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Comment by soup10 | Hacker News Reader

Real reasons why working at Facebook isn't that attractive in my opinion:

1. Giant php codebase.

2. All the excitement is gone post-IPO, they've reached an inflection point and growth is slowing down.

3. Mark Zuckerburg doesn't have great social skills/intelligence. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that he runs a giant social network.

4. The corporate mission of making the world more open and connected just doesn't seem very high impact. Facebook at it's core is a way to share photos and keep up with old friends, it doesn't really change social interactions.

5. Their focus is very narrow, they don't work on many novel exciting problems.

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I work for a medium sized public company (500 people), that went public about 5 years ago. After going public we had a CEO that was decent, but didn't know how to run a company to make it profitable. After 1.5 years of missing earnings we got a new CEO and our stock is 10x the value it was back then.

If Zuckerburg is still playing a part in engineering, he should be the CTO of the company, not the CEO. Having a business minded person person holding the reigns of a company can help the shareholders, otherwise the stock price will have a good chance to continue its descent.

Facebook is in a quandary because it would be difficult to monetize (to the extent that it reclaims the 100B market cap) and still retain its user base. And if these business people existed, don't you think Facebook would have already hired them?

My favorite thing about Google is that I haven't seen a single "Keep calm and carry on" poster.

Oh, except for one making fun of said poster.

"Violate privacy and break things" perhaps?

Sad to say I know where one is non ironically posted.

Finally a use for my shinonome_nano template.

Would you mind explaining item 3?

> "3. Mark Zuckerburg doesn't have great social skills/intelligence. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that he runs a giant social network."

I'm not calling you out for stating this without supplying the supporting evidence. I'd just like to know what you do. Is it with respect to his business missteps, or is there something else you see?

> 1. Giant php codebase.

As a Python enthusiast who works in a N-hundred kLOC PHP codebase for a living, I have to say large PHP codebases aren't really a problem if they were written by competent people who took the time to think ahead a little.

Sure, PHP has it's deficiencies like any other language, but my day-to-day experience is more along the lines of "I dislike not having <feature that's somewhat unique to Python>"; I don't find myself thinking "wow, I hate PHP, it's such a terrible language and makes my life miserable!", as many people are prone to think with PHP.

PHP may not be your favorite language, but in good hands it's a perfectly workable language, and IMO its use should be a small factor in where you work.

3. I don't know why you say that MZ does not have great intelligence. I met this kid in two occasions (outside the States) for professional issues and IMHO he is kind of shy- awkward but that someone does not speak up does not mean that he is not intelligent. Usually the opposite is true.

Playing devil's advocate: "Better to be silent and others think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

re: growth. Facebook has one billion active users. There are seven billion humans in the world. There is a lot of growth left.

Knock 1.3 billion off that number because FB is blocked in China.

Oh, yeah. You could add all the people that earn 1 dollar a day and spend tens of dollars/year on each of them using money from more pension funds investors.

That would be great...

Some advice, you could go out of Western countries and see how people live there.

No, they don't have a billion users. And no, there's isn't growth left. Theoretically there is the potential that they could grow still, but it isn't happening.

one billion active? are you sure? I have two accounts and one of them was a joke account from the get go, the other I haven't used in months. But that's 2 "active" profiles in the stats right there, I constantly get email for them.

What so the third world doesn't exist? Seriously?

The average Nigerian or Bangladeshi has more phones than you do.

Facebook has not yet exhausted mobile.

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