Chris Cox is a huge loss for Facebook. His first day speech is still the reason Facebook has the strongest culture in the valley.
For a company so regularly beset by scandal, this feels like a bold assertion.
Culture of what?
Whatever your thoughts about Facebook, the fact that some of the smartest people have worked, and continue to work at a company "beset by scandal" should give you pause.
2. Even if he wasn't, the fact that we're making the comparison reflects how important he was to FB.
Not to be rude, but this has been my universal experience in the tech industry for the past 20+ years.
They pay many people salaries that they’d have trouble getting elsewhere. If these people stick around for the dream even after the money dries up, then I’ll be impressed.
The sentiment I’ve heard so far is “let’s wait this out, and hope it goes back to business as usual.”
The ethical have likely left already. Those who are most talented and in it for the money will likely be next out, if things don’t turn around. Then they’re left with the untalented and overpaid, who will cling on for as long as possible while the ship sinks.
I think people really underestimate the value of sheer impact on end users. I know the news about FB hasn't been positive, but as an engineer a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to literally change the world every month.
Facebook forgot that “change the world” isn’t the end goal. It’s to change the world for the better. At that, they have failed.
Their AI platform is a also ran in pretty much every aspect.
Where exactly are the smart people?
2. Even humoring that assumption, you’re conveniently forgetting React, Hive (+Hbase, hipal), presto, rocksdb, Cassandra, graphql, oauth 2, open compute, phabricator, hhvm, buck, and that’s just the open source stuff.
PHP could have died, but no, it got a new lease on life.
Hive is a bad copy of a google tech. Buck is a bad copy of a google tech. Hbase is a bad copy of a google tech. Rocks is cute, but it's a bit sad that it's at the center of literally everything in the company.
Phabricator isn't bad, but it's a pretty close copy to things at google.
And I think Google only joined the open compute initiative to try and talk facebook out of it's weird ideas.
Just because they're the best ones talking about what they're doing, doesn't mean they're anywhere near the best.