In an effort to lift everybody’s spirits, Zuckerberg offered to host a company-wide hackathon an attempt at a lighthearted diversion that landed with a thud among employees.
lmao “Hey, you guys wanna work more, but ‘for fun’?”
I used to work for a company that did them. Your usual deliverables would be paused, including meetings.
It wasn’t “more”. They were great. Most of our internal tooling was prototyped that way, and that tooling was super awesome… because it directly solved the real issues we had in our processes.
My current company is “you can during the designated hackathon events, but you still have to do everything you usually would”. Which is absurd because it means that we don’t always have the option to work late for free.
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Good hackathons don’t mean more work. They should carve out time for people to participate. However if the systems those employees are maintaining need constant work then you can’t carve out time for a hackathon because the systems will go down otherwise. It sounds like Facebook is doing the latter. A one off event will also not improve morale, just like a pizza party won’t on its own.
Hackathons are not working more. They’re supposed to be a liberal period to work on whatever seems interesting to the workers. In Meta’s early days, they were a big part of their culture and Zuck in particular fed on them.
I don’t expect everyone to know anything about Silicon Valley hackathons, but no, they’re not just “more work.” However when people are already crushed by what’s going on at work, they don’t have a lot of creative energy just looking for an outlet.
It used to be a pretty big deal to land a job at Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft or Netflix as a dev. If you were fresh out of college and saw your friend update their linkedin to show that they’ve been employed in one of these companies, it fucking meant something.
I don’t know if it’s just my perception, but when I see a guy I know working for Big Tech, it’s just fucking disgusting. Being a part of a machine that’s actively contributing to the literal downfall of society as we know it, pushing us into the depths of technofeudalism and corporate fascism.
Yeah that shit ain’t cool no more. I remember seeing a guy I tutored land a job at Facebook even before getting his master’s. I was pretty envious.
Not anymore.
Probably doesn’t help he replaced himself with an AI bot clone and disappeared most likely to his shelter too. Like people gotta be thinking “wait I’m supposed to still work when this guy is MIA now”
if you are still working at meta, you are there for the money, even tho it’s one of the most harmful companies in the world for our society and our planet. If your morale is low because some coworkers got fired, well, fuck you. You are part of the cancer of this planet, so if you all get laid off and meta is burned to the ground, I won’t be happier.
I bet there are at least some working there who have their heads in the sand about how bad a company it is and just want to believe they’re good people doing good work. I don’t think many people want to admit to themselves that they’re just doing something for money. But yeah… the proverbial rock they live under must be mountain-sized.
way to shift blame
Who is shifting blame here? I’m just saying that they are part of the hell, not victims. Meta is rotten to the core, and if you work there, it means you are ok with what they do, hence the lack of sympathy.
eh, you know what, fair enough!
How can their spirits be crushed when he told them to be happy?
He should ask AI what to do.
He obviously needs to lay off more people.
If he lays off all the unhappy people, happiness will go up!
Layoffs will continue until morale improves.
In my experience, no one working for Meta does so for “spirit.” There are two kinds of people there:
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Extremely smart and business savvy, there to make lots of money and pretty good at doing so. These people tend to be a little older and more cutthroat. They don’t have “spirit” to be crushed. They will stay or leave on financials alone.
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Younger crowd, largely straight from college, working across product, engineering, and other operations roles. These folks don’t have “spirit” per se - they have operated on large paychecks and a high energy work environment full of the brainy types they roomed with at college. A posh office full of free amenities is half of what kept them going and the other half was youthful hormones fueled by each other and a general sense of being on top of the world by virtue of working there.
THAT last part has been crushed, but it is not what I would call “spirit” or “soul.” More like a collective delusion that fed on its own momentum. Like anything else so divorced from reality, it was always going to crash. It’s amazing they kept it going as long as they did.
The saddest thing is how nobody in either of those groups ever seems to have even the most basic principles or ethics. If they did, they wouldn’t be working for Meta.
Oh well, you should actually talk to some of them sometime. A lot of very bright, otherwise decent kids go straight from college to Meta and they think they’ll be doing good. One guy I knew spent his entire job working at keeping ISIS from using Facebook to organize. He didn’t go home at night thinking he was a terrible person.
Of course Meta is just a caricature of an evil corporation from a distance but it becomes more complex the closer you get to it.
With the great reality distortion field they had going there, the problem for a lot of staff was not ethics but perception. They were good people thinking they were doing good work but lacked perspective (not ethics themselves).
Of course someone can say “everyone should know FB is evil, there’s no excuse” but this is a classic case of “I can’t imagine why anyone would ever think something different than what I think.” Which, in itself, is just a lack of perspective. Funny how basically all humans suffer from that. You can chip away at this problem by asking yourself “why would a reasonable person think that?” instead of just going around saying “well then you’re stupid / evil” anytime anything outside your POV comes along.
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Couldn’t have happened to a nicer boss or company.
He looks less evil, with those eyes.
Zuckerberg has objectively made terrible decisions after terrible decisions.
He’s so insecure he FOMO piles on one bandwagon, and jumps to the next the second he feels a little nervous. After Facebook, won’t commit to anything, even good teams.
…Yet he’s still in charge.
It’s mind boggling to me. He feels zero consequence from any of his failures, and somehow the stock market rewards him for it, too. I guess because Facebook is still Facebook, but still.
No compassion for people working for the evil mega corps
And he doesn’t give a f$ck.
Why would he, zuckerborg is the only android in the house, emotions make humans weak.
One can only hope worker‘s spirits keep declining in big tech.
Zuck’ll do well in the Nazi New World Order, if the Nazi’s take over, that is.
So, mission accomplished?
My inner monologue is just elevator music.
Admits or boasts?
