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Comment by achow | Hacker News Reader

Interesting quote from CEO in an all hands directly to employees. I don't want to be at Meta right now..

.."turning up the heat" on performance management to weed out staffers unable to meet more aggressive goals.

"Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," Zuckerberg said. "Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me," he said.

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>"Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me," he said.

This, to me, sounds like he's pressuring people to leave, so that they don't have to fire them, which would involve severance.

I doubt it. You can just slow down and be fired. Severance is a pittance to them.

What they are really trying to avoid is laying off the wrong people. Management is really bad at guessing who wants to stay and who wants out. Often, a bunch of “low performers” are riffed. Some are bad, some are just on the wrong team, some are having life complications- birth, death, divorce, etc.

It’s really bad PR to fire someone who is a low performer because of a bad pregnancy, grandma died, etc. especially when they call a reporter and show their stellar ratings from previous years.

On top of all that, with the rif comes a higher work load. At this time many high performers will quit, which sucks because you just laid off a bunch of people, many of whom were close to these guys in performance.

Then the company is at risk of making bad decisions. They they push even harder on those that remain? Do they become pragmatic and cut initiatives they can no longer staff?

All moves have risk.

Generally, people who get PIP'd don't get severance, even if fired.

The real purpose of the PIP process is to grind people down so they make mistakes, costing them what could otherwise be beautiful lawsuits [1], or just stop showing up (which I guess would fall under quitting, since they end up firing themselves, at least bureaucratically speaking).

----

[1] This is surprisingly easy to do in the US. If you post about your termination on social media, this can be construed as "cause after the fact" and make a termination that was in fact unjust or unlawful now legal. The employer's argument becomes that they knew you held malice toward the company ("cause") but couldn't prove it--the social media activity becomes said "proof".

That may be for more cold blooded companies but most PIPs I've witnessed have gotten severance and actually good packages to boot.

Same here. Severance is very cheap in the grand scheme of things. If someone is a poor performer, they're essentially a negative value add. Your default is continuing to pay them a salary, so you may as well agree to continue to do that for a number of weeks and just have them not work. I've seen 2 weeks for every year at the firm as standard

It's not necessarily about severance; could be keeping unemployment insurance premiums low, too.

Yes, most people dont realize companies can be financially impacted through the unemployment system when they lay someone off even if there are no direct severance payments.

An employee who quits isnt eligible for unemployment.

(these rules obviously vary by country/state/etc)

Agree, I mostly saw: Take this generous amount of money and hand in your resignation or you won't have to come back tomorrow and you get nothing.

Take this generous amount of money (1 month pay) and SIGN THIS WAIVER RELEASING US OF ALL FUTURE LIABILITIES is the important part.

also usually anti-badmouthing clauses in both directions. “you may never blog about this experience”

> Generally, people who get PIP'd don't get severance, even if fired.

Not quite true at Amazon, the most infamous PIP user. You get put on "Focus". If you fail that, you are offered severance or to go on a PIP. True, once you're on the PIP, you're not going to get a severance offer. (This is all according to https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/amazon, which is excerpted by the author here https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1537810787473006593.)

I have never, at any company, found this to be true.

Not knowing who is worth firing seems like mismanagement to me alongside the obvious " do more work plebs and you'll be safe"

Once you get paid, you and the company are even. Of course one would want as much reasonable employee protection as usual but practical realities dictate that you shouldn't get something for nothing.

The second Iron Law of Bureaucracy states:

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

It seems that FB, err Meta, is going to advance the turn of the breaking wheel one rotation. They may be attempting, in good faith, to eliminate the flotsam and jetsam in the bureaucracy, but are more than likely to just eliminate those least connected to internal politics.

I would not be surprised if remote-only workers are the most affected, followed by the most 'heads-down' programmers.

It's interesting that these steps are occurring with the recent leaving of Sandberg and I wonder if there is any connection.

I'm not a Meta-hater, but the tone of this is always destructive when it comes up. It's basically soft layoffs that try and paint those leaving/pushed out as "unmotivated" or "can't keep up with the rest of us". I wish companies would be more honest that they aren't doing well, over hired, etc instead.

I kinda get mgmt types thinking this will keep remaining feeling motivated, safe, etc. but it's very phoney to a lot of us who've been through this before.

I've heard it asserted that your median level of talent doesn't change much with these strategies. But that means you're losing people that you could probably ill afford to lose.

I’ve worked at a couple places that took this layoff philosophy. Twelve months later headcount was back to the same level. More of the best employees left on their own volition after layoffs. Company spent a bunch in severance and damaged reputation for no real gain. Shareholders I guess felt they got their pound of flesh.

When things get nasty and it’s clear the good days are over it’s usually those most able to leave (the actual best employees) who get the message

but where do they go? You can't escape the recession. All the FAANGs are in it. A startup seems even more risky in this atmosphere.

Maybe you didnt mean it that technical, but the median is very robust to outliers. So your first statement is true but the conclusion is not necessarily.

No, this is an old saw and we see it happen over and over and the managers never learn. When they announce things like this, or voluntary layoffs, they mean for the lower quartile to leave in droves and for the overall quality of the remaining employees to improve. For the amount of stuff per dollar to increase.

But what actually happens is that a few of the lower quartiles leave, and at least as many from the upper quartiles leave. None of the Dunning Kruger people leave because they’re all that and a bag of chips. So you tend toward mediocrity. Doubly so because when the changes that management expected don’t happen, now everyone knows there is likely to be a round of involuntary layoffs. So the people you have left either start playing it safe or become demotivated, further lowering the stuff per dollar. And now the company is doing worse, and some idiot upstairs thinks it’s just their predictions coming true, instead of self fulfilling prophecy.

