
What I Hate About Working At Facebook - dshankar
http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/2012/08/ten-things-i-hate-about-working-at-facebook/
======
onan_barbarian
The funny thing about this list is that a few of the items, while intended as
satire, are actually spot-on. Especially item #1:

"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."

Whoop de do.

This might, just maybe, because no particular behavior of FB really matters
all that much. You're not building a space shuttle launch program or even a
spreadsheet that people rely on to give correct answers.

I'm sure that a business model that can allow 80 godzillion developers to
fling spaghetti at a wall in parallel with a view to seeing 'what sticks' is
quite a bit less subject to Mythical Man Month type scaling problems.

And is there anyone so naive that they don't understand the agenda behind "3
free meals"?

~~~
jrockway
It's likely that the code is not coupled. Fred Brooks studied OS/360, which
was essentially one big component. Facebook is, presumably, many separate
components that don't depend on each other in any way, and so the "teams" are
much smaller than "all of Facebook".

If you watch velocity on individual components, you'll probably see sub-linear
scaling as Brooks predicts.

~~~
javert
_Facebook is, presumably, many separate components that don't depend on each
other in any way_

How could that even be possible?

~~~
ninetax
The messaging back-end is probably completely decoupled from the stuff running
other components of the site. I would imagine everything interfaces with each
other, and as long as you don't break the interface, things could be changed
pretty orthogonally.

~~~
jrockway
Indeed. They have quite a toolchain and a wide variety of libraries. While a
change in the javascript framework or PHP compiler affects everything, it
isn't _dependent_ on everything.

------
beering
A lot of this is believable (i.e. can be taken for real, not satire) if you
don't read into each point, because a lot of it is quite different from how
Google does things:

1\. At Google, code has to be designed, written, tested, and reviewed. You
can't just start writing and shipping stuff, partly because there's so much
infrastructure, and partly because you pay for shoddy code later. Google has
long outgrown the kind of "start-up" velocity that you feel at Facebook.

2\. Arguably, software does need to be talked about and debated. Google and
many others hold meetings to make sure teams don't end up with 5 incompatible
siloed components when what they really needed was a server and multiple
clients. Teams have been bitten in the past by the "shit, let's rewrite all
this except with a good design" problem. Certainly, they try to keep engineers
out of meetings as much as possible.

3\. Google doesn't have Larry and Sergey micromanaging things, and PR has been
something that Google's struggled with. The role of a CEO is debatable.

4\. Sure, although a low stock price isn't without consequences.

5\. Several design changes have been made to food at Google: healthier snacks
on the snack shelves, color-coding snacks, more plates of the smaller variety
in cafes. Some people do get the Noogler 15.

6\. Engineers can be pretty bad at making certain kinds of decisions,
especially because they spend a lot of time heads down on a small components.
(Have you seen the typical engineer-designed UI?) Google PMs that work between
teams focus a lot on product decisions that affect the users and other
products. Remember criticism that Google just makes a bunch of random,
disconnected products?

7\. Facebook has had some embarrassing "launches" of Hackathon products. One
poorly thought-out launch can mean multiple criminal investigations and loss
of user trust.

8\. Social is important to Google, but it's hard getting people to agree that
it's important.

9\. Does it drive away candidates?

10\. Trust is all fun and games until you give people in your PRC office
extensive privileges to the internal network.

~~~
btilly
Thank you for demonstrating the truth of Steve Yegge's observation in
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSK...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz)
that Google's software culture tends towards risk-adverse conservatism.

~~~
Resident_Geek
Don't worry, I don't think there's any controversy there. Google is quite
conservative, engineering-wise.

------
crazygringo
I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but #2 is actually worrisome:

> _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._

There are a lot of companies where failure of communication is a very real
thing, and where semi-affected (or totally affected) parties are completely
ignored. In my experience, ideas for code _do_ need to be talked about and
debated, not simply written. Facebook has had a lot of very public
privacy/other failures that could probably have been avoided if there was more
communication going on.

