These past two years at Facebook have been an absolute nightmare, something that I hope never to repeat in my career. I’ve held my feelings back long enough. Now that I’m coming upon my two-year anniversary at Facebook, I need to just come out and say it: there’s a whole lot to hate about working here. In the interest of brevity, I’ve trimmed my complaints down to just the top ten things:
- There is way too much code being committed and shipped. Over the past two years, the number of engineers at Facebook has more than doubled. But the rate of source code commits continues to grow proportionally with the number of engineers. This is in clear violation of the law that Fred Brooks established nearly 40 years ago in The Mythical Man Month. And that’s exactly what this “supposed” productivity is: myth. I see engineers around me committing code all the time, releasing new features onto the site every week, and I just sit back and chuckle to myself. Happy, happy fools.
- There are too few meetings. This is actually related to, and arguably a prime cause of, #1 above. There’s even a “no meeting Wednesday” meme in the company, which you might as well call a “failure to communicate” death wish. Software needs to be talked about and debated, not simply written. It’s lunacy to be writing and shipping code at a blistering pace, instead of letting things bake a bit in committees representing broad swaths of all semi-affected parties.
- Zuck is too involved. Now that we’re a publicly-traded company, the CEO’s job should primarily be interfacing with the public – specifically the major investors, analysts, and pundits. Instead, Zuck is still planning upcoming products, talking with engineers, developing the strategy. This is a complete misappropriation of time. His job should be pumping up the stock price externally, not “building stuff.”
- There is not enough focus on short-term revenue. This is related to #3: specifically Zuck’s idealism (perhaps even naïveté) that focusing on building great products will lead to solid long-term businesses. The stock is down this quarter. We’re public now – we should be juicing next quarter’s revenues, not building cool stuff. Seems to me that we show less ad pixels than other major web sites. We should introduce banner ads (with eye-catching graphics and animations, ideally showing toe fungus or the spontaneous dancing that results from discovering low mortgage rates). We should sell user data to interested third parties at a decent price. Nobody in the company seems to be proposing these (admittedly obvious) business strategies, which, if anything, shows a clear lack of business acumen at the highest levels.
- The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in?
- Too many decisions are being made by engineers. Specifically, by just the engineers in the immediate product team of whatever’s shipping. No one at Facebook seems to understand that hierarchies in organizations exist for a reason, one of which is to make sure people higher up can override decisions they don’t like. I’ve seen decisions being made by lone engineers. Or an engineer and a designer over lunch. Or by interns. All without telling their managers, even. This sort of autonomous decision-making suggests a complete lack of understanding of how corporations are supposed to work, a disregard for people with titles and broad management responsibilities. I’ve been preaching a much simpler approach: always go with the opinion of the person who’s closest to Zuck. Or the opinion of the person in the room who manages the most people. No one’s listening.
- Too many new ideas are being created at Hackathons. This is a direct corollary of #6. I was told the other day that something like 70% of Hackathon projects, which are pretty much projects that engineers in small groups dream up and implement in single-day coding parties, end up shipping on the main site. I’m all for creativity and supposed “empowerment,” but that’s way too much stuff shipping without being formally outlined and approved by committees of senior execs. We have execs for a reason. They should be telling us what to build. Not the other way around. Corporations should be autocracies, not democracies. What – we should all just go off and create whatever amuses us? Where’s the leadership?
- All the internal focus on Mobile and Platform is completely misguided. I don’t mean to belittle your intelligence by belaboring this point, so I won’t. I’ll just say this: mobile devices are self-evidently of no consequence, and it’s ridiculous to give third-party developers the means to build on a common social graph.
- There is a fully-working hot tub in the New York office that interviews are conducted in. I didn’t believe this until I saw the photos on Twitter. It was billed to me as a way to test candidates’ resilience under pressure. I was told that it’s used rarely, and only on exceptionally good candidates as a way to probe the extent of their mettle. This is about the least professional thing that I have ever heard of, and I’m sure it violates laws in several states. [Ed: This is completely untrue, in case this fantastical point seems plausible at first. I installed a hot tub (non-functioning) as a conference room in Facebook Seattle. Interviews are never done in them.]
- There is too much internal trust. People at Facebook regularly assume – I kid you not – that employees they’ve never worked with will excel at their jobs, work hard, and deliver what they promise. This type of idealism is frankly nauseating. When it comes down to it, politics and mutual suspicion are ultimately what create the dynamism and drama that make work worthwhile. Without these, it’s just code, code, code. Ship, ship, ship. I get tired just thinking about it.
