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Comment by menloshark | Hacker News Reader

Here's how things play out: Zuck gets some idea, he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men who say "yes, this will definitely change the world", then it turns into this optics game of kissing the ring. You ask yourself "how could they blow 80B on the Metaverse like that", this is how.

DON'T JOIN META, no matter how fast the recruiters reply to your messages. No matter how cool the work sounds (the managers lie in team matching). There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years.

It's a toxic and fear based culture. You join, the people around you are already thinking how to scapegoat you. People gatekeep actual work and save it for political favorites and everyone else on the outside is stuck cooking up bullshit projects. If you do manage to find work on your own, people will immediately start scheming to steal it

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It is hard to judge culture during a period of serial downsizing because it will always be toxic in that context. But what you tell aligns with what I have inferred over a period of many years observing, even during times when they were growing: at a high level, Zuck gives the right signals of a successful tech CEO. He's smart, insightful, talks well (now) and appears decisive and willing to back long term bets into the future. And he makes money like crazy.

But looking at the track record there's a very concerning lack of execution around critical strategic objectives. Take metaverse - I know most people laugh at it because they think it was a bad idea to start with. I push that aside and look at the execution. They poured a startling amount of money into it, and the end result - technically - sucks. This is not good execution of a bad idea. This is incompetent execution of an untested idea. After 5 years of huge investment the characters in Horizon Worlds still look like cartoons. All the advertised features of hyper-realistic worlds, generative world building etc failed to materialise. They made a face saving pivot to mobile where they claim it is successful but I literally never heard of anyone using it. I think it will be entirely synthetic traffic driven from their existing properties.

Then you can look at AI. You can say the jury is still out on their AI reboot, but it has been out a long time now, and it seems like at best they are just grading into being at par with leading AI labs. But I think that's being generous because so little has been released. What is certain is they went from a leading position right up to 2022-2023 to falling completely off the radar. Despite still holding the undisputed leading AI framework in PyTorch.

I have to conclude there's a genuine culture and execution problem that probably centers on the fact that Zuck is simply not a good people manager. And his relationship with the next level down (Andrew Bosworth etc) is such that he doesn't enable them to be either. And this all permeates through to an organization that delivers at a fraction of what it should given the resources it is expending.

The low execution quality of Meta's metaverse effort surprised me, too.

But they wanted it to run on their relatively weak headgear. A good metaverse needs a decent gamer PC, a serious GPU, and a few hundred megabits per second of Internet bandwidth. (I've written a Second Life client in Rust, so I'm very aware of the system requirements.) Facebook needs to serve a user base which is mostly phones and people with weak PCs. Not Steam users.

If you have to squeeze it onto underpowered hardware, you get something like Decentraland or R2 or Horizon - low rez, very limited detail, small contained areas. Roblox has made some progress on this problem, but it took them two decades, even with a lot of money.

The real problem with metaverses is that a big, realistic virtual world is a technical achievement, but not particularly fun. It's a world in which you can spend time and meet people, but the world is not a game. It has no plot or agenda. This throws many new Second Life users. They find themselves in a virtual world the size of Los Angeles, with thousands of options, and are totally lost. It's not passive entertainment. As Ted Turner (CNN, TBS, etc.) used to say, "the great thing about television is that it's so passive."

I think the problem goes beyond that. Meta never had a particularly coherent story for what "Horizon Worlds" was supposed to be to users - it was variously pitched as an online conference room, a social hangout, a way to explore 3D models, a video game... it felt as if they were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck, and nothing really did.

Ultimately yes, that was the issue. In theory they built a viable product, even if it still was cartoonish etc. But it was enough to see that even if it was perfected - there simply wasn't a killer app for what to actually do in there. The vast majority of the worlds that got any traction were just kids playgrounds with silly or trivial games. Some of them were quite fun. But none of them represented a serious value proposition to anybody with actual money.

