I don't think this has anything to do with the engineering challenges they have to solve at Facebook or the fun working environment. As that code-leak incident hinted some time ago, Facebook probably isn't more than a huge pile of spaghetti php-code. The only motivation of people for switching is greed. Facebook is pre-IPO, so stock options can potentially make some employees millionaires in case of a good IPO.

From the article: "Entrepreneurs want to work at the hottest place on earth and right now that's Facebook."

I see at least two false statements in that sentence.

Yes, I don't know about the rest of you but I'd rather be working on what will be the hottest thing around in a year's time. Catch the wave _before_ it breaks.

Google's big wave came and facebook's hasn't. What's your point?

If an entrepreneur goes to work for an established company, he ceases to be an entrepreneur.

yeah I read that comment as the opposite.

The time to join FB was back when it was a harvard thing. If you join them now, you're jumping someone else's train, and you aren't shaping the company, you're just a plug compatible engineer.

I'll bet the 300th employee at Microsoft and Google disagree.

This is like giving a reason for why stock X is overvalued. Time to buy it was last year. It can't possibly go any higher.

There's nothing wrong with being a top-flight employee and helping build something big, but by the time a company has reached a size where two pizzas aren't enough to make everybody full the company has started to settle, the culture is beginning to congeal and the BIG decisions have been made.

If you want to build something insanely great that works the way you think it should you have to pioneer and risk the arrows.

You are aware of the origin of the phrase "insanely great", right?

Something to do with the original macintosh, iirc.

Entrepreneurs want to make their place hot, not go to someone else's. I also doubt Facebook is recruiting top hackers: they don't have hard technology there. They are probably getting a lot of idea guys/socially savvy people.

Yes, I bet that at facebook placement they have air conditioners.

Some days, Tech Crunch seems more like a gossip tabloid than a serious news source. I once heard someone describe TV news as an ounce of fact poured into a sea of speculation, and this isn't the first TC article I've read that's gotten really creative with the speculation part.

I'm not alarmed. Are you alarmed? ;-)

This reminds me of a conversation I had with one of the Microsoft VPs. When asked about Google free lunch and recruiting tactics, he replied: "That's the culture in Silicon Valley. What's frightening is that people come and go within 2-3 years"

These googlers came to my school and advertising how proud they are working at Google. Now we know the truth (^_^).

"They are going back to Microsoft!" -- facebook has a lot of ex-microsofties already. Anyways, I hope it doesn't get polluted too much with the ms mentality. The facebook experience and the newsfeed are loosing their simplicity and looking more and more like windows live.

For a side note: Google products start to look boring. No new features. No wonder they're losing their employees; nothing more to do.

Does Facebook make anything interesting (from a programmers perspective)? I know a lot of cool stuff coming out of the google sweatshops, but I couldn't name anything interesting from Facebook. Am I missing out on something?

Search, GMail and Maps are the only 3 things I used. I don't even use Calendar, My Maps or their Cinema search whatnot. That's pretty much their products that I know of (and most of my friends outside Valley)

That's already three more applications than I could name from Facebook :-) That wasn't a rhetorical question, but I've really no idea what would make Facebook interesting for a programmer.

Google on the other hand is teasing me regularly with brandnew interesting API's (for which I never find the time to really check em out).

A lot of programmers seem to think the Facebook API is pretty interesting... and they've found the time to check it out, too.

Thanks, that's the stuff I was searching for. Facebook ain't that common here in germany and I'm no webdeveloper, so I didn't know until now about this API. I only had found the Facebook website which completely failed to impress me and if the name wouldn't drop so often I would probably not even have taken a second look.

Well, time for new API's... maybe next year. If facebook is still the hype in 2008 ;-)

It has some interesting possibilities, but as a hypothetical Google or Facebook developer, I'd much rather be hacking on something like Android than the Facebook API.

How much freedom does Facebook provide for its software engineers? Do they get something like 20% freedom?

FYI that 20 percent thing is a trick for keeping potential entrepeneurs from quiting and starting their own companies.

From what I understand, it's not even that real. That is, if you can get all your work done in 80% of your time, then you are free to work 20% on whatever, but most people don't end up doing it because they have to spend 100% of their time (or close to it) on official work.

but, afaik, you can club all the personal time you don't use and take it as a continuous block of time, perhaps between projects. Anyone working for Google, please clarify!

I don't work there any more, but you are correct. Many successful products started with banked 20% time.

However, most individual 20% projects are not standalone projects. They are often tools or components or features or mini-sabbaticals with other teams.

It is more possible to entrepreneurial at Google than any other company I know of. The workload is really high, but even so, the main barrier to effective 20% time is still oneself. Even at Google, most people talk about their brilliant ideas and don't do anything about them.

So how is not having it any better?

So you can go home and do your own startup if you're not satisfied working with X company that doesn't give you 20%.

They are going back to Microsoft!