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.
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.
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.
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.
When they would need the spirit in order to be happy, but some of the spirit isn't in there anymore
https://media.istockphoto.com/id/482385250/photo/shattered-brown-beer-bottle.jpg
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"
a buffet of HR-solutionism like resilience training, pulse surveys, and the dreaded team-building exercise.
Well said, and soo true! 😅
Couldn't have happened to a nicer boss or company.
If I was Mark, I would require all company meetings to happen in the Metaverse, so I could change all their sad faces to happy smily faces.
Why have sad conversations when you can have "hey boss I think you suck and I quit! 😄😄"
They killed the Metaverse a few weeks ago, so he's going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: pizza on Friday and mandatory team-building exercises.
zuck learned enough about humanity, he does need them anymore.
No compassion for people working for the evil mega corps
In my experience, no one working for Meta does so for “spirit.” There are two kinds of people there:
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.
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.
Aw did I hit a nerve?
I'm done trying to share perspectives with fascists and fascist supporters and apologists.
If you work for Raytheon, fuck you. If you work for Palantir, fuck you. If you work for Meta, fuck you too.
I'm about the least close minded person you know. I've just learned my lesson when it comes to these people.
You didn’t touch a nerve. I’m not close to anyone there and couldn’t really care less. You just revealed profound ignorance. We don’t have perspectives to share because you don’t have one. Your point of view is made up of narratives you’ve seen other people articulate online, and I’ve read the same stuff. I’m not an apologist because my point of view is better informed and more complex than your own. Maybe you’ll grow to a point of understanding the difference. I hope you do. Because having life and death certainty about things you aren’t directly informed about is a dangerous thing.
The article without Yahoo: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/meta-zuckerberg-workers-morale-layoffs
@sanitation@lemmy.today, could you edit the post to use this link instead?
Updated. I don't follow why yahoo link is bad but if it makes people happier
Thanks!
A big reason for me is that people can tell who the source is more easily, instead of seeing a generic Yahoo link. If someone is blocking or flagging a particular domain through their app / front-end, then it won't work for a yahoo link.
Also while I don't think Yahoo is doing something illegal, my gut says that these articles are harming the smaller news orgs. When Yahoo/MSN publishes the full article, the user likely doesn't notice who the actual news org is, likely doesn't go to the real news orgs website, the news org has a harder time building a brand / reputation, and over time they might become even more dependent on Yahoo to stay afloat. A lot of the time when I look up a story, the yahoo page ranks above the actual original source, and that feels wrong to me
One can only hope worker‘s spirits keep declining in big tech.
So, mission accomplished?
He looks less evil, with those eyes.
And he doesn't give a f$ck.
Why would he, zuckerborg is the only android in the house, emotions make humans weak.
Zuckerberg has objectively made terrible decisions after terrible decisions.
He’s so insecure he FOMO piles on one bandwagon, and jumps to the next the second he feels a little nervous. After Facebook, won’t commit to anything, even good teams.
…Yet he’s still in charge.
It’s mind boggling to me. He feels zero consequence from any of his failures, and somehow the stock market rewards him for it, too. I guess because Facebook is still Facebook, but still.
Admits or boasts?
Zuck'll do well in the Nazi New World Order, if the Nazi's take over, that is.
"BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!" - Every Sociopathic Oligarch
My inner monologue is just elevator music.
Boo hoo hoo for developers making 350k$, boo hoo hoo, I really feel your pain. Do you want some ice cream to make you feel better ?
You know you're helping you enemy with this attitude. You do you but that's what you're doing
Boo hoo hoo my enemy as a response
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