The crazy thing is, they built a half decent app called Horizon Workrooms. You could go in there with colleagues and co-work. With so many people WFH it was an actual useful thing to be able to share a room with your colleagues and anybody could throw up a shared screen on the projector, while having your own display in front of you that nobody could see. I did this with folks from my team and it became a regular Friday afternoon type thing for us all to hange out. This was actually useful. But they managed to screw it up and eventually canceled it as well.

That's what metaverses are like - big spaces in which users can do things. What to do is largely up to the users.

He is the owner though.

If zuck wanted, he could solve it. Decimate middle management, downsize at a level of what musk did to Twitter and then _slowly rebuilt_ in order to pay attention to the culture this time, removing anyone that takes part in such behavior...

The company would be worth more (because smaller headcount) and likely even ship more, because the culture would be better.. I've never worked at Facebook though, I'm just an armchair analyst being judgemental from reading some comments.

Interesting wording, because he's not the owner. What he owns is enough voting rights that nobody can challenge his decisions.

And also interesting in the sense that, this is what he claimed to actually do a few years ago. He had a "year of efficiency" where he significantly flattened and restructured the org, losing tens of thousands of staff. At that time I even defended him precisely due to this reasoning - if execution is failing you need a reboot. Well he did the reboot and it is still failing.

> Interesting wording, because he's not the owner. What he owns is enough voting rights that nobody can challenge his decisions.

So he's the owner, for the definition that matters for GP's argument.

Again, I'm just an armchair analyst, but in that year of efficiency,his aim was to reduce wastage, removing low performers etc.

That kind of trimming entrenches previous culture even more, which can be desirable - but not in this particular case where the culture itself is the issue.

At that point you can't trim, you need to decimate. The layoffs at that time were several waves of around 10% - unless I misremember? If he instead did two waves with 40% each and slowly rebuilt from scratch, it'd be a different story.

Why is the problem assumed to be middle management? Maybe middle management is the only thing preventing the company going from successful dumpster fire to unsuccessful dumpster fire…

Because the issue is the culture, and the culture is entirely in the responsibility of middle management.

If an IC behaved like this then it's would've been the responsibility of the middle management to let them go when it started. So it'd still be on them.

And that's ignoring that issues like this have historically always started in middle management.

Also I suspect you're looking at it from an individual level: one middle manager on their own obviously cannot have enough impact to change this culture, so it's not the "fault" of any one manager. And that's the reason why the heavy handed approach is necessary, because the bad culture has settled. Anything any one manager may try to improve their ICs work life will inevitably get soured by the next level.

> This is incompetent execution of an untested idea.

VR will be huge some day. Maybe not as huge as the Metaverse hype, but huge nonetheless.

But did you expect Facebook to have any competence on making it? Even if the timing was correct, what differentiator do they have?

And then the CEO throws a world-changing amount of money without even an idea (because "a VR world!" isn't an idea). Did you expect any of that money not to be wasted? That's not how products are made.

The Metaverse wasn't an organization failure. It was all Zuckenberg's incompetence, Facebook didn't even get the chance to try.

The AI started different, but it's becoming the same thing again.

VR won’t be huge someday. We won’t live to see it at least. We also won’t experience quantum computing having a real world impact. We also won’t see humanoid robots doing any meaningful real world work. There also won’t be a Mars base in our lifetime or datacenters in space or underwater. There won’t be any flying cars either.

I can't tell how serious you are.

But I'm curious - thinking of your past self (depending how old you are), what would have said about the current AI revolution 10 years ago? Eg: the chances that fully agentic generalised automated software engineering would become orthodoxy? What chance would you have given it happening by 2026?

We're still waiting for "fully agentic generalised automated software engineering".

I’m like 8%5 serious. And you are right I never would have dreamed of some of the things that we have now including LLMs. So it might well be true that I’m very wrong on all of these.

I would definitely bet against the humanoid robot thing on good odds.

You mean that we’ll have robots that can do the same (more or less) things that humans can?

I think the field made great advances in the last decades but still so far away from a meaningful human robot.