If you're just writing code at a blistering pace, without a lot of
communication, there's a good chance you're not writing the right code.

~~~
jrockway
Meetings are a very expensive way to communicate. A concise, well-edited email
is more difficult to prepare, but cheaper for the company. If something takes
you an hour to write but the ten recipients can understand it in six minutes,
you saved nine hours of time over having an hour meeting. That's like having
an extra person on your team, without having to pay them or buy them a
computer!

(That's why a textbook costs $100, but a semester of class costs $2000.
Economy of scale.)

Of course, if you anticipate the discussion to mostly be back-and-forth, then
a meeting could be necessary. But have an agenda and stick to it. If you just
want to socialize with your coworkers, duck out early and hit the pub.

~~~
anthonyb
Email and face to face communication are completely different beasts though,
particularly for tougher issues.

~~~
masterzora
If your meeting absolutely positively must happen on a known weekly no-meeting
day then there's really only three cases I can see: 1\. You are bad at
planning 2\. You are bad at communicating 3\. Something really, really bad
happened and people will understand breaking policy

There's a big difference between "no meetings ever" and this.

~~~
btilly
Sadly there is a particular type of person who discovers the day that nobody
is supposed to go to meetings is the day when everybody is free and the
meeting rooms are available. And then starts scheduling meetings for that day.

~~~
bwooce
This is the same kind of person who discovers that people, and rooms, are
"available" from 12-1pm, and 6pm-

After too many days of back-to-back meetings from 10am to 3pm I've taken to
creating a repeating lunchtime meeting with myself. Then I discovered the
people who don't care if you're available or not...they consider themselves
important enough that you'll drop everything for their meeting.

~~~
btilly
I personally enjoy disabusing people like that of that particular mistaken
notion. But there can be associated fallout.

------
msie
I was expecting some real criticism of Facebook and not a recruitment piece.
What a waste of my time.

------
ghshephard
Good grief people - It's satire. The entire thing is meant to be funny. I
didn't even think it was particularly subtle so I'm not sure how others are
seeing it any other way.

~~~
mcphilip
Pretty obvious only an idiot would write up this rant on his personal blog
while still employed at FB. I ignored the content immediately after realizing
this. Click bait title. Lame.

~~~
AznHisoka
Exactly my thoughts. It would actually have been a worthwhile piece to read if
it wasn't satire...

As it is, it's just another geek trying to get attention.

------
redthrowaway
I haven't felt the need to downvote a post since PG stripped us of our ability
to do so, but this is unmitigated crap. A poor attempt at satire in service to
some large corp is not something that should grace the front page, and the
resulting conversation helps no one. It's blog spam in a different form.

~~~
Lewton
That's what the flag function is for

~~~
hisyam
I don't see a flag button. Is this a feature that's only available after
reaching a certain amount of points?

~~~
jamesbritt
I used to see it, then one day it vanished.

~~~
Lewton
hisyam: Yes, it's something you get after getting 20 points or something like
that

jamesbritt: I've heard of people losing their flag priviliges because of
'abuse' whatever that is

~~~
jamesbritt
I suspect I flagged too many posts that ended up as popular so now I cannot
flag anymore.

If so then there's a serious flaw in that kind of strategy since it erodes
counter-balances.

------
the_cat_kittles
Wouldn't this be better as "10 things I love about working at Facebook"? Why
not just drop the "hilarious" satire angle and say what is awesome directly. I
hope I don't sound like the death of fun... It sounds a little smug as it is
now.

~~~
tedunangst
Satire is useful to detect people who have decided to agree or disagree before
they've read what you've written.

~~~
thinkingisfun
Wait, what? You lost me at "Satire is useful to detect people".

To me it seems like a passive-aggressive jab at those who complained about
working at facebook, and left.

"It's just a joke" is just a lame way of saying something, without anyone
being able to actually call them on it.

And to call this stuff satire is kind of extreme, too? Let's ignore the
lameness for a sec: what, exactly, does it make fun of and shed light on?

~~~
tedunangst
I was making a broader point, not one about this piece in particular.

~~~
thinkingisfun
I still don't see how satire is supposed to detect anything other than who
gets that it's satire, and who takes it at face value -- which is not even
possible until you, uhhh, read or saw the satire. So that point of yours, it's
lost on me unless you elaborate.

