Meta managers are urged to identify, push out low performers | Hacker News Reader

Meta managers are urged to identify, push out low performers

wsj.com

62 pointserehweb33 comments

In my experience at a FAANG company it was basically impossible to fire people for low performance. People who did zero valuable work could last for multiple years without having to fool anyone. I’m talking about people that had zero or negative value to their team and 100% of their teammates and management would agree. You’d only get fired if you did something extremely offensive.

I don’t want to work in a hostile environment with constant purges but I do think it would be healthy if more people in big tech companies got let go for being bad at their jobs. People making 300-500K doing next to nothing isn’t good for anyone (except them).

I assume it's one of those reflective policies

In particular, protected classes would be even harder to the point of being almost literally impossible.

But even the average worker... I've seen people milking FAANG for years too. They would bring 300K-1M home and remove value from the company in return.

Its unfortunate how Meta is commoditizing engineers as inventory items - the very same they'd woo from other companies with salaries & perks. The company isn't making loss in its balance sheets. FAANG / MANGA is a demanding workplace anyway so I can't imagine people slacking like Japanese/ Korean salarymen.

Based on comments from here and talking with friends, Meta was already on the way to having a bad reputation among engineers.

I think this will just add more to that image.

Damaging a company's reputation among engineers is not something that happens like 1 and 0 but more like growing older

And I think in the end recovery from bad PR among engineers is very hard. I saw this happening to other companies and most of them never recovered.

Agreed. And knowing that Facebook Engineering was a top notch group to work with, this decline is sad.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but this strikes me as cover to have a layoff but weasel out of paying severances.

I mean, I don't believe it's a cover. From the perspective of a company why would you ever want to lay off ($) people when you can push them towards wanting to quit (no $).

That's the kind of short-sighted thinking that makes the difference between high performers actually wanting or not wanting to work for you.

(In more detail, the two reasons my sibling comment gave.)

My company is being acquired and doing exactly this. Senior engineers and managers are getting fed up and leaving, and the company does nothing to retain anyone. It's a win-win for the company and those who leave because they're all leveling up and the company saves a ton of cash, but the people who stay are suffering from the brain drain. No idea how they expect new hires to keep this ship afloat...

Two reasons: wanting to be able to hire in the future, and to retain high performers who also value a good atmosphere in the workplace.

Um, so I hate Facebook as much as the next commenter but calling it news that FB managers are meant to be getting rid of less good employees seems like quite a large stretch.

I would assume that that is standard practice at every company that exists?

Yeah but the head of engineering doesn’t put out a memo like this if it’s just business as usual.

To me this is clearly indicative of the “turning up the heat.”

Yup, and ask for names to be submitted by the end of day Monday next week.

Lol, this is a “offer up your sacrifices now, I have pressure from up top”

Mediocre or downright inactive workers are endemic to the workforce. Not everyone has a job they love or are passionate about, they just want to get paid for doing as little as possible then go home.

Even at employers who do pursue this sort of policy, getting a bad worker fired can be incredibly difficult in some places.

So no, a logical person who puts effort into their job would think this is standard practice, but it definitely isn't.

Having worked there on several different teams, I can confidently say slacker engineers are not common at fb. They have plenty of systems in place to keep people grinding.

slacker engineers are incredibly valueable. if work is being slacked on, it's a good sign that the design is bad.

“Just want to get paid for doing as little as possible” Ya, no kidding and the employer wants to get as much as they can while paying as little as possible. That’s how it works. It’s Econ 101.

Hiring employees is like buying fruit. You don’t have some right to a perfect basket of peaches.

what about the low performing managers

They would be fired by their managers. I don't believe this memo applies exclusively to individual contributors.

In my near 2-decade experience, I almost never heard of any manager getting laid off, including even the most incompetent ones.

I've seen managers get fired for performance. Not "laid off" though.

Don't they spent something like a Billion Dollars or more on Accenture, Cognizant and the other outsource sinkholes for the wonderful support experience they provide?

I'd start there. A team of good engineers can outperform that Billion dollar spend any day. It seems Facebook spends a LOOOOOOT more on operations fiefdoms than any other social network out there including TikTok.

Un-paywalled: https://archive.ph/k4tTH

I feel like every company in existence has basically had a memo or meeting like this.

Unfortunately for those being let go, having a FB stint on your resume is considered a red flag by most hiring managers, especially in the Bay Area. The longer the duration of that stint the harder it's going to be to find another job.

That goes against what several of my current & ex meta friends feel during a job search.

No matter what you say about the business, the people are fairly hard working and smart. More hard working than most other FANGs and it shows when they job search.

I find this hard to believe. From an engineering PoV, an FB stint is definitely an indication of above average technical competency. It may also indicate you're ethically challenged - though I don't believe that's true of the vast majority of FB employees - but I'm sure most hiring managers would overlook that.

Can you elaborate on the logic behind that? Also when you say "most" do you really think it's a percentage of 50%?

Many see FB as an immoral company, so it starts with the question why did you work for such a company. IME a simple "I disagreed with X but I did Y" satisfies most. (No idea what % of people in hiring positions believe that.)

This has been the opposite of my experience, but I can see that you wish misfortune on others.

I was, and even after the recent events like Oculus or leaks or layoffs, still thinking the opposite, actually.

It may be a red flag for some, but IMO a FAANG/GAFAM/etc experience on a CV is one of the best parts of it, unless one can top even that one. Personally I dont like or use facebook much, but I respect their engineering at that scale.

It’s just there’re people who want to discriminate others. And it doesn’t matter what others are “guilty” of.

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