Personally I also think it doesn’t make sense - we can already produce humans at mich cheaper cost than robots, they grow, repair themselves, can learn all kinds of stuff, etc.

I would rather invest in more humans than humanoid robots.

Specialised non-humanoid robots are a great idea on the other hand.

Underwater data centers: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-powers-ai-b...

"Flying cars" https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/joby-flie...

Sure there have been attempts, but nothing that regular humans actually use. Once I can book a flying taxi like I can book a regular one I’ll admit defeat.

> VR will be huge some day. Maybe not as huge as the Metaverse hype, but huge nonetheless.

I really doubt this. There’s too many people who suffer from motion sickness to make this payoff. 33% of the population suffers from motion sickness to varying degrees and current mitigations including blowing a fan at suffering users, is an unrealistc barrier to causal usage.

I love the quest and was just using it about an hour ago. Even beyond motion sickness, it is not the same experience as it was when I first got the quest.

There is a habituation that happens the entire experience becomes far less immersive feeling. I have used the quest so much I don't really feel the immersion anymore at all. I had just found youtube 360 videos of the sphinx and great pyramid last night. I wish I would have watched this a year ago as it would have been so mind blowing. It is still fun but it is nothing like what it use to be. I don't feel like I "go" to the places anymore.

It reminds me quite a bit of the way marijuana was such a different experience the first few times vs the 500th time.

So even if you don't get sick, the magic wears off in about a month and people stop bothering. The experience is so consistent with people getting bored after a month. I can say from experience that this has nothing to do with the lack of content but something to do with the way the brain adjusts.

i think the key is, about half of that 33% can tolerate certain elements of it (stationary experiences etc) and another slice suffer in a way that will be resolvable or at least somewhat mitigated by technology improvements. And then another slice will accommodate it if exposed early enough.

Put it all together and you probably are talking more like 10% of people residual. It is still a lot but I think it's just bearable to not be a death blow to mainstream use.

You can't have a modality that leaves someone out for a mass social or business product.

It's the vegetarians that constrain a shared restaurant choice.

I have the Valve Index and had to buy prescription lenses to put inside to allow me to play without my glasses.

The first company to have auto adjustment lenses to my eye sight will get my money. when I can use it with my current eye sight and without having to buy accessories, I'll root for VR.

I am tired of this hypocrisy world.

No.

VR is not going to be huge, and it misses the entire point of tech.

Think of something like a Bloomberg terminal. Ugly as sin, and incomprehensible to any one who hasn’t practiced using it. It also gets work done faster, and has a keyboard with multiple keys to get to menus faster.

BB terminals save calories. VR does not.

VR is cool, it is aspirational, but it is not saving experts, let alone the average person, time and energy.

> Even if the timing was correct, what differentiator do they have?

Being willing to put $80 billion on the line is a differentiator. It can subsidize hardware, hire talent, acquire companies, etc.

There were definitely ideas beyond just "VR good". But frankly, giving some of the high level employees he had (Boswell and Luckie and Carmack among others) $10billion each to make VR products they think should exist is something that would probably work

> DON'T JOIN META, no matter how fast the recruiters reply to your messages. No matter how cool the work sounds (the managers lie in team matching). There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years.

I would be surprised if I even got through the interview hellscape that these companies put people through. I'm not interested in talking about algorithms and things that no dev in my entire decade+ time on the industry ever talks about, ever. To make matters worse, the things you should screen developers for nobody seems to do so, except exceptional shops that care about quality (ironically enough!). The only thing the algo questions do is push out "older" candidates who may not remember every little nuance anymore, because... they don't have to hand craft algorithms, every language worth its salt has sorting algorithms or lambdas (thinking of C#) to make sorting effortless.

A decade+ is plenty of time to spend a few weeks brushing up on CS basics. There is really only a handful of algorithms and data sctructues and none of them are rocket science.

And what's the alternative? Quizzing people on some random C# framework methods? The "I don't use algos in a day to day job" argument has been around forever, but nobody making it ever proposes a better filter.

