I find this very interesting...

'I get paid a lot, and they treat me well, so who cares about anything else'

Pull your head out of the sand and realize that when people talk about Facebook, they are talking about each and everyone of you. You are a representation of your company and your company is a representation of you.

OP isn't the face of the company. He or she is likely a small yet well-paid cog in a large machine and doesn't need to worry about outside pressure.

In this economy, I, and many people, would have no problem working at an unpopular company that leads to financial stability decades down the road.

Not everyone hates fb or cares that some people do.

I don't have a problem with any of this.

Agreed, liking it here so far. But you do have to make sure you get on an interesting team. I wouldn't want to be on a lot of different teams here.

Which ones wouldn't you want to be on? Or at least is there a pattern to them?

This is purely my preference, but anything customer facing would be a snoozefest for me.

Most L6+ that I've met in infra are incredibly sharp, and there's tons of interesting problems being solved in infra/core systems right now.

On top of this... the "move fast" motto really does ring true, compared to google, facebook speed is like riding a bike vs walking.

Is it really true that once you pass the interview and orientation you get to choose the team you want to work on?

For general role hires, this is true, although it's a subset of all teams - teams with high priority roles pitch to you, you choose a couple to try out tasks for a few days. They stack rank, you stack rank, matches are made.

Internal transfers after 1 year are pretty easy. I've seen people transfer earlier, if it's clear the fit between employee and team isn't there.

      if it's clear the fit between employee and 
      team isn't there. 

This is very interesting to me. How good is management at discerning between...

a: "employee 12345 has been here for one year and probably wasn't a good hire"

and...

b: "employee 12345 has been here for one year, and they were probably a good hire, but they're not a good fit for their current team so let's get them to a new one!"

???

On a human level, I'm a firm believer that (b) happens a looooot. Personally, I've been anywhere from a turd to a star depending on company culture and team fit, and it wasn't me that was changing.

But I am amazed there are organizations that manage to spot (b) and actually correct it rather than cutting a person loose or just pidgeonholing them as a low performer.

Def seems hard to do. You could pass an A many times before ”proving” they aren’t going to fit in any team.

One way to side step the issue - trust the hiring process. I haven't seen very many issues, but Meta seems to give people multiple chances, on multiple teams, under multiple managers, before doing a pip (or whatever the equivalent is).

Yes, if they have headcount, you should be good to go

I used to work at Facebook. I understand the vitriol. It's very easy to paint that picture. It's a very one-sided picture though.

Hands down, of all the companies I've worked for, I've never met so many rank and file people who cared about doing the right thing so much. Most jobs are just jobs. People do their jobs and they get money and sometimes they try to do a good job. And there are plenty of people like that at Facebook, the majority of people are like that.

But, nowhere have I seen such a large percentage of people who actually care and who care strongly. It is honestly shocking, coming from jobs where people just do their job and avoid stirring up trouble. These people do stir up trouble. And it's hard work to fight the inertia. Sometimes they fail and become bitter and burnt out. Sometimes they succeed. And when they do they are rewarded.

So that's what I wanted to say. Facebook is a big place but people do care about doing the right thing and doing the right thing is rewarded.

This almost reads like someone paid you to write this.

Ha really? I mean, no one paid me, but thanks?

Seriously, have you ever worked at a place where people (outside of leadership) care strongly about making sure the company does the right thing rather than just accepting the status quo? That's pretty rare I would say and it was very surprising to me.

I'm not saying that Facebook is good. I'm just saying that people paint it like everyone who works at Facebook made a decision to support an evil empire, which does a disservice to all the people there who are working really hard to do the right thing.

I've worked at two of the FAANG companies before as an engineer, so I have some idea of the general culture.

What I meant was that the average employee at any of them doesn't care about about doing the 'right thing' any more than employees at any other corporation care about doing the 'right thing'. I'm not saying employees at FB support an evil empire but neither are they revolutionaries who deeply care about the society and are fighting tirelessly to bring some positive change.

They know what their products do and they still work there, so I'm pretty sure they're okay with the compensation-conscience tradeoff they made and I have nothing against that, we all do that; but to paint them as some deeply caring people who tirelessly strive to do the right thing is just disingenuous and like I said earlier it sounds like something a paid PR person would write.

Yeah, you're right, I did get a bit dramatic there. This was helpful, I understand your comment now, thanks!

I want to note that like you I did say that the majority at FB don't care. I also didn't care when I started and that's why it was such a surprise that people actually did care and that it wasn't shut down by leadership. I think that is compounded by the fact that certain teams are more like that than others and I was at a stage in my life where I was ready to be influenced by that, and so I agree that I have a rosier view than is probably accurate.

It also reorgs every six months.

I was on Search. You either really like it, or you hate it. There's no middle ground.

Second this. FB Corp treats its employees very well.

Interesting take. Facebook is one of the few companies in the world I'd never work for.

> management... all come from eng for a few levels until you start hitting VP roles.

And then where do they come from? Ivy league MBAs or IB?

No shade at those guys, just curious. I'm early-career and I've got interests in finance and programming. It seems like I see fewer engineers running the show, as if committing to programming as a career tops-out at a certain point because you're missing certain experience. Though, I don't know enough to know what that special sauce is.

some of them are still eng background but it's long enough ago that they're not really technical at all anymore. others are what you said, I guess for the most part. engineering and managing engineers are sort of similar, or at least you can see how one might be valuable to the other. engineering and managing managers are way further apart, so I'm not surprised that technical people have less presence the further up you go

Agreed. I work for a company whose products are widely used but many might consider it morally wrong. On the bright side there is no guilt at getting raise at every opportunity possible.

Memed? It's being accused of assisting with genocide abroad and culture destruction locally.

Memeing is a bunny with a pancake on its head. Facebook is accused of helping dictatorships hunt and kill actual humans.

Good paycheque though eh.

it is also memed heavily. zuck with too much sunscreen, zuck in Congress drinking water, there are many

RIP Oolong rabbit.

Some how I would guess hate speech would still be spreadable if fb didn't exist.

For the folks reflexively downvoting because they don’t want it to be true…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/facebook-...

I guess there is a difference between actively genociding and _just_ shielding genocidal regimes from facing justice.

Facebook fiddles while the world burns…

What is the employee sentiment towards Meta / metaverse products?

everyone I know is pretty excited

Please don't cross into personal attack.

It's particularly bad to attack someone who posts about the employer/work to HN. We want people to post on topics they know about, and for most of us, or work is the thing we know the most about. We don't want to disincentivize that, so please don't flame people for doing it, regardless of how you feel about their employer.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=...

Edit: you've been posting a bunch of flamewar comments lately. Would you please stop that? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful.

It is possible to work on efforts to prevent genocide and extremism. As a matter of fact, there are very few people who enable genocide! (Approaching 0.0000)

Doesn't refusal to help only exacerbate the situation?

If you're not allowed to work on the problem, you can't help. Management isn't prioritizing fixing the issue. They know it exists, and are prioritizing things that make them money, and in many cases know that the what makes them money is what's causing the extremism.

By continuing to work there, you're enabling what they're doing.

What voice? Not everyone holds the same ideology as you.