~~~
tedunangst
My premise is that people who fail to detect satire do so because their
existing bias makes them see what they want to see. People apparently disable
their critical thinking apparatus when presented with an argument that even
superficially resembles their own viewpoint.

~~~
thinkingisfun
Ah, that is much clearer, thanks.

------
soup10
Real reasons why working at Facebook isn't that attractive in my opinion:

1\. Giant php codebase.

2\. All the excitement is gone post-IPO, they've reached an inflection point
and growth is slowing down.

3\. Mark Zuckerburg doesn't have great social skills/intelligence. Which
wouldn't be a problem, except that he runs a giant social network.

4\. The corporate mission of making the world more open and connected just
doesn't seem very high impact. Facebook at it's core is a way to share photos
and keep up with old friends, it doesn't really change social interactions.

5\. Their focus is very narrow, they don't work on many novel exciting
problems.

~~~
flyt
re: growth. Facebook has one billion active users. There are seven billion
humans in the world. There is a lot of growth left.

~~~
heretohelp
What so the third world doesn't exist? Seriously?

~~~
irollboozers
The average Nigerian or Bangladeshi has more phones than you do.

Facebook has not yet exhausted mobile.

------
Uchikoma
Must admit I've stopped after the firtst, but: With thousands of programmers,
what real features have been released to facebook.com? I often ask myself what
those thousands of programmers do, as a user (I know not customer in this
case) I can't see it. All of them mobile? Ads? Image recognition? With
thousands of programmers should't the output be (5 people dev teams, one
feature a month) hundreds of features/stories per month? Could users live with
that?

I'd also think commits are not a productivity metric.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
A lot of our manpower goes into designing, implementing, and maintaining
highly scalable systems and tools that allow the actual product teams to do
their work. And of course there are plenty of teams that are simply focused on
improving the scalability of existing features.

It's hard work to scale something as complex and inter-dependent as Facebook
when you're operating at the scale of almost a billion monthly active users.

~~~
Uchikoma
How is productivity measured than? (OP)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Hell if I know; I've only been here for two months. I'm just reporting what
I've seen as a production engineer in that time. :)

------
ricardobeat
I went from "I disagree" to "This guy is a moron" to "Oh, thank god this is
satire" at #3. It's amazing that they can keep this environment after growing
so big.

------
kimmiller
Too much code being committed? Too many decisions being made by engineers?
Building a great product?

Wow, talk about navel gazing. I get the satire point, but...

This internally arrogant, externally ignorant attitude is why the stock is
where it is. These ideals are not necessarily good for a mature business that
needs to pay back the kind people that gave it money in the first place.

Enjoy your free lunch, as there are none.

~~~
kahawe
Facebook and "mature business"?

But more seriously, I think this is an all-too-human trait - once you are
successful you start to greatly approve of yourself and look for reasons in
your very DNA why you are where you are and then you start marketing that...
when really, it was all a lot of luck and people seem to forget that pure
chance is the biggest innovator and the bigger part of what they have actually
done right is NOT spoiling the success that luck has brought them. There are
and were a ton of companies with the same culture, the same great benefits for
developers, the same productive environment but you never heard of them and
they are gone now.

------
jamesvl
Satire is well and good, but i can't grok #9. Interviews in a hot tub? So...
even for the women? Or is it used preferentially for high pressure engineers
only (whom _of course_ are all men)?

It may be just me, but I can't see the HR department in any state being okay
with that. And if it's not for interviews... what's it for?

~~~
JohnnyBrown
Are women allergic to hot tubs or something? I wasn't aware there was anything
particularly masculine about a hot tub.

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
Do you seriously not understand how a hot tub could be inappropriate as part
of a job interview?

Not as bad as a casting couch or a swimsuit competition, but still bad.
Obviously, indisputably bad. I just hope that part of the article was not
inspired by truth.

~~~
reledi
Perhaps the post was edited later, but they don't actually use it for
interviews (ever).

See the photo album:
[https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458....](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151055286951458.491055.603416457)

~~~
brown9-2
Read the paragraph again:

 _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...

...

I installed a hot tub (non-functioning) as a conference room in Facebook
Seattle. Interviews are never done in them.]_

~~~
reledi
I'm not sure what you're trying to point out to me. You're just confirming
what I wrote.

Philip Su, the blog author, installed the (non-functioning) hot tub and was
joking about it being used for interviews.

~~~
brown9-2
According to the blog post there is one they use for interviews occasionally
in New York and one in Seattle they do not use. So saying "they don't actually
use it for interviews (ever)" is incorrect according to this article.

