Having worked there on several different teams, I can confidently say slacker engineers are not common at fb. They have plenty of systems in place to keep people grinding.
Are you saying that Facebook employees are not motivated to work? Or that now after he has been hired, he is not adding any value anymore?
Facebook is a multi-billion dollar startup and its created by the people working there. So it may not be my favorite company, but I give respect to that, and the people working there.
I can't say what's the skillset to be an effective engineer at a large company, but I do believe that it must be a SUBSET of the skillset required to create a successful startup.
I think I see the disconnect. Yes, passionate people move the world forward, but that's not every person, or every coder, or even every Facebook employee. Plenty of engineers just want to make a steady paycheck and live their comfortable life outside of work.
If Facebook's a grind, then that's something the employee has to figure out.
True - but those engineers don't work at Facebook. This isn't no-child left behind. This isn't hand-hold time. This is the most expensive and expansive internet application in the world. If they need time to ramp up, they can do it on someone else's product and come to Facebook when they're ready.
I was a Software Engineering intern on an ads product team at Facebook last summer. My experience was almost exactly the opposite of what you assume here. Most people worked 7-8 hour days. I stayed plenty of late nights because I was dead-set on getting a full-time offer, but I was literally the only one on my entire floor most nights (including interns). On the off chance someone stopped in late and saw me, they were honestly shocked and insisted I go home.
The team working next to mine had a major product launch during the time I was there. A few of them (2 or 3) stayed in until 8 PM for the two nights immediate proceeding launch. That's it.
One of the biggest surprises to me coming from undergrad was just how little the engineers worked at a company like FB. There is a pride in efficiency in the Facebook culture, and an working effectively is more valued than putting in long hours.
Of course, that was my experience on one team. I'm sure some teams work longer hours than others. That said, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an engineering shop that had a healthier work-life balance than Facebook. The idea that its a 'meat grinder' is laughable. I saw another comment suggesting that FB employees leaving after 8-10 years is a sign of burn-out. Are you kidding? In this business 8-10 years is lifetimes.
In addition to what Itaxpica said (which is very true), I believe I read somewhere that FB does have a lot of non-engineer employees. Can't provide a credible source or even a reason for why that is so.
The queue is large, but the number of engineers capable of working competently at Facebook's scale is not. They already had a code quality issue when I was there (briefly, leaving for reasons of conscience) - the site will fall down and never recover if they have to replace the right 10% of their engineers.
Oh please! Facebook is considered total crap by almost every engineer i know. Nobody i know wants to work there. Seriously all these zukerberg ass kissers on HN are pathetic.
I know of at least 2 companies who will explicitly not hire ex-facebook engineers, with the rationale that anyone who would work for facebook is morally bankrupt, especially the more recent years.
> Facebook is looking to hire a human to fill a spot in the org chart.
This isn't true. Most (not all) engineers are just hired into "Facebook", in general, not onto a specific team with a specific manager. They choose a team to join about ~2 months after joining the company and going through an internal training and team selection process.
reply