[bottle_roket]

I’m a FB employee and I’m giving my notice tomorrow.

I interviewed with them in 2019 just so I could get a competing offer and had no intention of working there, but at the end of my interviewing run they were the only offer I had. It was 2x my current salary and it was too hard to turn it down when the money was right there in front of me.

I had sincere moral issues with the company but I convinced myself their worst days were likely behind them, that they were committed to doing the work to to fix their reputation. The last 2 years have only gotten worse and it’s very clear the leadership has no interest in making meaningful changes to address social harm caused by the platform. I legit don’t like telling people what I do for a living when I meet someone new at a bar for fear they ask where I work.

Couple this with a culture that has masterminded a set of carrots and sticks that gets people to push themselves very hard all of the time, I’m completely burnt out. My GF pretty much told me she can’t handle living with someone so stressed out all the time.

I don’t have another job lined up but I’m not too worried. I’m excited for a reset. I’m taking through the end of the year to cool off and prep for interviews. I think it’s imperative at my next job that I at least somewhat believe in the product. I’ve learned that money isn’t enough to keep me going in the face of giving 0 fucks about the company mission.

[PragmaticPulp]

Thanks for the inside perspective

> Couple this with a culture that has masterminded a set of carrots and sticks that gets people to push themselves very hard all of the time, I’m completely burnt out.

Can you say more about the work/life balance?

I've heard Facebook's work life balance described as everything from a cushy "engineer retirement home" to a grueling crushing workload that few can handle.

Obviously FB is a big company and it can vary from one manager to another, but I'm interested in hearing more of your perspective.

[bottle_roket]

Obviously it’s a huge company with thousands of teams, but I’ve been an engineer on 3 different product teams and certain things have been the same everywhere.

I would say purely from a coding perspective the workload is typical ~40ish hours a week. The stress comes from the biannual performance reviews that grade you explicitly across 4 axis.

If you got your projects delivered on time with high quality code that’s just 1 axis. What did you do to improve the codebase? What did you do to help drive the mission of the team? How many code reviews did you do(they count)? What did you do to improve the team culture?

I think these things are all important, but everywhere else I have worked a lot of these are more implicit. At FB you need to have bullet points and evidence of these contributions every 6 months to get a satisfactory rating. Couple this typical giant corporation red tape (legal, marketing sign off, metrics reviews) to getting anything released.

Some people seem to not have trouble keeping up with it, but I find it exhausting. I’ve gotten good reviews during my employment here but it’s been grueling.

[tdeck]

> How many code reviews did you do(they count)?

A friend who works at Facebook was telling me recently that since he gets judged explicitly on the code review count, he feels like he needs to immediately drop everything when a code review comes in so he can get to it before someone else approves and it gets merged. As you might expect, he finds that very disruptive.

[codewiz]

Well, what would happen if everyone prioritized writing code over reviewing their coworkers' code?

Since junior engineers and new hires are not yet able to review code effectively, senior engineers end up reviewing a lot more code than they write.

I think recognizing and rewarding this behavior in performance reviews is entirely reasonable for any tech company that wants a sustainable codebase.

[tdeck]

The problem isn't that code reviews get recognized and rewarded, it's that once a change is merged you can't review it, so people "race" to review changes before their colleagues get to it. That's not a healthy system. It's better to let people manage their time to promote flow, letting them batch up code reviews at a certain time of day if that's more effective.

I'll just add that nowhere I've worked has counted code reviews in this way and they still get done, so it's not a disaster when you don't officially penalize people for their review count.

[akomtu]

Those extra axes seem easy to fake. Just "review" all code reviews you see - takes 5 sec per CR and your metrics skyrocket. Mission of the team? Write some bs docs with vision and ideas: nobody needs them, but you get to mark the checkbox. Team culture? Say you've organized a book reading club, even do a couple meetings - just bring a book there and mark the checkbox. Books don't actually need to be read. Want to score some diversity points? Say your book reading club studied "white fragility" - nobody is going to verify you havent and nobody really cares, but you get to mark the checkbox.

[romanhn]

That wouldn't fly at FB. Doing busywork without producing impact doesn't count for anything. And CR comments are reviewed by managers - a bunch of LGTMs doesn't add up to much. It might unblock the team, but the goal is to uplevel the team, so meaty comments that impart knowledge are searched out.

[cutemonster]

I would have thought that people would start doing smaller and smaller change requests, collaboratively enabling each other to do more and smaller & quicker code reviews

True teamwork

[akomtu]

What's the incentive for those managers to take you down like that? Even then, you can write prose in comments - semi-related thoughts that are very difficult to distinguish from actually valuable comments.

[romanhn]

The incentive is the calibrations where the org leaders get together to compare notes and align on scoring. A manager who's not aligned would not only see their reports' scores forcefully shifted, but their own performance as a manager would be seen in a more negative light.

