It sounds like these people would otherwise be laid off if they were not parked in this department instead. I imagine they are quite unhappy, but getting paid 200k+ to do tasks that are usually gig work is hardly the most heart wrenching story in this tech market.
If your comment is intended to convey sympathy on these workers, I think you're going to have a difficult time finding folks that align with you.
If your comment is intended to remind folks that these workers can simply resign of their own free will to find meaningful and dignified work at a different employer, I think you're going to have an easy time finding folks that align with you.
Eh, maybe. It's not clear that some won't be returned to their old roles eventually. Personally, I think I'd prefer the layoff with severance over this kind of transfer.
> “It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
May I be blessed with a life so comfortable that I would be able to complain in such a way.
Free food? Free massages? Low effort work? High salary? High social status? For a while I knew someone who lived in oakland and refused to commute across the bridge to the office because they couldn't be bothered.
The same people who bully the ones that actually do the work for not being fit for “company culture”. I had a similar experience before where I over delivered every task, but that wasn’t enough because I refused to join pizza parties and other “team building” activities.
I want to work with people I like and who's company I enjoy; it's not all about executing the task with maximum efficiency. I can replace you with a solid robot worker before I can find another awesome human.
You can come back now. The pizza parties and other "team building" activities are gone. Until they realize they could record them as training content for the robot AI models.
Due to "politics" my teams main responsibility went from developing ai agents to just testing out a chat it developed by another team.
When you spend 8 hours a day doing mind numbing tasks, tasks that won't help you land another job and is constantly under stress of being fired, its bad for your mental health
I was kinda surprised by that. I thought that people working there we're just conformists which have the FAANG money and are generally not bothered by company's actions.
People I read about in the article sounds like spoiled babies.
Yea isn’t that basically all “normal” work? You do tasks and have little ownership or fun.
It’s also obviously not “literally” the gulag. Do these children know what a gulag is and what happens there? It’s quite offensive to equate their luxurious spoiled lives with people getting tortured and murdered over politics.
I was never sentenced to the Gulag, but based on what little I know, it's pretty different than one these people are experiencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
They're taking people who were skilled in product dev, employed to be product dev, and then assigning them data entry and telling them to suck it up or get leave.
They're not isolated... But they're no longer doing what they were trained to do, what they were employed to do, or what they can eek some satisfaction out of. Sure, they're talking with explosive terms - but they're also social media employees. That goes with the territory.
Reminds me of when you hear that an asshole in your extended social circle is dating another asshole and you think "Fantastic! They're not hurting good people anymore"
Seriously, these people have zero solidarity with their fellow humans. If they had any they wouldn't be working at one of the most evil companies on the planet.
Indeed. Zero sympathy for someone helping creating this man his slop machine.
It's kinda funny that their main problem is that they don't have enough work.
>“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
>Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding that Meta stop a recently launched initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data.
>Some employees are being asked to finish two tasks per week. These involve generating complex software coding problems to help AI scientists better train and evaluate the performance of the latest frontier models.
My management (not Meta) is choosing to bribe people to complete their 'mandated' training. I suppose I shouldn't be so torn up, could clearly be worse.
The "soul's crushing work" they are crying about is actually not enough of work or not enough interesting work. Not the sole volume. They sound like angry kids.
“I joined this fine company to help accelerate the destruction of society, and now instead I’m expected to help it destroy society in a _different way_ by creating puzzles for AI. Now my morale is low. Poor me. “
We just came out of a period in which solving CRUD apps and cat pictures at high scale chose winners of the whole economy. Now we're in a big mess with them thinking they're capable of doing much more difficult things.
If I had taken a Reddit/HN approved job instead of working at FAANGs for 20 years, I’d be looking at another 20 years of soul crushing work. Instead, I’m retired. Sure you have to roll your eyes at the corporate nonsense sometimes but I’m happy I made that trade-off.
It sounds like these people would otherwise be laid off if they were not parked in this department instead. I imagine they are quite unhappy, but getting paid 200k+ to do tasks that are usually gig work is hardly the most heart wrenching story in this tech market.
I think everyone deserves to participate in meaningful and dignified work.
That is why I have no sympathy to spare for anyone who chose to work for Zuckerberg's social toilet.
Yes, they certainly should have taken one of the many other jobs that are widely available right now.
They can all get that if they want it! At a very nice but not as high wage.
If your comment is intended to convey sympathy on these workers, I think you're going to have a difficult time finding folks that align with you.
