
Ex-Facebook engineer mocks the culture and jokes about how he was fired - waitwhatt
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/ex-facebook-engineer-patrick-shyu-makes-fun-of-company-on-youtube.html
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hashberry
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-brF6SUXbns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-brF6SUXbns)

Brutal and hilarious. Good deadpan. "Without a doubt Facebook is one of the
best offices I've worked in ... open office is like working in a warehouse,
food is good, they have decent coffee."

~~~
harryf
Wow. There is so much stuff here on the borderline of dystopian nightmare,
e.g. how he describes how [http://work.facebook.com](http://work.facebook.com)
get's used as a popularity contest for decision making. It's almost exactly
what David Eggers was describing in The Circle. Suddenly all those boring
corporate workplaces pushing stuff in and out of an RDBMS look a lot more
attractive...

~~~
JacKTrocinskI
I work at a place that pushes stuff in and out of an RDBMS, life is good here.

~~~
fjp
I just interviewed at a small startup, but one that has real customers and
hasn't needed to raise VC money. Some customers them millions to develop their
platform features, others pay them just to use the platform as it is.

No thrashing around for product-market fit, changing goals every week.

Everyone I talked to seemed so... calm. It was surreal. At my current startup
job people seem to take a weird sort of pride in how frazzled and overwhelmed
they are.

~~~
ethbro
If you're in debt and not making money, at least you can have the decency to
appear frazzled and overwhelmed...

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Shaddox
In my experience of working for corporations, all of them tend to be cult-
like. Office politics: bringing down others to cut ahead, cutting deals,
favoritism, etc. are the norm and your work and quality of it matters very
little in the long run as long as you can deliver something on time.

The difference lies in perception. Or to put it more elegantly, if you like
(or at least can tolerate) that specific flavor of Kool-Aid.

~~~
claudiawerner
This has been noticed for a while now, to the point where there are various
theories as to how corporations (and companies in general) are able to
persuade people not only to do a service in exchange for money, but to adopt
the desires of the company for themselves, to see "a job well done", and go
above and beyond, even sacrificing compensation for some time for the company.
It's fascinating from a social psychological perspective; Frederic Lordon has
some recent work on it.

~~~
HenryBemis
I've worked in large corporations most of my life. Each is its own ecosystem.
The top dogs use their staff as minions. The tough minions get an attaboy. The
weak (normal humans with a soul) leave. It is a self cleaning/adjusting
system, no need to fire anyone, most people quit for softer/calmer/humane
companies.

In these large companies the #1 employee is the one who crushed everyone else
on their path. No strange that many high-performers are sociopaths.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> In these large companies the #1 employee is the one who crushed everyone
> else on their path. No strange that many high-performers are sociopaths.

I often argue with my female colleagues who see this as an aspect of
patriarchy culture since these sociopaths tend to be men. I disagree because
their victims have no gender, these people simply don't care who they're
mistreating. Nevertheless, I met many women who perceive it as a huge gender
issue.

~~~
claudiawerner
Although I'm not sure if what they're saying is true, it's entirely possible
to be an aspect of patriarchal culture _and_ affect both men and women. For
instance, feminists argue that "toxic masculinity" is harmful to both women
_and_ men. Nevertheless, in my experience most people are averse to saying
women have masculine traits; if a male is a strong leader, typically he's
described as commanding, dominating, effective, strong-headed, whereas women
in that position may be described as "bossy".

As such, if it is an aspect of patriarchal culture, it is more accurate to say
that it is a patriarchal attitude that both men and women adopt, rather than
it being something essentially "manly".

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I could agree with you, but why call this culture "patriarchal"? I'd call it
"animalistic" if anything. "Patriarchal" involves male/female duality and
ascribes certain features to men and women that they might not currently be
comfortable having. If someone is dominating, let's just call this person
"dominating", not "having male features." If we go down the rabbit hole of
patriarchy, in the end sooner or later someone starts accusing men for all
evil, and this is one of the greatest misunderstandings of our age.

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fareesh
I've been following this guy for around 1 year or so. Really funny guy, the
content is enjoyable more than informative. The moment he said "politics" in
his last video I hoped he wouldn't be getting a visit from the activist press,
now it looks like he's on the radar and at risk of getting the pewdiepie
treatment

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Oras
Not far much from what he's doing on Youtube, isn't? Posting clickbait titles,
crazy thumbnails .. etc to get views, likes and comments to rank up.

I'm not defending Facebook nor attacking Shye, I just want to say that rules
are pretty much the same for different games so why criticising one and
accepting the other?