[sundvor]

This sounds like some different version of hell to me.

But hey, if you can make it work - and it sounds like you do - then all the power to you! :) I must admit I do like seeing the middle digit you're raising in their direction there.

(Edit: Even though CRs ought to be taken seriously, for the sake of your fellow engineers).

[zelos]

Goodhart's law in effect.

I once had a job where a portion of our bonus was related to an automated code quality score. Needless to say, we reverse engineered the algorithm and scripted the (pointless, probably slightly harmful) changes to the source to maximise the score.

[cutemonster]

What did and didn't the score algorithm like?

(Did you reverse eng it during work time :-))

[zelos]

There were several components, but the parts that were I can remember were gamed were code duplication - someone figured out the minimum number of matching lines required for it to be detected and made minor changes in the middle of blocks - and number of imports. The penalty for .* imports was quite low, so we just ended up with wildcard imports everywhere.

[yeswecatan]

I feel like a lot of the anxiety around reviews is an unquenchable thirst for more. My understanding is that if you just meet expectations you get 100% of your bonus. If you're happy with your salary alone (which is probably higher than 99% of tech companies) then why get stressed?

[romanhn]

Meeting expectations is a pretty high bar to start with. The next lower rating (Meets Most Expectations) is a cause of stress because two of those in a row frequently results in a PIP at Facebook.

[Ozzie_osman]

I worked at a FAANG (not anymore), and my spouse and many of my friends still do.

There are two ways to do FAANG (very generally). You can care about promotion, or you can not. If you do care, then it's competitive and stressful because perf reviews (and often politics) will determine your fate. If you just want to cruise and have a cushy job, you can do that too, but just accept that you either won't get promoted (or will get promoted very slowly). You may have to transfer to a team where that's easier to do to get away with it, but it's very doable.

(There are some exceptions. If you go in at a very high level, the level expectations will be high and you still have to meet them. That might be what happened with the parent commentor, given the expectation to have broad impact)

[m0zg]

The correct way to do it, if you can, is, quite obviously, #2. The comp differential that comes from "career" isn't life changing, but the stress that comes with that comp differential is very real and damaging to your relationships IRL, your family, and yourself. And even if you coast, you'll still be paid better on income/effort basis as well as in absolute, compared to the vast majority of non-FANG companies.

As rational and verifiably correct as that strategy is, I can't do this myself though. I either care about the things I do, or I don't do them at all. I feel as though my age might solve this issue.

[cutemonster]

How might the age solve the problem? (Retirement maybe?)

[m0zg]

You learn not to give a shit and realize work isn't all there is to life. IOW you develop a more balanced, informed world view. You also learn to not do stupid shit, which saves a lot of effort.

[cutemonster]

Aha, age, as in life experience :-) I think I understand & agree, also about the stupid shit

[geekster777]

I work at FB right now, and one of the more stressful things are the timelines for promotion. I think you have a year and a half to go from New Grad to E4, then 2 and a half years to go from E4 to E5. If you fall behind on those timelines, your performance reviews just start getting measured against E#+1 until you either get promoted or more likely fail. A lot of pressure is placed in those early levels to get promoted quickly and efficiently, with not a lot of opportunity to coast. As someone who's very ok with the compensation and responsibilities at E4, I don't really want to get promoted and it's exhausting. It means that "meeting expectations" isn't enough. I need to be exceeding expectations so I can prove I'm working at the next level. This often involves seeking out ambiguity for ambiguity's sake and making projects unnecessarily formal.

The other main "issue" is how incentives are structured, although this one seems to be working as intended. By focusing so heavily on personal performance and impact, Facebook can pretty reliably delegate project planning to their engineers in a bottom up fashion. Engineers will then adjust to ruthlessly prioritize only the most impactful work on the team. Velocity also gets highly prioritized. You don't have to assign many tasks, since engineers are afraid of the mythical "poor performance review". This leads many teams to feel chronically understaffed, and bad for choosing impact over polish on many projects. The flip side is that if your team is overstaffed, it's a struggle to find enough meaningful work to get more than a meets expectations (which may be too low depending on what level you are).

[romanhn]

I have never heard of Facebook described as anything like "engineer retirement home". Google, yes, but not FB. When I was there, poor work life balance was everywhere - from individual contributors to managers, from engineers to product managers to all other cross-functional partners, from juniors to senior staff levels.

[cutemonster]

How many hours per week did the poor balance people tend to work?

[smnscu]

I've been doing Karat interviews for about three years and it's been incredible for my mental health. The work is extremely flexible and there is nothing to worry about when you're not working (I dread deadlines and I'm neurotic enough to never manage a good WLB at a regular SWE gig). The compensation is also pretty good. Apply on their website if interested (https://karat.com/) or hit me up at my username at google's mail service if you want a referral (though you shouldn't need one to get in the door, we're hiring pretty aggressively). Hope this helps.

