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Comment by romanhn | Hacker News Reader

This was my experience as well. Left a highly functional agile group (yes, those exist) and joined FB as an engineering manager. It was a culture shock, to say the least. The culture is that of individual performance, and all incentives stem from that. If you're a go-getter that can operate autonomously and drive things to completion no matter what, in a high-pressure, deliver-or-perish environment, you will thrive there, with fast promotions, ridiculous money thrown at you, and ever-increasing responsibilities and expectations. For the rest 95% of us, it's a stressful treadmill with unrelenting pace, poor work life balance, and "impact" worship. The teams are just collections of individuals doing their own thing (I'm simplifying a bit and there is collaboration, but it's very... "stay in your own lane"). I eventually realized I was not a fit for that culture and vice versa.

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> If you're a go-getter that can operate autonomously and drive things to completion no matter what, in a high-pressure, deliver-or-perish environment, you will thrive there

I'm not sure that's true. If you have dependencies on others and they're not operating in the same fashion, it gets impossible to get things done, and that's a recipie for frustration and resentment, not thriving. Now, if your scope of work doesn't need things from other teams, but who doesn't need something from someone? And they're not going to be willing to do it, because it's not in their plan for the half, so doing it doesn't help their PSC.

#totallynotbitter

That's fair, I probably should've said "might thrive". That said, I've seen some impressive feats of cutting through the red tape or stepping up in areas outside one's expertise to get their project delivered. Those tended to be the folks with impressive career trajectories. But luck certainly played a factor as well.

How many people get fired for underperfoming? Maybe one could work at their own pace and ignore all that culture BS. It won't get you a promotion or more money, but if they're already paying you a lot, then sanity is easily worth more than a promo.

Generally speaking, underperforming for two halves (so, a year) is very likely to result in a dismissal. Even earlier, if it's particularly bad. Senior Engineer (level 5) is considered terminal, i.e. you won't get fired for not growing, but at that point expectations are high, so coasting is not really an option for most people. Lower levels have a ticking clock, with the expectation of reaching senior by a certain time at the latest. Not doing so will definitely result in a dismissal.

TL;DR, it is a high-performance culture and ignoring it is hardly realistic. People do get let go. Folks usually leave on their own before it gets to this point.

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