Not that I mean any of this as a lecture or warning for Zuck. More like a movie trailer. I hope it all burns and we get to watch it happen. But more likely they’ll turn into Microsoft. Fewer teeth, but still essentially the same bastards they always were, because changing a negative founder culture is really, really hard for any social or business group.

> I kinda get mgmt types thinking this will keep remaining feeling motivated, safe, etc.

That seems completely counterintuitive to me. Seeing your co-worker tip off the end of the plank doesn't make me feel safe as we are all inching closer to the end of it.

Though it would motivate me to look for a job elsewhere.

He is blaming the economy and employees, when in fact the product itself is dying.

Lots of CEOs with bad businesses will play this card to avoid responsibility...

I keep asking people if they know anybody excited about the metaverse. I have not found any even among people who are total Facebook products.

It’s because the Metaverse is just Facebook’s last ditch effort at controlling an App Store.

Never mind the fact that VR is niche and will always be niche, or that VR conference calls add zero value beyond a simple Zoom call, Meta is going for it anyway because they have no other viable options.

I have to admit that the technology itself looks really cool, but it’s a solution looking for a problem.

You aren’t thinking broad enough. The metaverse is Facebook’s oh fuck moment that a massive social network crept up on them without them realizing it. My friends and I “hang out” more in games and discord than any other digital space by a massive margin. Getting together in a Minecraft server might as well be a physical hangout and it’s taking the place of a lot of our group texts. Playing games for me is more about the social activity than the actual game.

It’s not really about VR, it’s just that FB had no chance whatsoever of competing with existing players in the PC, console, or mobile market so they are pushing VR as a “staple” gaming product. They’re trying to make a new market where they can be a major player.

I don’t think the future of the metaverse will have anything to do with 3D actually. The 3D/VR stuff is more of a fad than a long term plan.

The real vision behind the metaverse is thinking that many of the things we currently do in person (i.e., concerts, going to bars, school, work, etc.) will eventually move online. Meta wants to position themselves as the “platform” for this.

And this expectation is incredibly far fetched. It is betting on the reversal of many, many years of human habit which has become habit for a reason.

I have no faith that Facebook knows what it’s doing, but I need to point out that COVID is going to absolute cripple the population if we don’t all learn to get virtual for anything truly optional real quick. And if it does cripple the population, a lot of stuff will have to be virtual to be attended at all.

Most of Europe and the America's are winding down lockdown measures. mRNA vaccines are highly effective. if you try to book a plane or concert ticket you'll see that people are racing to get out of their homes after 2+ years.

My entire family got Covid last week because we let our guard down and went on vacation on an airplane. all vaccinated, but still put us out for over a week and counting. it may not kill us, but I definitely don’t want to get Covid again if I can do something to decrease my risk, like choosing zoom over in person.

i dont think it's even habits - the technology of VR is just not mature enough, and convenient enough. I don't see it becoming better by an order of magnitude, which is what's needed for it to be competitive with real life attendance, any time soon.

By this moment, i think the Steam Deck has a better position to build the 3D metaverse.

I thought you'd missed a word but no, "total Facebook products" is good.

> I keep asking people if they know anybody excited about the metaverse. I have not found any even among people who are total Facebook products.

There are people that are willing to zap their eyes with laser only to not wear their glasses that actually allow them to see.

People literally hate putting things on their face/head that restricts what they can see. Maybe because I would fell too vurnable without ability to check what's happening around me.

Now sell them glasses/vr headset that are even less useful. And way heavier.

Or how successful 3d glasses were with 3d tvs or before that colored 3d glasses or even IMAX with their 3D(watched on movie there, not worth the price). Or fact that Nintendo made their 3d work without glasses and then started selling 2d version of that handheld and then forget about 3d in their later products.

Even cyberpunk ability to jack in would be useful to me only when I were still able to use my eyes(or implants) while controlling a device.

> there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here

Would be interesting to see whether he still considers himself essential for the future of Meta.

How many founders of successful companies willingly stepped out? 1%? 0.01%? :-)

How would you know? When a founder is out unwillingly, most of the time don't both sides pretend it was willing and amicable because they know it looks bad?

There was a thread on HN some time ago discussing how different growth stages needed different people in the hot seat, and the fate of a company was often decided by the founder's willingness to cede control to someone with the right skills and experience. I think it came up in the context of VCs wanting to bring in CEOs for this purpose and the pushback they encountered.

Ofc VCs would prefer ceo they fully control ;-) what else is new?

And vice-versa: when things go well, they're geniuses and circumstances outside of their control have nothing to do with it.

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here

He's probably not wrong though. People are routinely amazed just how many people these large companies employ. Big company culture often slips into not what is delivered, but how many people does a manager have under them.

In the past, successful companies have used economic downturns as a way to reset this culture.

Can you name a few of those companies? I’d genuinely like to read about them. My current hypothesis is that a company needs to have a near-death experience to acquire actual management discipline and true focus. Chrysler in 1979. Apple in 1996.

Meta engineering could definitely afford to get a bit leaner, but the question is whether their approach will cut fat or muscle. Having been there, I suspect muscle. There's a strong correlation there between the "impact" that is the be-all and end-all of their performance measurement, churn, and technical debt. If they cut headcount but keep all of the people generating churn and technical debt, there will be more of those per person who's left and fewer of those risking bad reviews to actually keep things running. Some parts of engineering are already cracking under that load, so the results could be pretty bad. Expect more outages.

This reminds me a bit of a discussion that used to be common during hard times early in my career: layoffs or pay cuts? It didn't take long for companies to figure out that with a layoff you get to choose who goes, but with pay cuts it will disproportionately be your best people because they have the greatest ability to jump upward. Nobody has that conversation any more, because the answer is known. I suspect in a few years Meta's approach to forced attrition (already practiced at Amazon for years) will also be recognized as bad for the long term.

Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”?

Yes FB is not for me. Not as a worker, not as a customer.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster.

(yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

> glorified CRUD message board features faster

I think this comment says more about you than anything.

If you look into Meta's tech stack they have challenges no company on the planet has and clearly a lot of talent. Having just played with CacheLib it's an impressive project and yet to see an equivalent anywhere else. And I imagine much of what they do is like this when you're operating at their extremes.

Like I said in my original comment: I'm sure there are a ton of interesting jobs at meta, no doubt - but they are the "meta" jobs of meta. In terms of driving their primary objective it's nothing that innovative from a technical perspective. Their innovation is solely rooted in behavioral psychology. Not self-driving cars, not better medical devices, not VR technology (well, OK, they bought their way into that). The prime directive at facebook is to keep people on facebook.

They've definitely been responsible for pushing web technologies forward -- but all in the name of increased engagement. Let's not pretend there is an altruistic angle to this.

Their innovation is solely rooted in behavioral psychology.

I’m not a fan of Facebook. I don’t even have an account. But it would be unfair to say they haven’t come up with some truly innovative approaches to large scale infrastructure.

Also, to their credit they are huge supporters of open source. For example the Open Compute Project is still alive and well in large data halls. They are also still supporting the Telecom Infra Project which is responsible for OpenRAN as well as their Open DWDM hardware.

Does all of this work in their favor to support their own business? Absolutely. But that can also be said for every tech company in some form or fashion. But, they still open source it which is way more than a lot of other shops can say.

I think the point is that Facebook's contribution to society (with its actual product, not its tech work) has been negative; its goal is to turn every knob it can find to get people to spend more time on Facebook, not actually solve any problems. All businesses are selfish, but some manage to meaningfully improve some aspect of people's lives along the way.

> Their innovation is solely rooted in behavioral psychology.

i think the poster meant 'business model' rather than innovation.

Having an immoral business model doesn't imply they are not innovative - facebook does plenty of technical innovation indeed.

No, it doesn't seem like they're doing much to alleviate the damage to society they've done. Still your comment seems rather cynical.

Yet, relative to the age of humanity or even modern society, they are still a new modality to humanity's interaction. One that facilitates also a lot of good that's happening in the world.

There is still a ton they could do right if they chose to, to make that environment for communication a healthier one. Could they find willingness to reroot their design choices in a wider tradition of social psychology, for instance?

>Still your comment seems rather cynical.

Your first paragraph points out the damage FB has done to society.

Your second paragraph appears to give them a pass because social media is "new" and has also done some good.

Your third paragraph tacitly gives FB credit for the things they could do right if they chose to.

Perhaps you're not cynical enough?

There is no denying that there is some interesting "engineering exhaust" coming from Facebook, side and passion projects developed on company time that are genuinely interesting and in ways industry-changing (React), but that is driven by devs and not the company. That is almost expected from a FAANG, where they have enough money to let that happen. Now, I bet, things will be different. You won't just be able to "do your own thing".

Say ello to KPIs.

Exactly this. The historical value of tech companies was that they provided safe, stable employment that gave employees enough slack to do things of value to society while tending to the profit engine. As these companies have evolved instead towards tightly-managed, low-slack organizations focused on KPIs, they now actively (and coercively) divert talent and attention from the "exhaust" that had been the positive externality. In this new state they become an active drain on society.

CacheLib appears to be a library that's useful to large centralized organizations that control large numbers of servers. So it is probably not value-neutral, but a force for increasing social centralization. "Scale" is fundamentally authoritarian, and it necessitates hierarchies of domination within abusive corporate structures.

Imagine what the engineer capable of writing CacheLib would have done instead, had they not worked for Facebook.

Hardly. A lot of what they do is likely filibuster.

Issa joke

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

You self selected because he turned up the heat on those buttons, and you know what? He’s okay with that

(Being facetious)

But why was your padding work so shoddy?

Cause i was modifying the shoddily built codebase of the feature we were modifying.

Turns out "move fast and break things" doesn't make for maintainable code.

He's a low performer; it's just one of his immutable and context-independent properties.

Padding work is hard and the benefits are often marginal.

Is this literally true?

Shouldn’t that take only a few minutes?

Haha, not in the codebase I was working in at the time. Paddings being manipulated programmatically all over the place.

Also, what a clear signal the CEO is not focusing on what matters. This was during the time the Cambridge Analytica thing broke... There's really nothing more important that needed his attention?

Maybe he needed something to direct his stress into and distract himself. I'm not saying what he did was right, BTW.

That was kind of my read too. Focus on the small things you can control to make up for the loss of control over the big things.

I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.

> I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.

That's a very fair need. Hope your life turns out better than you ever hope it to be.

It takes a few minutes once, it takes a few minutes another time, ... and now you have an exec who is like Pavlov's dog got used to prompt completion of his/her caprices. That isn't a way to a happy life for you (well, until you a one of those who thrive in execs' attention). Instead you wait until second or third reminder (if it is important the exec would remind, if not - then there wasn't a reason to bother to start with, and given the ferret like attention span of a typical exec...), you similarly wait for reminders another time, ... and now you have an exec frustrated by such an impedance mismatch and who as a result would move their attention to somebody else to promptly care for his/her caprices :)

At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.

Steve Jobs was famously known to be involved in even more micro product details than that.

“So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow” said Steve.

“I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?” Of course this was okay with me.

Just like working hard won't make you rich on its own, it's not enough to be a micromanager. The directions you give have to actually produce results.