Consider this fair warning if you’re a software engineer. I can only call it as I see it.
The only thing I can say is that you have to start your own. You can’t get people to fix their mistakes (especially when they don’t think they are making a mistake). I bet many of us would rather work for FB than our current company. Except for the company you start yourself, all other companies will have flaws that you wish would get fixed. All of us (companies are people too), have blind spots.
For cripes sake, at least link to Poe’s law on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) at the outset, so people can figure out for themselves whether to take this as parody or as the real thing.
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Most likely even Facebook’s investors won’t agree with you on the “Zuck being too involved part”. He has to be involved, for his sake and for every investor’s sake. He’s a brilliant programmer and his feedback counts – and he should still make all the technical decisions about the company.
You think at Google Larry and Sergey don’t make product development decisions?
I completely agree with point 5. Here at Mobivery we don’t have award-winning chefs but we have nothing to envy. People don’t stop bringing a lot of delicious food. There is always a birthday, a newborn child, a new worker, a new house or anything to celebrate as an excuse… We are thinking of chaging our name to Fatvery.
After each meal you are so full that you can’t think and sometimes not even move.
[...] Philip Su, ein Softwareentwickler bei Facebook, hat in einem offenen Brief in seinem privaten Blog seine Zeit bei Facebook als die schlimmste seines Lebens bezeichnet und 1o gewichtige Vorwürfe formuliert, die andere Naivlinge davon abhalten sollten, sich von der Strahlkraft Facebooks irreführen zu lassen und sich dort zu bewerben. Hier geht’s zum ausführlichen Artikel. [...]
Mate, I do not understand you.
E.g.:
“Too many decisions are being made by engineers” –> I am sorry but facebook is a software company which lives because engineers built great algorithms…
“The food is too good” –> I am sorry but I should know by yourself when I have eaten too much or not. Nobody expects that you eat too much. Try to get help…
“Zuck is too involved” –> He is the founder, CEO and the guy with the voting majority. Because it is his “baby” it is understandable that he wants to be involved in the process. His educational background is informatics and not business.
Although this article seems to critic Facebook, it is actually pointing out its goodness.
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I see what you did there.
Either you are part of an eastern culture or you are 80 years old. But even so some points do not make sense.
1. “There is way too much code being committed and shipped” -> you said nothing in this paragraph. Too much code? For what? Is the code modular? Are all teams working on the same code? How many projects are there? If code is modular and each team is committing to it’s own module I don’t see where is the problem. If not… and everybody at Facebook is committing everywhere in the code that means these guys are great developers and if in the future the code will be sliced then the productivity will increase by 100% which is a matter of time.
2. “There are too few meetings” -> Is is against internal policy to organize meetings? If don’t like this why don’t you organize some meetings?
3. “Zuck is too involved” -> Zack is not stupid he knows what he can do best. He is a software engineer as mentioned earlier by Mike.Is like being a good developer and doing design. Everybody should to what they are best at because otherwise they are not efficient.
4. “There is not enough focus on short-term revenue” -> Is everybody getting their paycheck? If yes then why are you thinking about this? Addind eye-catching ads? You have no design knowledge… that will kill Facebook. People are in love with Facebook. They don’t need it. They will come less often to Facebook if there were colorful/animated ads. For example I lokk for ads on facebook and in 20 percent of cases I finally buy something because ads are so well targeted that I find what I like and want. “sell user data”? This is not what users want. They will share less data. The value of Facebook lies in the quantity of data being shared. Sell it and users will be aware of that every time they share something.
5. “The food is too good” -> This is the most hypocrite thing in the whole article. When you go home and eat what limits the quantity of food? You have a problem not Facebook.
6. “Too many decisions are being made by engineers” -> this is like the heaven of engineers. This is when they can be creative. This is when they are part of it. When their thinking is visibly reflected in the product. You prefer working in an Indian company where you do what they tell you? How can you make mistakes? You don’t even have the chance. As a company this educates engineers. In other companies they are some paid slaves that do what is told. This is not funny. An definitely not the way to get the most intelligence out of an engineer.
I am going to stop here because more I read more I realize that the article is worthless.
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Hey Aalex Gabi, try to focus on the subject matter. No need to bring up eastern culture which has nothing to do with the matter. Unless you are a moron, you should be able to differentiate between “eastern culture” and “working for facebook” to begin with.