The better filter is to spend the precious interview time talking about actual experience solving real work problems, it has a high signal to noise ratio, because it gives you information on many independent axes.

I guess for candidates fresh out of school, you have to fall back to things they should know out of school as a proxy.

Strong no hire for Staff+ signal from this post.

Meta's leetcode gambit includes leetcode Hards and Mediums which aren't just "remember your hash maps and trees!" They're incredibly hard to brute force under time pressure if you haven't practiced similar problems before. Now do that for every interview -- exhausting.

Alternative? Lol? System design. "Walk me through systems you've built." Have a conversation. If you can't then maybe you don't have the skill for interviewing or dare I say the skill to be an engineer.

Meta's interview process does include leetcode Hard and Medium problems (although the Hards tend to be on the easier side), but you don't actually have to write working code, just talk your way through an algorithm. I actually was surprised at how it didn't feel like I was being asked to brute force my way through a tough algorithm problem, but more felt like a whiteboarding session with my interviewer. YMMV but I found Meta's interview process to be the most humane "big tech" interview I went through.

But there is a system design interview, for staff+ there should be even two system design rounds if I remember correctly.

When I interviewed at faang I was only once asked a leetcode hard question. Mediums in 99% of cases are manageable with just "remembering your hash maps and trees".

I'm in no way saying there aren't people who ask hard questions, but most of the times it is not the case. Also, how would you check that the person can code and solve problems with only checking their past system design experience?

> Alternative? Lol? System design. "Walk me through systems you've built." Have a conversation. If you can't then maybe you don't have the skill for interviewing or dare I say the skill to be an engineer.

This. I can talk about projects I've worked on from day 1 in my career to date. Some more than others, but at least I can cover the high level.

They create toxic products that make the entire world more toxic. How they still manage to not have any responsibility while being editors and publishers is beyond me. I couldn't imagine how their insides wouldn't be toxic as well. Nice people don't do this.

OR join meta, sell your soul, stay for 7 years, then retire and be done with work forever!!!

I 100% understand the appeal of freedom from external pressures that retirement offers. But at the same time all the (many) people I know that retired early mostly just goof off and struggle to complete any of their many projects. And don’t get me wrong, I love goofing off. Been doing plenty of it. But given my inevitable death I have to appreciate a little external pressure forcing me to do good work.

> But at the same time all the (many) people I know that retired early mostly just goof off and struggle to complete any of their many projects.

I retired early and ended up going back to work part time. I didn't complete many of my projects, but that's not why I went back. Most of my projects were things I wanted to play with, not things I expected to finish.

Working part time is nice because of external pressure, but really, the most of the pressure is cause I'll feel bad if I disappoint the people that are letting me work with them.

I don't feel bad if I don't get my personal projects done, because nobody is going to use them anyway.

I have picked up a project that helps out a nonprofit and it’s making a nice financial impact. And then there are artistic projects that I hope positively impact others.

Are you a dev? What does part time look like?

Yes, I write software. The company is 100% remote with an annual team meetup and an annual company meetup, but I only go to the team one.

4 days a week, online at 9-10 am, offline 2-3 pm most days. Sometimes I'm working a sticky problem and stay online later. Or if I start a deploy in late afternoon, I'll stick around to finish it, etc.

Still on group chats, may or may not mute them on my day off.

What corporations even offer “good” work any more? In the sense of not making the world a net shittier place.

I don’t know what your values are but I’m sure you can find some company that is at least morally neutral in its mission. However you might have to accept lower pay.

But to clarify I meant “work you can be proud of” when I said “good”.

If I were fortunate enough to be in that position, I think I’d partner up with a buddy to build something cool (that is unlikely to be a big moneymaker) and rely on each other for that pressure.

> and struggle to complete any of their many projects

Hmm.. I don't struggle, I enjoy it. The goal isn't to start glossy product production. It's to learn how to do it. As soon as it's obvious project is usually shelved. Except for the 'main line' projects which together can result in something significant.

After early retirement, it took be a solid 3 years to undo the mentality of needing to work. Now, I ride my bike with my wife as we fight her MS. I show up for her and myself.