Facebook is no iPod.

Respectfully: Zuckerberg has earned the right to care about whatever he darn-well pleases at company the size of his.

As soon as you start talking about “rights” you’re just having your own argument. We are obviously talking about what’s best practice.

Sure. But random employees also have the right to quit, if they don't like that meddling.

Why not? It's his company. He can do what he wants.

His company pays design and UX experts a huge amount of money to come up with designs that work for users, not for him personally. Meta isn't Zuckerberg's toy. Ignoring that expertise, and designing for himself instead of users, is failing the shareholders by wasting money and not maximizing revenue.

The parallel to Steve Jobs is a fair one, except that Steve was brilliant at design and UX and got things right. He wasn't bothered about tiny details like the padding on a single button but rather the design of the entire system, and he picked up on things that didn't sit in the overall architecture brilliantly.

He also drove people to leave Apple, and that was a bad thing. Things aren't right or justifiable just because they're like things Steve did. Sometimes he got things wrong, particularly when it came to managing people.

CEOs dog fooding their products and leaving feedback on them is not failing shareholders. Would you prefer a CEO to completely ignore everything their company makes and just trust others to tell him how things are going?

A wise CEO doesn't bypass the product and engineering process he's delegated to be put in place. Bypasing the process not only interferes with someones sprint and product roadmap, but more importantly, tells the people who own the process that they don't really own it after all. Which leads to people quitting.

If the CEO of my company prodded me about a feature I work on, I think that's actually a great opportunity to build rapport.

Happy to talk about it (who doesn't like talking about what they're up to?), and indeed it is nice if they're taking a genuine technical interest.

If they want a change made that's basically a completely trivial detail that was already within my ability to have done when I was doing the work (e.g. just putting some padding that just felt about right), then sure, I guess. Not sure it's actually important, but whatever.

If it will go against other work (e.g. the padding comes from some central styling rules), entails substantial off-route work, or adds future maintenance debt or project risk, it should go via the product manager if there is one. A good CEO knows not to preempt the people who decide how the product works, what it needs to do and how the team(s) are going to get there. He should also know that product will consider a valid suggestion (and he should know if they're so slammed that they can't even think about it, in which case he can help in other ways than moaning about padding).

In this case it sounds like Zuckerberg is bikeshedding over something trivial (doesn't get much more trivial than padding on a specific button) just to swing his dick about. If he has something insightful to say about the business logic, that would actually show engagement and understanding.

Right…

I'm surprised that nobody is questioning this. Zuckerberg owns ~17% of Meta shares, so it quite clearly not "his" company where he can do whatever he pleases. Primarily he is an employee and has a responsibility to the owners (which does include him) to do his job, arguably looking at button padding is not part of his job description.

Zuckerberg has a voting majority. As long as he believes he is acting in the companies best interests he can do whatever he likes.

This isn't strictly true, Zuckerberg has to act in the interests of the minority shareholders as well. He can't take a deal that helps himself while hurting all other shareholders.

Getting involved in button padding issues isn't one of those cases though. He can spend all the time in the world on that if he likes.

Not really. The role of the fiduciary is to act in the best interests of the organization, including seeking counsel and advice from experts. “I was doing what I thought was best,” is not an affirmative defense, and has been successfully argued to be a dereliction of duty in corporate and contract law.

That's irrelevant when discussing ownership. He owns 17% of Meta. That he retains control of 90% of Meta doesn't mean that he has the moral right to ignore his responsibilities to his co-owners.

No one has the moral right to do anything since the entire idea of moral rights is absurd. Yes, Zuckerberg has a duty to act in the best interest of shareholders. Courts have repeatedly ruled that good faith belief is all that requires. Unless you think his interest in button ui is somehow in self interest over company interest he didn’t do anything wrong.

17% of stocks != 17% of voting rights. I don't know the current numbers, but Zuck was known for aggressive use of priority shares to retain voting control of the company as he was selling shares.

>17% of stocks != 17% of voting rights

Stock classes are the biggest robbery of modern times.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robbery

> larceny from the person or presence of another by violence or threat

How does Facebook’s share offering meet the definition of robbery?

That Zuckerberg was selling a product with such high demand and so little supply that he was able to sell at a very high price does not qualify as Zuckerberg robbing others. It is not even bread for a starving person, it is equity to chase returns.

It seemed obvious to me that robbery was being used in the colloquial sense (rip off)

It's not like people aren't aware of stock classes when they buy it.

Share of stock class != Share of stock class

Zuck controls 90% of the voting rights of FB: https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1061237/how-facebook-si...

You're essentially right. It's not the job of the corporation to act morally. The job to create a moral framework under which corporations operate is the nation's.

Unfortunately, corporations have been successfully lobbying on removing constraints on what they are doing and against adding new ones.

Should not, not must not. He can do what he wants, but he shouldn't.

Meta has done a lot of interesting work in the hardware space. In hardware, you just kind of accept, regardless of your company or its vision, that your work is ultimately used to facilitate the watching of cat videos.

Alternatively, your work is being used to process financial information and trades a few nanoseconds faster, or your work is being used by the military, ...

For a long time I thought that cat videos, HFT, and military tech were the options. I worked HFT for a while. Then I discovered medical technology. You can work on interesting hardware and software for devices that absolutely make the world better. It's great.

Do any companies in the medtech space pay as well as the other options?

In my experience, yes. I get paid a bit better than I would expect at Microsoft and a bit worse than if I went to Apple.

Is this in Silicon Valley? In my area (a southeast tech hub) I’ve seen these type of companies offering jobs in the $100k-$120k range, which is far below Microsoft or any FAANG.

Yes, Silicon Valley.