[coward123]

Karat represents everything wrong with how we interview in the tech industry. After being in tech for dozens of years and having interviewed and hired hundreds of people, an interview with Karat was one of the experiences that shook me to the core and told me It was time I retired. I’ve seldom felt so dehumanized.

[smnscu]

I don't represent Karat but please reach out to me (same gmail as my username), I would love to hear what your thoughts are on a better process.

[nextaccountic]

Could you share a bit more about your experience?

[notNormal]

I totally agree with them.

Karat is actually systematically building an algorithm that EXCLUDES diversity of thought. I spoke directly with their CEO who was not interested at all in diversity , but just wanted to make the process "scalable".

Here is the problem:

The more companies use Karat as a service, the more companies will NEVER get to hire engineers who are unable to pass the karat interview process! I have personally programmed highly complex distributed systems, algorithms, and more, yet I have a disability which makes it difficult if not impossible to pass a karat interview.

The karat interview is the gatekeeper to the other companies. Therefor, Karat is LITERALLY blocking software engineers from getting in the door at other companies. Any software engineer that cannot pass the karat format of interview will never be able to get a job at any company that requires a karat interview to begin!!!!!

[orange_puff]

I've had a karat interview before on behalf of Palantir and by the end of the interview I was less interested in Palantir (although thankfully I did move forward) than I was in Karat. I didn't end up looking too much into it. Do you think engineers with ~1 experience could get hired there for interviews? I am about to get promoted to SWE2 if that helps. I actually enjoy leetcode type problems and have solved over 800, so I think this would align with my interest.

[notNormal]

for me, I was excited to interview with Indeed.com

However, their interview process requires a karat interview. Since I was unable to pass the karat interview (due to disability discrimination), I was unable to even speak with the team at Indeed!!!!!

Therefore, Indeed misses out, I miss out, and Karat gets paid.

[p1esk]

The compensation is also pretty good.

What is the compensation?

[ma2rten]

I googled it and it said $60-$100 per hour, which is not that great compared to Facebook pay or other contracting gigs.

[varispeed]

"Build global technical talent acquisition operations"

Why they think this dehumanising language is okay? It reeks of modern slavery.

[esyir]

Highly paid tech workers complain about their "slavery".

I doth think you should see what a slave's life actually was.

[varispeed]

Relatively to how much the corporations they work for make, it is. I guess for many people being exploited, as long as you have a roof over your head and can afford food is totally okay.

[nix23]

Human resources beg to differ ;)

[Jensson]

"We see workers as assets!"

- Proud slave trader

[ethbr0]

It's a great way to look at peril (physical or moral) posts:

"Will I make enough money over my current salary to (1) move substantially closer towards my financial life goals (funding kids' education, house, caring for parents, retirement, etc) & (2) fund my R&R, unemployed, for long enough to put my head and soul back together?"

Often the answer is yes, but it's definitely a different way of looking at a job. Still trying to do a great job, but knowing there's a 1/2/4/8 year expiration date on your working there.

And yes, at the hazard of putting it out there, I'd say believing in the mission vs not is worth ~25% salary to me.

[goldenManatee]

Cash in, cash out. Resume is a trail though.

[bottle_roket]

This experience has definitely given me more compassion to people who have made mistakes.

I just hope my future interviewers ask themself: “if my morally questionable actions were written down would anyone want to work with me either?”

[Jensson]

> Resume is a trail though.

Companies value being able to work on amoral projects so I don't see why having Facebook on your resume would be an issue. Every big corporation is more or less evil so they want people who are fine with working for someone evil.

[qwerpy]

Has there ever been any instance of someone being turned down for a job because they had FB on their resume? I see this sentiment pop up a lot on HN but when it comes down to it you could always explain it away with “it was my only offer at the time and I had crushing student debt and/or medical expenses to take of”.

If someone has moral qualms about working at FB that’s a different issue but the whole “don’t want to be shunned at dinner parties or future jobs” thing seems to be all self-inflected and unnecessary.

[ratww]

I really don't think anyone in our industry is holding regular Facebook employees responsible for any issues with Facebook. People who worked there are still regarded as very competent.

[devoutsalsa]

I would not turn away anyone because of where’d they’d worked in the past. You gotta hustle to bring home the $$$ and the I’m not gonna judge you for doing what you had to do.

[vmception]

saying “ex-Facebook” is still serious clout with few questions from people that appeal to authority unobjectively, you could be an ex Facebook janitor and garner audiences for an investable venture with no questions asked about the specific role and experience and its relation to that venture

[vmception]

> I’ve learned that money isn’t enough to keep me going in the face of giving 0 fucks about the company mission.

(Anymore)