When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices | Hacker News Reader

When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

en.pingwest.com

162 pointsAFascistWorld57 comments

It's quite the lengthy article but the crux of what they believe led to his suicide is here:

Relevant sources unveiled that before Mr. Chen’s last PSC, he had already been under pressure from the advertising department, so he expected to shift to other groups to maintain his job in Facebook and the opportunity to work in the United States.

According to informed sources told PingWest that, Mr. Chen’s group had undergone organizational restructuring, during which the group’s original manager hopped to another group. A new manager was hired to lead Mr. Chen’s group, but the manager soon realized that many of his ICs were already transferring groups, resulting in a sharply-increased workload per capita within the group.

Mr. Chen, who was already in high pressure, submitted his transfer request as well, and was pre-approved by another group, meaning that all that’s left is to have his own manager sign off on the transfer.

The new manager reportedly gave Mr. Chen verbal approval and told him to stay on the team until the PSC, but eventually gave him the "Meets Most" rating, which factually voided Mr. Chen's transfer request because the other group is very unlikely to accommodate a new IC who just received the worst possible rating, according to Facebook internal sources close to Mr. Chen.

Mr. Chen, who had been on the verge of collapse, was mentally pushed off the edge by a Facebook robot, according to people familiar with the matter as well as other employees on Blind, an anonymous workplace social networking app.

Two weeks before the tragedy, the Facebook advertising system experienced a Severe Site Event (SEV), which is essentially a server crash. A SEV management bot created a task for the SEV to be resolved and assigned the task to Mr. Chen, requiring him to fix the bug and submit the SEV report before the deadline, which is roughly one hour after the time of his death.

Mr. Chen tried to push the deadline to be delayed but another bot monitoring the SEV rejected the change and maintained the deadline to be met in 12 days.

It sounds like the already existing pressure in Ads + reorg + new manager blocking his transfer request + SEV caused him to just give in. Given Zuckerberg's public push on transparency, openness, and wanting to connect the world, I'm honestly quite surprised and disappointed at how secretive they've been on this tragedy.

I've heard this pattern (manager drops performance rating to block transfer) more times than I can count on two hands. I've heard this several times within two steps of my professional network. This story shows up regularly in the gender discrimination story piles.

At this point, it should be standard practice that sudden drops in performance ratings coming after team transfer attempts should trigger raised eyebrows.

Something to consider: there might be a legitimate drop in performance from somebody who intends to leave a team because they are no longer satisfied with it. In those circumstances, permitting the transfer could quite possibly improve the performance of the worker since the worker is once again working on something they care about.

Man, I can't imagine working in such an environment. It feels so detached to normal human interaction.

Couple questions as I don't (and largely have no intention to) work in Silicon Valley:

- Shouldn't the bar for transfers be roughly the same as the bar for initial employment? As in, give the candidates a similar interview process as if they were coming outside of the company into that team? Why would a transfer be based on the current manager, who is already disincentivized to allow the employee to switch teams?

- > Mr. Chen tried to push the deadline to be delayed but another bot monitoring the SEV rejected the change

Maybe someone who works at FB can clear this up but how does this work? A bot opens a ticket, dev attempts to change a dropdown field and another bot decides whether to revert or not? Or is there a human involved, and do they have override powers?

> Shouldn't the bar for transfers be roughly the same as the bar for initial employment? As in, give the candidates a similar interview process as if they were coming outside of the company into that team? Why would a transfer be based on the current manager, who is already disincentivized to allow the employee to switch teams?

1. This allows internal transfers to avoid reinterviewing. I think many would agree that going through the same interview process is not productive, especially with the types of interview questions asked at FB (predominantly Leetcode style). This reflects FB's standard hiring process for engineers, where engineers are hired into a "general" pipeline and not to a specific team, with the implication that once they pass FB's interview, they are qualified to work on basically any team. The performance requirements are there so that engineers cannot just change teams every time they perform poorly.