Naturally, the nature of the 1st to ring the bell (i.e. HFT) poses an interesting concept. It's a very technical goal in itself.

Definitely.

And I don't actually disagree with HFT or finance in general, or sending cat pictures around.

(I'm reserving my judgement on the military.)

Data security!

You can work on defending the masses from the militaries and bad actors of the world.

Also lots of hardware in industrial applications. Though fundamentally you can consider that everything is in indirectly service of cat videos. Even a jet turbine blade casting machine is going to be used to get someone home faster to load up the cats.

Add to this the devastating effects that they had on human minds, in particular on teenagers.

When money is good, most people turn a blind eye. Stop the music and people will think twice.

Let's also not forget that Facebook knowingly facilitated a genocide of the Rohingya people of Myanmar.

> glorified CRUD message board

That's like describing SpaceX as "glorified fireworks"

Did you just compare CRUD to literal rocket science?

But launching rockets isn't rocket science. You build giant steel tube, fill it with some explosives and liquid oxygen, ignite it and, kaboom! you go to space. That's the theory behind it. Now, to put that into actual practice is whole different thing.

The same with CRUD. CRUD is simple, but to do CRUD on ~Facebook~ Meta scale, that's a different thing.

Meta-scale CRUD is fancy, to be sure. But the craft behind it is still not on the same level as building things that can, you know, blow up on the lauchpad. Or break apart up at 46,000 with you a schoolteacher and other crew members inside. While the nation watches. Stuff like that.

Whole nations _have_ been blown up by Facebook though.

Yup, they did (despite the perorations in the sibling comment). Precious.

> Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”?

Not to me. Just reads like they want to ditch low performers.

(They might or might not still want to ditch 'ethical people', no clue. It just doesn't read that way here.)

It's a framing issue, just like what Tesla recently did. Now they have the agency to clean house as they see fit with the excuse of "turning up the heat on performance" to hide behind.

Well, if you say so.

I would have assumed that Facebook always had the ability to manage-out people they wanted out.

Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”?

I read it more as let's ditch those 'lazy' people that don't 'embrace the grind', only want to work 8 hours a day and then just go home.

> Does this read “Let’s ditch those ethical people who get in the way of profit.”?

No. You said that. Not sure what you are reading.

It is basically getting rid of very low performers, slackers and those unable to deliver those expected goals.

No where did it say what you have just said.

It is basically getting rid of very low performers,

No - it is specifically aimed at getting rid of people who were doing fine before -- may have been top performers, even -- but who refuse to go into overdrive (start sacrificing sleep, or time with their families) to meet artificial goals.

That is to say: goals designed to reduce headcount -- by turning high performers into low performers.

No, I don't read it that way, anyone at Facebook doing their 2 year big tech stint has already wrestled with that irony.

I wonder how many people at Meta are there specifically for the money. Just learn to game their interview process, get in, and coast. I doubt that there are a lot of engineers working for Zuck for the love of the mission, let alone for moral reasons.

In other news, the value of a developer who knows how to solve the problem at hand vs torching your money on maintaining the overkill of dozens of microservices has just gone up.

Every single Meta employee I know is only there for the money, and for the ability to put Facebook/Meta on their resume for the next job. Nobody is really interested in the product, though all but one of them like the working conditions and how they treat [engineers] there. Anecdotal, obviously.

Should have finished that email with "may the odds be ever in your favor".

> turning up the heat

Well that was long due: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2013/mar/11...

15 degrees!

Presumably only where legally permitted. For instance, Ireland:

> for sedentary office work, a minimum temperature of 17.5° C, so far as is reasonably practicable, is achieved and maintained at every workstation after the first hour’s work.

There is something charming about the use of "realistically", a discovery the CEO just had that "bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here" as if this had nothing to do with him.

I mean, isn’t that always the case though? That lots of people don’t belong there? It’s just the law of large numbers + the ever shifting lives of people.

Don't see why this should always be the case. Also I don't recognize your use of addition and the sense in which you invoke the law of large numbers.

There is no hiring process that is perfect. Plus, people burn out, organizations shift focus, etc. People who shouldn’t have been hired in the first place make it in, and people whose skills no longer match the job hang on.

> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here,"

He makes it sound like these people sneaked in into the company without being hired.

This reminds me of my greedy uncle - went to a wedding, gobbled every other food and drink in sight and then when the fierce loose motions hit, blamed the food.

Lol, Meta (with their known intense PSC culture) of all places is doing this?

PSC culture?

Performance Summary Cycle.

It's a thing where you get performance reviews every 6 months, and where every minute contribution gets scored. Or so I've been told by a former mid-level Facebook manager who quit after a bit more than a year because he couldn't stand that toxic place anymore.

I found it particularly funny that the interviewers who gave the thumbs up to hire him would get bad marks because of his early departure.

I read that it is once in a year now.

Yes, they changed it effective this year. No more summer PSC, just the January one.

If anything, that makes this internal announcement worse because of the whiplash.

"We're going to make PSC less onerous and stressful by only doing it once a year!"

"Just kidding, we're actually going full Hunger Games with the new once-a-year cycle!"

> "We're going to make PSC less onerous and stressful by only doing it once a year!"

There's something interesting going on here. I agree that people will probably perceive annual PSC as less stressful than semiannual PSC. But even there, some people might not.

And there is a point where more frequent is very clearly less stressful. If you did PSC once a week, it wouldn't be cause for stress, it would just be something you did every week.

What about, you know... _zero_ "PSC"? Sounds like the type of shit a company does when it builds a culture of mistrusting its own employees.

No performance reviews, ever?

That’s de facto my situation.

After copy-and-pasting the same answers year after year in the self evaluation form, my manager got the message. That was, what, 10 years ago?