~~~
Juliate
Because in one instance, it's a one-man-show, in the other, it's a giant
international company?

~~~
lasagnaphil
Let us celebrate this small moment of poignant joy of him being able to give a
big “fuck you” gesture to Facebook, before he realizes that the very platform
that he was able to express that sentiment is actually owned by Google and he
hasn’t really escaped the wrath of Silicon Valley tech companies at all.
(Maybe he’s even worse off than before; his labor as a Youtuber isn’t
protected by any law at all, and he can lose his job at any moment with a
touch of a Google employee’s algorithm.)

~~~
bigzyg33k
I mean, I reckon he's well aware of this, given he was a tech lead at youtube

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techer
Watching a friend of mine land her dream job and imbibe the KoolAid has been
very interesting...

~~~
mav3rick
What about the KoolAid that HN drinks against anything Facebook, Google ?
Biased takes without even reading the article.

~~~
high_derivative
Lots of HN readers (including myself) have worked at FAANGs.

The cultural characterisation seems completely accurate to me.

Everybody plays multiple games of performative open plan activity, pushing
other people to join their projects, all with the friendly face of 'make the
world a better place' while counting their RSUs.

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EstoniaTechLead
Love that dude's humor sense. So cute, serious and satiric at the same time.

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djmips
“It’s kind of this game for people to get as many likes and comments on their
posts,” he said. “If you’re into popularity contests, if you thrive in that
type of environment then you’ll probably do really well.” - Well that's
exactly the game he's into with YouTube... so then why did he get fired?

~~~
beardedman
Producing original content != sycophantic ladder climbing.

The means might look the same on the surface, but very different beasts under
the hood.

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classified
He's almost as good at selling advertisements as Facebook.

~~~
fasicle
I actually think the way he advertises his products in his videos is pretty
good, he does it so unashamedly

~~~
basch
Facebook ads arent placed as ironically to make them so funny. He segues from
"facebook is a nightmare" to "and if its your dreamjob this company can get
you the skills." All without insulting the company hes advertising, and
somewhat implying that it would be better to use skills learned there to get a
job anywhere but facebook. That kind of added humor through juxtaposition is
not popular.

Its like that Kris Lindahl radio ad that starts "are you sick of Kris Lindhal
ads? You could change the station, but wed be playing it there too!!"

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ReDeiPirati
hahaha, I love the Tech Lead is the top class master troll!

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tester346
Basing on his milion videos that use "ex googler/facebook" in title to lure
people, how he ain't just programming celebrity?

Why should I care about his opinion?

~~~
harryf
Check out his LinkedIn profile -
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickshyu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickshyu)
\- from the projects he describes there, seems like he can back it up. And
what's wrong with telling people you're an "ex googler/facebook"? If that's
the experience you have to share, fair enough.

~~~
tester346
There's nothing wrong with telling people you're an "ex googler", but
mentioning it whenever you can is quite... weird?

I mean from Youtuber that wants to get viewers perspective it's perfectly
reasonable, but generally it looks not nice for me.

~~~
toroszo
Here's a good starting point for understanding what's going on:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_gag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_gag)

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zbuf
There's something ironic about the criticism of Facebook internally as a
popularity contest, then making $500,000/year from advertising on your popular
YouTube channel.

~~~
dominicr
I heard it as a criticism of deciding work decisions based on popularity, with
product choices, technical implementations, etc... based on facebook likes,
not real deciding factors. Which is very different from growing a YouTube
audience.

~~~
gorzynsk
What works for gaining viewers on YouTube will not work when you have to
decide on highly technical manners in software development.

For one purpose likes are useful, for other purposes they are absurd.