~~~
reledi
The post also mentions that hot tub interviews at Facebook New York are
completely untrue. Then goes on to say what is true, which is that there's a
non-functioning hot tub in Facebook Seattle which is never used for
interviews.

To be completely sure, I contacted the author and will post another reply when
he verifies what's actually the case.

~~~
brown9-2
I think I misunderstood the "editor" note referring to "this is completely
untrue" - I interpreted it as saying it being illegal was untrue. Thanks for
the repeated clarification.

~~~
reledi
If you're still interested, the author replied: <http://i.imgur.com/LdZ51.png>

------
SqMafia
A not-so-subtle pretend recruiting/bragging piece, except perhaps it had the
reverse effect on me.

#1 reason I won't want to work at Facebook so I can avoid smug, not-so-witty,
immature douchebags like the author. With the stock price where it is, I guess
FB might have to resort to these kinds of tactics to attract talent these
days.

~~~
nestlequ1k
And they're smart enough to make it corporate policy to upvote their shitty HR
blog posts onto HN.

------
sbochins
It would have been funnier if he took a few jabs at facebook. Good satire
sometimes mixes actual insults with the satire. I don't know anything about
the author, but this reads like something written by a third rate facebook
recruiter.

------
utopkara
Why make it impossible to read more than two lines, if the point is to show
off how cool FB is?

It is fascinating, that I really want to learn the good things, but I cannot
get myself to read through the satire. Normally, I would be able to skim
through it; even that triggers a gag reaction. Anybody has the same problem?

~~~
thinkingisfun
yuppies and humour don't mix. people who can't laugh at themselves will never
be funny.

------
coenhyde
I actually agree with #1. Code is the enemy of all codebases. Though i'm not
arguing against the company culture that produces such productivity. It's just
more a case of "with great power comes great responsibility".

------
mda
Just a recruitment propaganda piece. And actually what #1 tells me: "Come to
Facebook, and have your share of ever growing giant smoking unmaintainable
pile of (php) code."

~~~
ojr
php is maintainable if you actually know it and not just put it on a resume,
Drupal runs the whitehouse.gov, Wordpress runs 15% of all sites and Facebook
has the largest member base in mankind history, PHP is not hieroglyphics it is
actually has roots from C...

------
xenen
I was way too naive to expect a Facebooker to not actually be drunk on the
cool-aid and actually bother to offer a comprehensive good/bad overview of FB.

~~~
SqMafia
The thing is that had he actually did that, I would have a more positive view
of working for FB. I would be impressed by the caliber of people who work
there -- people who're capable of parsing out the nuances of a given situation
and take a holistic view of the situation. Those people are the type who can
work through difficult situations and salvage a bad one. Instead, I walk away
with the impression that FB is full of immature toolbags.

~~~
xenen
Yup, pretty much. My view of FB prior to this was luke-warm because of their
contribution to open source, but it's just gone in the toilet.

~~~
hackinthebochs
So your entire view of facebook was changed based on one blog post? It seems
to me you were looking to justify your already negative view.

------
emmelaich
I'd pretty much assumed that it was tongue in cheek from the title. I'm
completely baffled as to how anyone can read more than a few lines without
realising it's not serious.

Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?!

~~~
jay_kyburz
Probably because the first 4 sound like they could be problems. Facebook is
super buggy, perhaps they do need to slow down. I think a lot of the feature
could be better designed. Zuck very well could too much of a micro manager.
And yeah, the ad's aren't working so perhaps the should be thinking about how
to make money.

------
bethly
#9 actually does sound hellish. The rest of it mostly comes across as snide,
since it's not actually exaggerated enough to be satire.

------
rweba
The point is (1) Is all this stuff true? How true? (2) Is it really all good?
Seems like they have a very free wheeling engineering culture. Are there
downsides to this? Is it sustainable as Facebook grows? From what I've heard
Google is considerably more controlled.

Also I must say that as a daily Facebook user I haven't noticed most of these
"thousands" of features being launched. They must be exceedingly subtle
features or else they bundle them up for an annual release (which is actually
a good idea).

------
corwinstephen
I can see why this guy got the job: he has the "I don't think the way you do"
mentality that is so typical of silicone valley employees, I'm sure they
probably loved him for it in his interview. That said, I think this guy is a
misfiring canon. He's getting mad at all the wrong people for what seems to be
his own dissatisfaction with not being in charge, ad he's getting mad at them
for doing most of the things that have caused such dysfunction in traditional
companies. Is like this guy's ideal work environment is an Innitech next to
Michael Bolton and Samir.

In my experience, companies that fight to boost their stock prices in the
short term end up making them plummet further in the long run. It's the
companies that have the restraint to accept a loss in order to build toward a
bigger reward that end up changing the world.

Look at Apple. They used to spend so much money on R and D that their stock
prices were miserable. But shit, they got the iPod out of it, and look where
it took them. If they had instead tried for short term profit, they probably
would have ended up putting out another garbage iMac. Or a Zune.

And finally, you can't be so shortsighted as to overlook the impact of
encouraging creativity an freedom. If you force beaurocracy on your employees
you might end up getting more done at first, but as they start to lose the
excitement that comes with being enabled and excited by a company that
believes in their ability to be autonomous, the quality of their work will
start to decline.

Short point: don't play devils advocate just because all your peers are stoked
to work for Facebook. And especially don't do it to get hits on your blog.

------
ahi
As a user, I'm not so sure #1 and #2 are haha funny. Things are being added
and changed constantly, reducing usability. Features seem to be broken or at
least temperamental all over the place.

------
marknutter
I realized it was satire at point #5. Well played.

------
msg
An interesting litmus test. I caught the satire at 3 but double taked when I
started wondering how this stuff would translate to my company of choice.

True story, two weeks ago my team launched a feature and decreased latency. We
hunted for an explanation and finally found out that some code that blew away
our feature was launched coincidentally at the same time. It was a pretty
unlikely scenario, and we have controls designed to prevent it, but it
happened anyway. I wonder how many collisions like this Facebook will have to
deal with as they expand.

I would vote for free healthy food though.

------
mparlane
I think this article needs to end in a ":P". I almost stopped reading at
number 3.

------
RollAHardSix
I think it's sarcasm. Well mostly, but with some truth splayed in (because
there probably are things that grate on the poster).

No way this is real:

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?

\- Some of us have to pay for our food by the way, all three meals, so if you
would kindly save the complaining (and grab seconds).

But also the bit about how it's code, code, code, ship, ship, ship, long-term
product view, the engineers are involved, the company looks for innovation
with the hack-a-thons. I do think it's mostly sarcasm. And with that,
disclaimer: I could be wrong =D

------
austenallred
Well done, combined efforts of Facebook's PR and HR departments. May you poach
all of the engineers from your greatest competitors.

------
datalus
How far you make it down the list before you realize it's a troll is the
quality of said troll... I give it a 4/10.

~~~
pirateking
0/10. I knew it was steaming troll feed before clicking the link. If the title
was "What I Hated..." instead of "What I Hate...", then we could have had some
sweet juicy content.

------
fchollet
Reverse linkbait, let's hope that's not the new PR trend.

~~~
philhippus
Judging from the success of this piece we have much more of it to which to
look forward.

------
tessr
#5 needed to come sooner. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this--clever angle!

------
rblion
"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."

Not surprised.

~~~
natrius
That probably does violate laws in several states.

------
blantonl
Jeeze.. Facebook has taken it on the chin since it's IPO. It is great to see
an insider's _positive_ perspective from a satirical perspective.

------
jyap
You know things are all good and well when a company is doing well and pre-IPO
but the truth is, Facebook will need to so major results quarter on quarter to
prevent the stock from tanking. A little less satire and a little more
business is what's needed. Given the state of Facebook's stock performance
post-IPO, I would say the joke is on him.

------
marcamillion
At first I wasn't sure if this was real - which is kinda scary. For those that
have ADD, if they read perhaps just the first 3 - 4 points they could come
away feeling like this is a real gripe about FB.

Not sure it was executed as best as it could.

Maybe this is one example of something that should have been 'peer-checked'
before pushing to production.

Just saying.

------
pspeter3
Sounds pretty terrible to work there. On a serious note, it's awesome how much
stuff gets converted from hackathons

~~~
JasonYang
Used to think this is a great idea. But reality told me this could lead to
chaos (way to much chaos), especially when the company is going through a
finanancial crisis (hopefully not the case for FB for a really really long
time). For most of the companies, leadership should be vital. Things like
hackathons are luxury game rich people allow to play.

