev 13y ago
  Right, changing the way billions of people interact every single day isn't impactful?
  - ericd 13y ago
    Of course it has an impact, I just don't think it's a net positive one.
    - onedev 13y ago
      Why not? Without FB, I wouldn't be able to connect as much with all the people I've met in multiple places around the world. All people that I care about. I've also met a ton of new people that I otherwise wouldn't have met (e.g. from groups). I connect with the CS community at my school through FB. I connect with people in my class through FB. A lot of discussion happens on FB that I'd otherwise miss or not have the chance to participate in (everyone is extremely busy)
      - ericd 13y ago
        I think the result is probably a larger number of shallower friendships than you'd have otherwise, or at least that's the pattern I've noticed, and I don't think that's necessarily better. The rest of most people's time on there is generally spent idly browsing the trivia of other peoples' lives. I just don't think it's a very effective use of users' or engineers' time. I used to use FB a lot, especially in college, but aside from being great for organizing parties, I've found that I like the old ways a lot better. For actually communicating and having conversations with people, IM and email are actually more robust/effective/universal, and aren't engineered and A/B tested to hell to suck up attention as effectively as possible.
        onedev 13y ago
        Doesn't matter if you think they're shallow. I care about these people. I want to know more about them and I want to stay connected with them in hopes that we cross paths again some day (for those that I don't live near).

encoderer 13y ago

Say what you want, but I left my entire, close-knit family behind in Ohio when I moved to San Francisco for better opportunities on better engineering teams. Nothing in my life keeps me connected with them the way Facebook does. Nothing else draws together an audience as broad. From my teenage age cousins who use FB their way, to my Baby Boomer parents, to my Greatest Generation grandparents. They're all there in one place. Also, they've faced enormous engineering challenges. Yes, Facebook style problems have great fanout results. You can almost accuse it of being easy in that way. But at their size and with their growth rate, nothing is easy. I'm not a big facebook user. I didn't touch it until i moved away and my family over time started using it. But your slur here is absurd. Facebook has given a lot of great engineering back to the community. Thrift. Cassandra. Open Source networking hardware, etc.

23david 13y ago
Yes the Facebook product has some utility. And they do have big engineering challenges, and have contributed to open-source. These are not unique to Facebook, and if these are the criteria for working there, I can think of a lot of other places to work at that: a) Have products that my friends and family would enjoy/use. b) Have interesting engineering challenges that a new employee can work on. c) Allow employees to contribute back to open-source and maintain their open-source projects on company time, with significant engineering resources. The OpenCompute project is pretty unique to only Facebook, so if hacking on data center hardware is your thing, Facebook is pretty unique in that regard. Would be curious to know how many people are in that group though... I imagine it's pretty small compared to their general software engineering workforce. You can do similar work at Google, but they don't let you release your work Open Source. :-) Trade secrets and such...