2. I think the incentives are intended such that the very worst case for a manager is being forced to fire an employee for poor performance -- it means the manager was unable to help the employee improve their performance. Having them transfer within the company reflects much better on the manager. In practice, this may not be true in all situations.

In the general / common case, this system is great for engineers in terms of internal mobility.

FB uses a Tasks tool. A task can have an owner, subscribers, tags, blocker/dependent relationship to other tasks, can be associated with one or more code diffs, etc. Bots have internal accounts in the same way human employees do, and for the most part any human or bot can make a drive-by change to any of your tasks.

This article appears to have some fundamental misunderstandings. Their description of the review system is not stack ranking, in which employees are ranked in a hierarchy and the lowest on the totem are fired. Instead, the "meets/exceeds" scale has been pretty standard wherever I've worked.

Further, it seems that FB HR asked the source of this article to not speak to the press about an internal event that involved a very sensitive issue. Yet, the journalist repeatedly states that Mr. Yin was asked to speak with nobody about the issue. It looks like he ignored the advice, and became a very visible interviewee, even appearing on public news. He told his manager after the interviews - what was he thinking? It's pretty obvious that FB doesn't want it's employees speaking to the press.

This article's inaccuracies in an attempt to spin a tragedy into some sort of Facebook conspiracy reinforces the correctness of the company's "do not speak to the press" attitude.

Not just the press, the source was also asked not to talk about it internally

> Based on the information provided by multiple sources, PingWest also discovered that Facebook is actively attempting to block internal discussions of Mr. Chen's death. Employees were discouraged to talk about the incident, verbally and in written form, with other employees

That’s not true. (I work there.)

a meets/exceeds scale becomes stack ranking when the proportion of different ranks is capped so that even if everybody on a team did well, some would have to be given the lowest ranking

Yep, if under some level (ie everyone under a VP with 50-300 engineers) basically every division needs to hit 5/30/30/30/5 then you do indeed have a stack ranking, just under a different name.

The main difference is that being in that bottom 30 is usually not “bad” under that system, ie it will have maybe a 0.8-0.9x expected bonus multiplier. Whereas under most stack ranking systems that call themselves as such, a D grade might mean that if you get another D you’ll be in hot water

“Meets most” is just the politically correct version of PIP or “you should look for other jobs now”

that's "meets some". Meets most means you have 1 or 2 secondary axes you need to fix

Do you have reason to believe this happens?

Why should you take the companies advice to stay quiet when you believe they're the ones who were at fault?

Exactly. We wouldn't expect silence from a factory worker who saw working conditions contribute to the death of a coworker, so why should we expect it from a tech worker who witnesses the same?

Facebook trying to suppress this worker's voice is morally abhorrent.

Part of the problem is a lot of internal conversation about suicide can actually trigger surviving people with suicidal tendencies. It’s a pragmatic recommendation supported by the medical community to limit communication related to a suicide; it’s not just a PR move.

It’s called suicidal contagion: https://www.hhs.gov/answers/mental-health-and-substance-abus...

I agree that's a problem, I mention that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21227195

However I think we need to weight that risk with the risk that future suicides will occur for the same reason as the first, not inspired by the first, if the circumstances that lead to the first suicide are left unresolved. Addressing those circumstances means having an honest discussion about what happened, which can only happen if people are allowed to talk about it.

(Obviously glorification/etc of the suicide should be strictly off limits. There need to be guardrails on the discussion to mitigate risk.)

You don't have to follow company rules - but again, company can terminate you with or without reason. In this particular case, Yi was fired because he's "lack of judgement", after Yi spoke to the press without formal approval and acknowledging he works for Facebook and refused to agree to the gap order warning.

Regardless, whether FB is hiding anything, speaking in front of the media representing the company without proper authorization is a common sense taboo. Yi should have know that better during first month of new employee training bootcamp. Also, this is not a of case of whistleblowing as Yi was simply protesting, he neither knew first hand nor had any evidence of FB wrongdoing. Having a gag order in place is not necessarily an indication of wrongdoing(FB has had enough negative news lately already and any more of it will affect their bottomline), although lots of time it is, but we simply don't know.