~~~
pspeter3
I was thinking more that you let your employees come up with new ideas every
once in a while. Like Google 20% time or LinkedIn HackDays.

------
thomashillard
It's important to create an awesome work environment. But in my experience
it's usually a trade off, the downside of which can be having diminished
social life outside of the office. You're also probably expected to sacrifice
some compensation and the deal tends to be in favor of the employer.

------
charlieok
11\. The stock price is too low

The stock has been sliding in recent months. This sucks because stock options
granted to people being recruited now will have a higher potential upside than
similar grants made around the time of the IPO. New recruits should be the
have-nots on the totem pole.

------
stephenlambe
turns out Su actually got the Seattle office a (waterless) hot tub
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleys...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2018545316_check_out_the_new_conference.html)

------
nestlequ1k
Really? This guy is a tool. Happy that he's scored points with his manager
though.

------
nuclear_eclipse
As a recent hire, I have to agree completely with everything he said. It's
such a terrible working environment that I just might have to stay here for an
inordinate amount of time so I can continue to complain about it.

------
pedalpete
It's tough to disagree when I don't actually have experience working there,
but there are a few telltale signals that the author doesn't know what he's
talking about.

Though I'm also wondering if the whole thing is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek
(if so, I'm barely getting it).

#3 "Zuck is too involved" states that rather than planning the long-term
strategy of the company, the CEO should be "pumping up the stock price". and
#4, too much focus on short-term.

That is the problem with most other companies, too much focus on short term,
not thinking long-term about the company. A CEO's job is not to promote the
company to investors, it's to move the business forward. That is done through
products and marketing, not by 'pumping the stock price'.

~~~
achompas
This article is clearly tongue-in-cheek. "Too much free food" is a dead
giveaway.

~~~
chii
> "Too much free food"

that might actually be bad - eating too much has been shown to be detrimental
to the health of a programmer who hardly moves all day...

------
languagehacker
"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?"

Is he complaining that he's getting too fat from eating at Facebook's buffet?

------
dj2stein9
I've had enough unbearable, corporate, cubicle, meeting-every-afternoon jobs
that this list makes Facebook sound like a wonderful place to work.

------
justindocanto
I got about 5 points in before i realized this is actually 100% sarcasm. You
had me pretty worked up for a minute there.

------
thesash
I can't believe the comments on that blog post are real. Apparently sarcasm
isn't a language everybody speaks.

------
tehwebguy
Look for the comment by Zechmann on the article, whoosh.

> 4\. Do not introduce banner ads that’s moving waaayy backwards...

------
DanBC
This explains the hideous broken interface, with options spread everywhere and
auto-resetting choices.

------
ltcoleman
I like the sarcasm and wished I worked there. Argghhh devs just want to code
and be trusted to code.

------
Kishin
why is this on the front page of HN?

------
tjholowaychuk
not to mention the only portion of the site I use (photos) is couldn't
possibly be worse :p

------
nlz1
"Decisions made by interns" = probably why FB is constantly raping user
privacy. I hope.

------
syassami
I was thinking to myself the whole time, "this is awesome" until it hit me

------
Empro
Absolutely hilarious.

------
ijobs-ly
"What I hate about those working at Facebook"

------
jfoutz
wrt #8, why no ads on mobile? isn't that, like, where all your money comes
from?

------
sjg007
This guy is being sarcastic.

------
grahammather
I see what you did there

------
timrpeterson
fb culture is toolbagish

------
franzus
> specifically Zuck’s idealism (perhaps even naïveté) that focusing on
> building great products will lead to solid long-term businesses

Nothing against that. Also I find it a good thinh that he's still involved in
the products ...

But what good products does he think does Facebook make? Quality does not
really come to mind when I think about Facebook. This is common among my peers
too. To us Facebook is the place where soccer moms get ripped off by clicking
on pixel cows.

That's also why I'd never work for them. It's something my hacker honor
wouldn't allow.

~~~
thinkingisfun
When someone talks, with a straight face, about

\- "building great products" \- "solving interesting problems" \- "changing
the world" and/or "transforming the way people view/do X"

It's pretty obvious they're just repeating what they learned in sophistry
class. Or to paraphrase Zuckerberg: "they actually _mean_ that. dumb fucks."

------
jason3
Too bad I don't use Facebook.