Now, once per year, we have a 20min meeting, he tells me “good job”, gives my new salary and RSUs, and we’re good.

It’s great.

Have you really never had a job where your boss simply evaluated your performance as needed rather than on some schedule like it's a mundane march towards death for the rest of your career?

Performance Summary Cycle. From experience, the psc culture within fb/meta is intense, internally competitive (even within teams) and heavily focuses on quantifiable gains (e.g. often tech-debt or ethical-minded features are forgone for engagement metric increases ... via any means). It's not nice unless you're a very specific type of person.

If Zuckerberg finds it OK to talk like that to its employees, then it means the general culture there must be able to hear him. So you're right, very specific type of person. But I wonder : how would you describe that type ? the type "if I'm in Meta it's because I'm the best of the best and I want to continue to prove I'm the best of the best, at any cost" ?

i don't know about "at any cost", but i haven't heard anyone push back against the performance and feedback culture. my team just wants to get better.

i have been really pleasantly surprised at how pervasive this mindset is among pretty much every one of my colleagues. it's something that i wanted at my previous jobs. i suppose it's not for everyone but it's been working for the small sample of people i know.

Amazonian?

I don't know if you can graft that onto a company, though. Amazon's like that because Bezos is. It seems like Facebook/Meta is more like playing fast and loose and damn the consequences, which isn't exactly the same thing. Being the best is not the same as winning, though neither of 'em are necessarily nice at the highest levels of performance.

> But I wonder : how would you describe that type ?

At first blush, someone that thinks they can game that kind of system.

So: unlock a bunch of achievements (I don't care about tech debt do u?), try to diminish the contributions of coworkers, cash out when you win and then head off to the next company.

So well said! Absolutely, totally reflects my own experience.

Performance Summary Cycle.

This is a two-week period that kick-starts the review process for both managers and employees.

https://candor.co/articles/tech-careers/performance-reviews-...

What's with this seemingly-new use of 'staffers' instead of 'personnel' or 'staff?'

'Staffers' to me always meant personnel in a political context, i.e. White House Staffers or, in a commercial context, recruiters, i.e. people responsible for providing staff.

Does anyone else concur? I did check with the dictionary which is telling me that 'staffers' is a synonym for 'staff' but... I've not seen it used that way commonly until very recently.

Aren't staffers the ones who work in hiring, talent acquisition, etc?

Yes, to me 'staffer' means 'recruiter' as in, a person responsible for providing staff.

In the context of a political organisation it is used to mean 'team members' (because they're not always formally employed staff) but I've not encountered it being used that way to refer to staff/consultants employed by a private company, hence my questioning.

In the North American context, a "staffer" is a member of staff of an organization, especially of a newspaper. I think reporters are using staffer because that's what they call employees at their organizations, even though the organizations they talk about doesn't use that nomenclature.

You will never beee president

So that's one less thing to worry about, one less thing to worry about

I imagine that song from Hamilton plays on Zuck’s bidet

You think they're using the term specifically because of its political-staff connotations? Interesting...

he had some delusional political aspirations before so I could see him trying to internalize it

There was a time where I wanted to work at Meta/Facebook someday - it was actually "next" on my list. I didn't care about the negative press that Facebook got, I felt like they were unfairly targeted because of the 2016 election.

And a lot of the engineering work that has come out of Facebook has been excellent, like React/React Native have changed the world.

But it's just really hard to see Zuckerberg as a good business leader. When you compare the business to something like Amazon - which has a strong culture around decision making and cultivates a style of leadership in it's executives.

So far, it seems like he hit a really good product/market fit and had good timing with Facebook. The strategy since then has basically been to stay ahead by acquiring social platforms that become successful. Until one came along that he couldn't just throw money at and acquire. Oops.

And now with the turn on the dime to "Meta" - other companies have been trying to figure out VR for a long time. Apple has reportedly had a VR headset concept going for years and is probably still several years from releasing it. For Amazon to come out with a product like that, it would have to start with a PRFAQ and a lot of vetting just to release the product. To rename the company and start putting all their energy towards it, which letting actual profit centers languish just wouldn't happen.

So not only has he not validated this new direction, he's now asking people working comfy FAANG jobs to knuckle down and suffer for it. It works when Elon Musk does it because he can make appeals like "we're going to make humanity multi-planetary"

Meta's pitch is "What if we convinced everybody to live in a virtual world controlled entirely by us, where we take 50% of a cut of every digital good that is purchased" - who wants to work 70 hours a week towards making that dystopia a reality?

I feel like Epic Games, with Fortnite being basically a social hub for kids and monetizing skins/associating social status with skins is closer to realizing some early version of "the metaverse" then what we've seen from Meta. I think that metaverse behavior is already happening in a lot of ways, it just isn't happening with dorky headsets and probably won't until the tech matures enough to get there.

Generally, people seem to enjoy working at Facebook. I knew a director that worked there and he constantly raved about it. Almost cult-like at times. I don't think I've read a single good story about working at Amazon, though. They may have the better business, but they are horrible for employees at all levels.

If we're talking ethics and it has to be FAANG... I guess that just leaves Netflix really. And maybe I just don't know their business in detail. But all the rest are ethically compromised.

Facebook, to their credit, were the ones that forced higher engineering salaries. We wouldn't even be talking about the stupid concept of FAANG (why anyone took Jim Cramer seriously is beyond me) if it weren't for Facebook. Because Google, Apple, etc. were doing backroom deals to form a hiring cartel[1], to prevent poaching talent and keep salaries artificially low. Facebook refused to play. Even today I hear that if you have a Google offer then you better have a Facebook offer in hand just to get Google to budge on their low-ball.