My brother, a GP doctor, said that he writes a lot of scripts for antidepressants every performance review season. Performance management sucks.

The racial tenor of this article seems bizarre and over the top, though?

There's only a racial tenor in the sense that work visa status gives companies like Facebook more leverage over immigrant employees than. Losing your job can mean you have 30 days to find a new position at an employer that's willing to sponsor your visa.

maybe I’m missing something but people don’t normally take antidepressants to deal with one off periods of stress, right?

If the period lasts months, then sure. People go on meds for temporary events all the time, e.g. Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Seems like there’s a few things at play here

Foremost it sounds like Facebook has a shitty performance management culture. Let’s forget intent for a minute. Looking at the details offered, it’s just bad. If you get a rating of “meets most”, and that’s really bad then your system is off the bat not clear.

The implied story I got was about Chinese worker and visa abuse. But it sounds like it’s more just bad company culture with high degrees of competitiveness and finger pointing. I don’t see anything especially relevant to his race or immigration status. The idea that they’re dangling anything over his head (as is a common and important problem for many low skilled tech workers, (which probably doesn’t describe this guy)) because it’s implied they were going to push him out.

The internal push to silence any internal discussion on it is shameful.

But overall this seems like the result of organizational incompetence rather than malice. And I don’t think it should be surprising to anyone that this is the case because you’re going to be selecting for a very specific profile for a company like Facebook. Namely, people who put higher value on money and prestige.

This incident has gone wild on popular overseas Chinese forums criticizing the double standards and mistreatments. It’ll be interesting and eye opening if someone could translate the information shared there.

Since you seem to be active in those forums yourself, maybe you could do the translating?

It’ll be way too risky to expose the threads. Some user ids and conversations can be used to infer the real identity

Then why mention them at all?

Or link to them at least

How can Facebook be claiming to protect the family's privacy when it is in fact preventing employees from speaking to the press about bad working conditions?

By doing both? Both the family and the company want to avoid a media blowup about the death, so keeping quiet protects both the family and Facebook's corporate interests (and probably also the mental health of other employees).

The argument people are making is that it doesn't protect society's interests, but as far as I can tell, Facebook isn't claiming it is.

Being quiet about the specifics of the individual case does not prevent them from having a transparent discussion of company policies and practices that may have contributed. The argument is that this does not protect employees' interests because it allows these practices to continue unexamined.

Is his suicide linked to some kind of maltreatment of Chinese employees at Facebook? The article doesn't make that clear.

Not mistreat Chinese employee per say. The individual is operating under big stress, and the manager is deliberately playing politics to prevent him switching teams, threatening to put his job at jeperody.

I don't feel like this is engineered to target Chinese. But if all proven, Facebook's internal culture seems fucked up...Maybe that is why it doesn't want even its employees to talk about it.

That's usually SOP at companies which have suicides. Suicidal ideation is contagious. They'll bring in a grief counselor, and encourage you to talk to them, instead.

Well, yes and no

Suicide is one thing. But Facebook's refusal to change anything as regarding to the cause of this employee's passing is jarring, for stuff like fire fast, highly stressful Sev meeting and etc, and super high peer pressure.

Even Amazon does change its way of handling internal transfer after employee's attempted suicide.

Not to mention there are Facebook employees defending on other places, claiming this is nothing burger, because Facebook's suicide rate is below national average, which ironically signals the issue is indeed internal and not normal.

Comparing against the national average seems like BS anyway. The suicide rate of employees in any given company should be compared to suicide rates of other populations of people with comparable incomes, opportunities, etc. For instance, how does the suicide rate in Facebook compare to Google? Or how does the suicide rate in one Facebook department compare to another?