The vast majority of you don’t seem to realize that this article is meant to be humorous. The writer is obviously pointing out things he likes about working at Facebook (point 5 being the most obvious).
Stop taking everything so seriously. Really.
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Actually, there’s nothing Earth-shattering here. These are comments you hear when a startup that follows agile methodologies and implements continuous delivery goes through the inflection point from ‘small & private’ to ‘medium & public’.
With scaling up and the added Wall Street’s scrutiny emerge the needs for a bit more process and control, better collaboration and coordination, and greater transparency.
None of these should stunt or kill innovation if done right. Engineers will continue to thrive on figuring out the ‘How to do it’ and will own the decisions at that level, while management steps in a bit further to shape and control ‘What to do’ and own the strategic and tactical decisions.
The best part of working in this type of environment at that particular time, is that you can shape it by taking action. Not enough meetings? call for more. Decisions taken too lightly? stand up, point to the issues, and suggest a better approach. Too much internal trust? enjoy it while you can, and implement metrics that track deliverables rather than promises to deliver. Too much good food? well, pass on the desert and take a walk instead.
Facebook will find its way. Assuming you stick around, you have a choice – either shape it, or be shaped by it.
I think fb is just not a good cultural fit for you. U should consider a larger company. Pros and cons.
Btw the hot tub thing is hilarious.
Yup, some people just don’t have a sense of humor….
I laughed so much that it hurts my belly… seems that many do not have a sense of humor, I’d also like to complain about the treatment that you have there in facebook
For anyone who reads this, please understand that this is satire. Seems like people lower in the comments got it, but I was linked here by someone who took it seriously..
Seems like pretty good place to work as far as I am concerned. Were you a Microsoft employee?
Are you serious? Is this a joke post??? Some of your wording is really odd this time around, Philip. :-p
Just want to save the dumb dumbs some pain: this article is a funny parody, so no need to go crazy in the comments. An LOL will suffice.
I am however concerned that you didn’t install the Facebook commenting system. hmmmmm *sad face*
I guess it should titled ” ten things i love about working on facebook “.
Your arguments doesn’t fit with what you want us to get.
[...] After reading this, I went on google and found some other information about working at facebook. One of the webpages I found really caught my attention. It was this site : http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/2012/08/ten-things-i-hate-about-working-at-facebook/ [...]
Well I still want to work at Facebook
trooll
This is a parody. Take a step back and read it again if you think the author is being serious.
The ol’ switcheroo. Nice.
“We should sell user data to interested third parties at a decent price.”
wow.. i stopped reading there; you sound like you’re capable of murder *warning*
Point proven that Irony doesn”t work in writing… (Looking at the comments)
Dude i think u seriously have some issues. I do agree with u on some points .. that is 2 and 6 but i dont agree with u completely with the rest.. If u check out the google hiring process you will notice that people have different responsiblilities and hence it is best you stick to ur skiil set and leave the finance departemtn to think on the financial issues.. the human resource team to deal with the hiring and the other respective teams to deal with their areas of expertise. And frankly speaking i think u are the most unappreciative person i have discovered.. on this internet scape.
The writer just isn’t skilled at satire. Stick to writing code buddy and leave attempts at humour to others. Nothing here made me laugh. Not clever.
Stop your crying bro! How can you complain about working at a place like Facebook? Do you have any idea what kind of jobs are out there or worse yet how many people dont have jobs period? I’ll take your job TODAY!! I have a job you can take. I run a CNC machine at a manufacturing company that makes jet engine components. Lets trade!
Lol this was a nice read!
“I eat too much”, that already killed me. Funny guy. Maybe you should bring mum to work too, so she can tell you when to stop?
The execs should tell you what to build? Hackathons produce too many new ideas. I mean seriously are you crazy? Please do you and yourself a favour and quit this job, you are in the wrong place. Go to Aunt’s Emma coffee shop for programming the cashier and let you guide by her wisdom.
Focus on short term revenue? You are an engineer, shut up. That is exactly the mistakes companies are making, focusing on short term revenue. You should be proud of that Facebook focuses on long term. More ads? Selling user data? Are you seriously nuds? OMG. Thanks to guys like you companies like Facebook & Google are able to exist and flurish and quite frankly you should be fired for what you said here on the spot, and that’s sure what I would do if I were in charge.
“Without these, it’s just code, code, code. Ship, ship, ship. I get tired just thinking about it.”
So quit your job moron! A lot of people at Facebook will be grateful and so would I.
[...] It’s a sarcastic note about what he “hates” about Facebook. [...]