
Police sound all-clear after Facebook evacuation Tuesday night - coloneltcb
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_25324527/facebook-headquarters-menlo-park-evacuated-tuesday-evening
======
vijucat
Some employee must have phoned in a bomb threat after becoming sick of the
peer pressure to have the "awesome Chef-prepared dinner" on campus, which is
just a ruse to extract up to 2 hours of extra work per day.

Or maybe to put off one more mind-numbing, health-destroying caffeine-and-
pizza-and-beer-overdose "hackathon". In PHP. Actually, it's probably just the
PHP.

[http://chinpen.net/blog/2013/02/hackathons-are-bad-for-
you/](http://chinpen.net/blog/2013/02/hackathons-are-bad-for-you/)

~~~
rahij
Wow. That was harsh.

~~~
jrockway
Not harsh, bitter.

~~~
vijucat
Nope, I dislike the culture, that's all.

This guy on reddit explained it much better than I can ever hope to:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/2026bq/reduce_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/2026bq/reduce_the_workweek_to_30_hours_nyt/cfzlgiw)

Excerpted here so that you don't have to jump a link, no rights claimed:

"I work as a programmer and in my jurisdiction people in the IT industry are
exempt from overtime laws. Even if there are no pressing deadlines (and there
usually are since unrealistic time frames are seen as a motivator) working a
standard 40 hour week is like wearing the minimum amount of flair at
Chotski's. If you don't stay a little later or work the occasional evening or
weekend from home then you must not be a Real Programmer.

What is a Real Programmer, you might ask? A Real Programmer is someone who
loves programming! They love it so much that it's what they spend all their
time doing. In fact, a Real Programmer loves programming so much that they're
happy just to have the chance to do it. Paying them is just a formality
because the Real Programmer doesn't really consider it "work". You know a
programmer isn't a Real Programmer when they don't volunteer to work 60 to 80
hour weeks (for no extra monetary compensation, remember) because it's "fun".
All they really need in thanks is a company t-shirt and the occasional slice
of pizza on those late nights.

And you know what? Those Real Programmers exist. They work ridiculous hours,
don't expect to get paid for doing the work of two or three people, and they
absolutely love it. They'll have conversations with managers about how lazy
people who leave the office at 5pm are and how they just can't understand that
mindset.

Then there are the people who try to be Real Programmers because that's what's
expected. It permeates the industry's culture. You hear it from fellow
programmers, managers, and investors. If you want to succeed as a programmer
you have to at least look like a Real Programmer even if you're not one at
heart. So you get people working evenings and weekends just for appearances
and they start to burnout. Their code quality suffers and the code base
becomes buggy and difficult to maintain. Longer hours are needed just to get
the same amount of work done and it becomes a feedback loop of bad code,
longer hours to fix the bad code, and burnout which makes things even worse.

Personally I'd love to work a 40 hour week without it hurting my career and
professional reputation. Programming is fun, sure, but I want to have a life
outside of it. I want to get out of the office at a reasonable hour and stop
thinking about work until the next day. I want some time to cook healthy
meals, exercise, see my friends, go on dates, write a book, learn a new
(human) language, etc. In short, I want the freedom to live my life. I don't
want to work merely for the chance to survive to keep working until 40 years
from now when I can maybe stop and think about doing something I really love
in the few years I have left.

On the one hand I must sound pretty lazy. There are people happy to work 80
hour weeks for 40 hours of pay. Why should they not be allowed to do that just
because that's not what I want to do? What about freedom of choice? On the
other hand, why should there be a culture of exploitation in this industry
just because of the few individuals who, frankly, don't seem to realize or
care that they're dedicating their lives to making someone else rich while
seeing relatively little of that money themselves?

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. And this kind of thing has
caused problems before. I just really wish we lived in a society where we
didn't define ourselves so strongly by our day jobs and where working
ourselves to death wasn't seen as a virtue."

~~~
Moru
I guess the market isn't the best judge of what is good? We still have a few
places left here in Sweden and we do understand english pretty well. Welcome
to a more healthy work environment. Btw, I still have about 200 days of daddy-
leave left with 80% payment and work expects me to use it all or I'm not a
good parent. :-)

------
sytelus
There are very harsh laws against anonymously calling police for bomb threats.
I remember a case of a very smart business man who was getting late to airport
and called the airline saying that the flight he was supposed to be boarding
on has a bomb. Eventually call got traced to him and if I remember correctly
he was sentenced to jail for 14 years.

------
userbinator
> Facebook evacuation

At first glance, this conjured up mental images of users worldwide being told
to log out of their accounts and not use the site until further notice.

~~~
72deluxe
Think of the amount of people that would return to their lives and do
something productive!

(I say this whilst typing a comment on HN; the irony is not lost on me)

------
gargarplex
Is it bad that I was kinda hoping that Zuck finally had his Scorpio moment?

~~~
morgante
What does that mean?

~~~
tedkalaw
It's a reference to Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, a character who was
simultaneously the perfect boss and an evil genius.

[http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Hank_Scorpio](http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Hank_Scorpio)

------
samstave
" __ _Last week, Menlo Park 's city council voted last week to allow the
company to pay about $200,000 a year to the city to fund a full-time police
officer who would be stationed near the new campus._ __"

They have tons of ex SS/Mil working there...

Plus Menlo Park is mandating plenty of cameras to monitor every single license
plate passing its new building...

FB has plenty of security.

~~~
rafekett
when I went for an OSS sprint it was completely locked down. the security was
very disruptive -- we really weren't allowed to leave one floor of one
building, so it was pretty difficult to get any kind of focus room even for
half an hour. I was working on a facebook project (one that saves them tons of
$$$ at that) and we couldn't leave the building to go to a conference room
even when escorted by two engineers.

------
yeukhon
I think someone who read about FB "donating" money for extra police officers
decided to "prank" FB and the county police department. The timing is just too
precise. One has to question whether FB is really under any threat and whether
internal security is enough or not. i spoke before that if FB couldn't keep
strangers entering the building or walking pass the campus, that's the fault
of the security contractor.

I think there are only two real threats: data thief and employees' mental
health under pressure.

~~~
DrJ
and counter offers!

------
soup10
_Dons tinfoil hat_ Obviously a distraction created so that the NSA could
thoroughly bug the place.

------
bradhe
Sort of...a little bit...

------
mdakin
Major "national security asset." <cough, cough, puke>

~~~
protomyth
Did I miss that phrase in the article or was there edits?

~~~
mdakin
No, I would have cited it. Rhetoric. I'm starting to realize that my zeitgeist
has diverged from the zeitgeist of hacker news such that my comments are not
understood by the majority of the readers here. C'est la vie. In-person
interaction is best.

~~~
hueving
>I'm starting to realize that my zeitgeist has diverged

How so? You made something up and then was subsequently disgusted with it. How
is anyone supposed to follow that?

------
goldenkey
I guess someone phoned in a Facebomb _removes sunglasses_