Idk external pressure is mostly forcing me to participate in the corporate hellscape - would love to leave this and goof off as a goat farmer somewhere.

Let’s face it - most businesses don’t produce anything meaningful and just exist to realise the infinite growth fallacy of capitalism

I'm going to raise cattle.

What is the infinite growth fallacy? Are you familiar with the concept of dividends?

The infinite growth fallacy is the belief that industrial economies can expand exponentially forever (rising GDP, consumption, and population) on a planet with finite resources.

What do dividends have to do with it?

Will they still be offering enough compensation over the next 7 years for that to be true?

Not sure their stock price will continue to rise as it gas in the past.

7 years at a toxic workplace is tough

I’d rather be poor

Id rather not.

Ive never known poverty in my life and I will do _anything_ to avoid it.

Fortunately there are many other options than "work at Meta" or "be poor".

I'm sorry but if you can work at Meta you can work at any other company in the US. You're clearly making a choice. Lets not forget "I'm just following orders" wasn't a valid excuse.

there's a middle ground

i make good money but not FAANG. like quarter million a year + equity that is sometimes liquid for more.

i do it remote and for a company that isn't so brutally antagonistic as meta. remote also means i don't commute, don't get trapped in an office for 40+ hrs/week, and can spend more time during the workday on my personal life than work itself.

so i make less money in an absolute sense, but i am not in any pain or being surveilled or being bullied to work hard.

and honestly i make more money per hour worked than a meta employee. so lower salary, higher effective hourly wage.

Maybe if you joined 10 years ago lmao

> People gatekeep actual work and save it for political favorites and everyone else on the outside is stuck cooking up bullshit projects. If you do manage to find work on your own, people will immediately start scheming to steal it

So this applies to even, say, mid-level developers? Wouldn't you get work assigned to you after you're hired, or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms?

> or do you actually have to hunt for your own projects, like you might in some consulting firms?

This is how the company works on a fundamental level.

On healthy teams, having something assigned to you (for levels under staff/6) is normal. On unhealthy teams, you're just a sitting duck and it's better to find your own work. Or else you'll be forced to work on bullshit projects with no upside.

Side note: the "they" who does the assigning is not a manager, it's another IC. The ones that go out and find their own work. That could be at any level technically, but usually staff+ because they form little political mafias.

Im joining meta for the total comp not because I give a shit about the company or products. Same as every company.

The total comp is a lie because the average tenure is <2 years, statistically speaking you won't get the full 4yr initial grant by the time you leave.

Just one suggestion: don't stop interviewing and be very observant of whatever team you land in, be ready to jump ship if there are too many red flags. Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value. Be very discerning in team matching, where you land determines everything.

You might be thinking "oh if I just work 7 days a week, I'll be safe". That's not true, it's all about where you land.

> Also don't trust any of the managers. Don't take anything people say at face value.

"Did you enjoy Game of Thrones? You'll love working here!"

OP was saying not to join because you'll have a shitty time, not because the products aren't inspirational enough.

Ill join purely for the comp. I can take a lot of abuse, trust me.

Is this supposition or first hand experience?

The latter. I've seen so much unethical shit here, I'd love to give more detail but I'd probably dox myself

Don't let it break you. Take whatever money you made and run.

The rest of big tech isn't much better. Big G is less stressful, but you'll see vicious and cringey behavior left and right. Hyped large startups are cults and 100% cringe. Meta is kind of the worst of both worlds though. "But they pay so well". Yeah, also: life is short.

> There's a reason why the average tenure is <2 years.

Companies that hire a lot or hired a lot recently always have this. The 3 month people drag down the average. It isn’t necessarily due to turnover.

Not disagreeing with the overall point, I’ve just seen people say this same thing about a lot of companies and it doesn’t always mean something.

This certainly fits with everything in the article.

100% true, absolutely nailed it

https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea...

I mean, the book is just over a year old here people. It's not like this is new or out of date stuff.

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