[1] https://pandodaily.com/2014/03/30/court-docs-google-hiked-wa...

the aws folks seem pretty happy!

I work at Amazon, and do not hate it. But yes I agree it's obvious to anybody that they have the worst reputation as an employer among the biggest tech firms. I felt like I had to write this as a disclaimer but it wasn't really the part of your post I wanted to respond to.

>If we're talking ethics and it has to be FAANG...

I wasn't really talking about ethics, that was more of an aside. I was trying to make the point that not only is the metaverse (and using metaverse here I mean a virtual reality controlled by a private company) completely unproven ground as a market, and is easily 5-10 years away from being even somewhat practical and not a complete gimmick with technology, it also would make most of the big unsolved problems our society is still grappling with around technology way worse

Like platform control. Facebook And Epic both say Apple has too much power. Apple hurt FB's ad business by limiting tracking. Epic sued to try to force a change in IAP rules etc... Then you've got Republicans saying the exact same thing about Facebook and other social platforms - that they have too much power and got mad when they banned Donald Trump. Republicans right now are pressuring Google to stop marking their shady campaign emails as spam in Gmail.

And I agree with them, but I also agree with Apple that it would be hard for iOS to be as secure as it is if they didn't have that level of control. Smart phones are computers. And for a lot of people, it's their only computer. It's a really tricky issue that has not been solved yet.

In a hypothetical scenario where people spend most of their lives working and after work in a "metaverse" controlled by a private company, that's even worse. What if you get banned from the metaverse, and it effectively cuts off your ability to live a normal life or participate in society? Hey, it's their platform so first amendment doesn't apply but every job in your field uses the metaverse as a remote workplace. You don't get to see your friends or family nearly as much. Your agency and autonomy as a human being is controlled down to what physical movements you can make, who you can speak to, it can all be recorded and controlled. Of course, even if control was handed to the government that would be handing them more direct power over people than any government has ever had.

I don't know why Mark Zuckerberg thinks that he would be trusted with this amount of control even if he got the tech down when the level of trust people have in FB as an entity has deteriorated an extreme amount over the last 7 years and they've faced vicious criticism from both parties in the United States.

There's a huge "ethics" gulf between writing code that is unambiguously good for the world (or whatever) and building... that. Like I said in my original post, I think a lot of the criticism Facebook got as a result of the 2016 election was unfounded. I don't think Facebook is an "evil" company (whatever evil even means here) but I don't think it's an ethical or moral one either.

It's especially odd because when Mark talks, he seems to really make a point to talk about Facebook's "vision" and "goal" to "connect people" - which is super vague. But it's like he expects that to be enough to inspire people. It's not. People choose to work there because they pay more and like you said, have a good rep as being a good place to work for and great on a resume.

Which brings me back to my original point: I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is a competent leader for a company of Meta's size and scope. When Bezos wanted to do spaceships, he didn't rename Amazon and start pushing in that direction, he spun off a separate company. It's clear Mark is passionate about this. He's hanging out doing videos with his R&D team. He should find someone else to head Facebook and focus on what he's passionate about. He wouldn't necessarily need to leave Meta, just transition his leadership so he's not CEO anymore.

This isn't responsible behavior from someone who leads a very large publicly traded company and I think it's part of why their stock is so volatile.

Facebook and it's portfolio of companies is threatened by TikTok and whatever comes next, but not existentially. TikTok will never offer what Facebook does in terms of things like groups, marketplace, a decade + of curated personas that people have on there. I had to create a Facebook account when I moved out of the United States because there were ex-pat groups on there and it was a reliable and non sketchy way to find things like long term housing.

One path for Facebook was/still is to become the "Oracle" of social media. Profitable, reliable and dependable but not new and exciting. Instagram, WhatsApp and FB are all profitable and stable businesses. Instead, it's like he's stuck in this mindset where he still thinks social media is all about "what's next" and FB will become MySpace if he can't keep 13-20 year olds on his platforms. Social media as a space has matured. Meta should mature with it.

Facebook was severely harmed when Apple made their platform changes. Imagine if Google's only revenue still came from search ads and they didn't have Android, YouTube, Google Cloud, Google Suite or the many other things they've done. Or if Amazon's revenue came from selling products to consumers online instead of AWS and Advertising.

Why has Facebook not able to diversify it's revenue and seemingly the only strategy has been acquiring competitors? Bad executive leadership. I don't understand why it's not discussed more.

> it just isn't happening with dorky headsets and probably won't until the tech matures enough to get there

Zuckerberg is well aware of the technical challenges of VR headsets and they're putting a lot of effort into getting the headsets where they need to be. Seems like they're helping push the technology much further than any other company right now.

Here's a 30 minute video where he and Michael Abrash go into the technical challenges, and what they've been doing to address those issues, as well as showing off prototype devices they've been working on[1].

And there's an hour long episode of Adam Savage's Tested series where they get to try the prototypes and go into even more detail[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sThLeiw8h2Y

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc

>they're putting a lot of effort into getting the headsets where they need to be.

1. Nobody knows "where they need to be" to become suitable for mass adoption. Definitely better than they are now, but personally I highly doubt I'd feel comfortable using a full VR headset regularly unless it was a "full dive" experience where I don't have to use a controller.

2. Hardware is a lot more difficult than software. Facebook's hardware track record is non existent beyond what they acquired with Oculus, which was a startup.

Apple has more experience designing and producing hardware than Google, Facebook and Amazon combined and if they don't think the tech is ready, it's probably not ready.

3. Why is Mark Zuckerberg the face of this? People find him talking so uncomfortable that they make memes about him being a lizard person. That more than anything is what makes it feel like a billionaire's vanity project. How is he being allowed to bet the entire company on this? Does the board have any real power? If I had any kind of significant equity in Meta I'd be really concerned right now that the CEO seems to be in la-la land and is issuing missives telling his employees to quit.