> "Suicidal ideation is contagious"

That seems true. There were some studies done back in the 70s that found a correlation between fatal plane/car crashes and news reports of suicide, as well as a correlation between multiple fatality crashes and news reports of murder-suicides. The implication here being that many small plane and car crashes are actually suicides with plausible deniability.

Of course, taking this to it's logical conclusion, this story should be flagged off the front page since it broaches the topic of suicide and therefore might induce more suicides. (However I think the social value in discussing these matters openly outweighs that risk.)

PingWest seems to be targeting the intersection of China and tech news, so emphasizing the nationality shows that the topic is relevant to their audience. Additionally, they mention that working under OPT or an H-1B visa increases the pressure, so Chinese expats are more likely to be stressed.

Less for being Chinese and more for being an employee on a visa, which leaves them with fewer options.

agree, more correct article title seems to me to be:

"When Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices, here's an example featuring some Chinese people"

There's no formal media report on this, the stories that hit Chinese internet headlines are anecdotal and seem quite sensationalized.

The stories alledge that he argued with his Indian boss (which commonly features in all kinds of Chinese stories about Sillicon Valley tech companies), was denied request to change group, an emergency project was assigned to him, attempts to extend the dealine failed, the fear of being fired and family visas revoked drove him to that tragedy.

The story went viral in China, played on his past of being local National Exam champion from modest upbringing, and the popular notion of Chinese being coolies in SV and widely discriminated in the US.

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Since this is a single-purpose account, I've banned it. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban anyone who wants to use HN as intended in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20013092

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Edit: just to be clear, I don't think you were posting in bad faith. The issues are important and I'm guessing you have deep personal knowledge of them. But we simply can't have people using HN as a political platform.

> to hold a vigil for a Facebook employee who took his own life after allegedly [being] bullied in the company and suffering extremely excessive work pressure

> Most Attendees wore black

Huh. Why not white?

In America at least, black clothing (typically formal wear, the specifics vary from place to place) is strongly associated with mourning. It's traditional garb at funerals and gatherings to pay respects for the departed. This may be different in other countries, and it's not a universal practice, but it's common enough that most everyone understands the meaning.

For context for those who are not already aware, since this is being downvoted... white traditionally has the same associations in Chinese culture. So it was not an entirely unreasonable question. The answer is just that this happened in the US, not China, and wearing white in the US would be unusual.

But this is an event for Chinese migrants, not even American Chinese.

It happened in the United States. And who says it was exclusively attended by Chinese Nationals?

The article.

This is a pressure tactic against Facebook. They are also carrying signs and chanting slogans. Of course the signs and slogans are in English; wouldn't do much good in Chinese. So it makes sense they would follow the custom of the country they are in and the company they are trying to pressure.

Because black is the color associated with funerals/death in the western world??

Why is that relevant? According to the article:

> September 26 was an unforgettable day for many Chinese migrant tech workers in Silicon Valley, as hundreds of them gathered on a blazing hot day at Facebook’s "Thumbs up" sign at the entrance to the social network company’s Menlo Park, CA, headquarters, to hold a vigil for a Facebook employee who took his own life after allegedly bullied in the company and suffering extremely excessive work pressure.

Chinese migrant workers do not typically observe the traditions of the western world, for the very good reason that they don't come from the western world.

Even the coverage is obviously being done by foreigners:

> After weeks of interviewing sources within the company, including employees who had worked in the same and overlapping internal groups with Mr. Chen and possess of first hand information on his tragedy

> This investigation found out that as Facebook grew to its scale of today, its management still wish to maintain the company’s image as a fast-paced startup with high growth.

> Facebook's Ads department, the most profitable unit of the tech giant, where Mr. Chen worked, is under a circumstance more complicated than other businesses, products and departments within the company.

> Eric, a senior staff of the company whose wanted his full name to be omitted for privacy reasons

The vigil happened in the United States.

I can't believe you (a) don't get this and (b) are arguing it so vociferously.

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