> I highly doubt I'd feel comfortable using a full VR headset regularly unless it was a "full dive" experience where I don't have to use a controller.

The Quest headsets already have accurate controllerless hand tracking, but not many experiences optimized for the input mode.

> Apple has more experience designing and producing hardware than Google, Facebook and Amazon combined and if they don't think the tech is ready, it's probably not ready.

Apple is releasing a VR headset next year, which means they think the technology is ready.

Apple entering this space will probably do wonders for broader acceptance of the technology, like the dedorkification of smartwatches with the introduction of the apple watch.

You cannot be sure that Apple is releasing anything in any timeframe until it’s actually announced. Things can get scrapped at any point.

What secret sauce has Apple found that will make it more compelling than all other solutions which have utterly failed to gain any traction? Cheaply enough that anyone outside early adopters will want it?

People don’t want to wear glasses for long periods of time in the first place — it’s why LASIK exists.

> People don’t want to wear glasses for long periods of time in the first place — it’s why LASIK exists.

Some people don't, but plenty of people do, or at least would rather where glasses than be blind or take a slightly risky procedure. I'm one of those people.

I've chosen to keep wearing glasses despite LASIK being a thing for 24 years now. Even my own father has gotten LASIK and I haven't.

If anything, getting into VR (I use it for about an hour a day on average, it's become part of my workout routine) has made me want to get the eye surgery more, to make putting on/off the headset more convenient.

For now I've just gotten prescription lenses for my headset, which are definitely a lot better than putting the headset over my glasses, but still not ideal.

Also, I choose to wear glasses instead of contact lenses. I did wear contact lenses for a couple years, but it my eyes dried out a lot, I left them in when I passed out on accident periodically, easy to lose, they were expensive, and my left eye really fought me putting them in. I'm far from the only person, as:

"According to the Vision Council of America, approximately 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% of them wear eyeglasses, and about 11% wear contact lenses, either exclusively, or with glasses."[1]

[1]: http://www.glassescrafter.com/information/percentage-populat...

What "secret sauce" did the Apple Watch have that made it more compelling than all the previous smartwatches that utterly failed to gain any traction?

Pancake optics and Apple silicon will probably play a key role in Apple's VR product. But Apple often succeeds where others fail through incredible execution, holistic product design, and the trust they've built with consumers.

> bet the entire company on this?

It's that an exaggeration?

Still, about how much does Meta bet on VR? Maybe compared to profits?

Wow. Guess I left Meta just in time. It still feels difficult to believe Zuckerberg would say this though.

Anyone who was someone at Davos are saying the same things.

Just do the old Netflix culture doc style

Welcome! You're going to get fired! If you want a “family” join a startup!

What a horrible idea.

Truly great engineering requires long-term commitment. Great engineering organizations often have people leave by retiring, not being fired.

Tenure at Netflix tends to be longer than at other tech companies.

https://developerpitstop.com/how-long-do-software-engineers-...

The numbers on that graph for the companies I'm familiar with are wildly, wildly incorrect.

I have no idea where those numbers come from, but I don't for a second buy the idea that average tenure at Netflix is larger than others on the peninsula.

I am also skeptical of that data. Some of the companies mentioned couldn’t function with that rate of churn.

This is the, "I fucked up and I'm going to have cut people, but I'm going to blame the people getting cut because I'm a shit human being" speech. It's never a good sign.

Not really. Business cycles exist and advertisement is extremely cyclical. Labour demand isn't fixed. Sometimes you have to cut not because you over hired, but because economic conditions change and this seems to be what's happening in regards to Facebook.

I don't think he's blaming anyone either. The fact he's acknowledging there are probably people working at FB who shouldn't be suggests you're wrong and that for years FB has kept people despite it not being the company's best interests.

Tbh I wish all companies were honest about why they're cutting back. I know I've been given BS reasons for being cut before and I've also been given no notice or warning. This seems relatively honest and direct in comparison. Those providing value will be fine, those who are not will be let go - isn't this how employment should function?

Returning to contract law; the employment agreement is a contract engaged by two or more parties to exchange labor for money (or a basket of financial incentives including money, in part).

In virtually every instance, Meta proffered the employment contract and its provisions, vetted the counter party, and gave assent to enter into contract.

Arguably, “there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here,” and their intent to “turn up the heat,” represents a failure of Meta to conduct proper due diligence when entering into contract, and a modification of the provisions of employment after-the-fact.

In most instances these would be considered organizational failures. Your reference to the business cycle and other delicate economic terms are not the explanatory variables, not even to Meta themselves.

Yeah, i really don't understand the point he thinks he was making. These companies spend BILLIONS on employee benefits to take away the noise of "real life".

You CAN NOT attract top tier talent easily to a dumpster fire and they know this. You can't be giving away free food, ice cream, no performance reviews for two years during the pandemic and shipping 10s of thousands of office equipment to each individual employees homes for two years during the pandemic, continue to approve aggressive hiring plans and laying out $10 Billion dollar outlays for the fucking Metaverse and then turn around and say to the employees you hired that "You guys suck"

I would just call it childish, but this asshole deserves no benefit of doubt. It's downright disgusting.

> represents a failure of Meta to conduct proper due diligence when entering into contract, and a modification of the provisions of employment after-the-fact.

People change, employ motivation levels wane, especially when a chunk of your employees are millionaires. Lots of folks who want to rest and vest- this announcement is aimed at getting those people to fire back up to higher productivity, or to take a different job they are passionate about.

Understood, but why is that relevant to my comment?

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