If your comment is intended to remind folks that these workers can simply resign of their own free will to find meaningful and dignified work at a different employer, I think you're going to have an easy time finding folks that align with you.
Plenty of entry level positions looking for the experience these 'engineers' claim to have.
Woah…they’re paid WAY more than $200k for this.
Eh, maybe. It's not clear that some won't be returned to their old roles eventually. Personally, I think I'd prefer the layoff with severance over this kind of transfer.
> “It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
May I be blessed with a life so comfortable that I would be able to complain in such a way.
How come people these days treat jobs like its a social gathering?
Free food? Free massages? Low effort work? High salary? High social status? For a while I knew someone who lived in oakland and refused to commute across the bridge to the office because they couldn't be bothered.
The same people who bully the ones that actually do the work for not being fit for “company culture”. I had a similar experience before where I over delivered every task, but that wasn’t enough because I refused to join pizza parties and other “team building” activities.
I want to work with people I like and who's company I enjoy; it's not all about executing the task with maximum efficiency. I can replace you with a solid robot worker before I can find another awesome human.
You can come back now. The pizza parties and other "team building" activities are gone. Until they realize they could record them as training content for the robot AI models.
Working with others only works if you work with others
Due to "politics" my teams main responsibility went from developing ai agents to just testing out a chat it developed by another team.
When you spend 8 hours a day doing mind numbing tasks, tasks that won't help you land another job and is constantly under stress of being fired, its bad for your mental health
Sounds like you already have the skills to automate your new responsibilities.
A day in the life of Ivan Slopisovich :'(
I was kinda surprised by that. I thought that people working there we're just conformists which have the FAANG money and are generally not bothered by company's actions.
People I read about in the article sounds like spoiled babies.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/725/
Yea isn’t that basically all “normal” work? You do tasks and have little ownership or fun.
It’s also obviously not “literally” the gulag. Do these children know what a gulag is and what happens there? It’s quite offensive to equate their luxurious spoiled lives with people getting tortured and murdered over politics.
I was never sentenced to the Gulag, but based on what little I know, it's pretty different than one these people are experiencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
The emphatic literally has been in use for over 300 years, it's time to let it go
You do usually get to interact with coworkers at some points if the day though? Are they isolating them during breaks or something weird here
They're taking people who were skilled in product dev, employed to be product dev, and then assigning them data entry and telling them to suck it up or get leave.
They're not isolated... But they're no longer doing what they were trained to do, what they were employed to do, or what they can eek some satisfaction out of. Sure, they're talking with explosive terms - but they're also social media employees. That goes with the territory.
I wish these losers the worst. Working for zuck is its own reward.
Reminds me of when you hear that an asshole in your extended social circle is dating another asshole and you think "Fantastic! They're not hurting good people anymore"
Seriously, these people have zero solidarity with their fellow humans. If they had any they wouldn't be working at one of the most evil companies on the planet.
Indeed. Zero sympathy for someone helping creating this man his slop machine. It's kinda funny that their main problem is that they don't have enough work.
>“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
>Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding that Meta stop a recently launched initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data.
>Some employees are being asked to finish two tasks per week. These involve generating complex software coding problems to help AI scientists better train and evaluate the performance of the latest frontier models.
That's how I imagine the Gulag too of course.
The Gulag AIpeono is such a letdown compared to the original.
At least they have the decency to not compare themselves to chattel slaves.
I assume that’s a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
https://archive.is/NndS8
Stop glamorizing the grind and start glamorizing whatever this is.
They should rotate all employees between divisions.
When done creating AI puzzles they can enjoy a stint in the Content Review team.
This alone should keep anyone away from using React.
React, the web framework that’s now 100% independent of Facebook/Meta. Not sure anyone should listen to this suggestion.
So they "draft" their own workers to create toy examples to train/evaluate LLAMA performance? Is this a temporary role/rotation? That seems goofy.
Temporary in the sense that it's a stop or two away from getting laid off.
Agreed that's the only way this makes any sense.
what is the expectation that they'd had such a shitty job and quit instead avoiding any potential legal potholes?
It feels like, when the history of Facebook is written, it will be clear that the company destroyed itself.
Birds of a feather flock together.
My management (not Meta) is choosing to bribe people to complete their 'mandated' training. I suppose I shouldn't be so torn up, could clearly be worse.
Is the child they hired for 250 million dollars still there?
Who do you think created the "gulag"?
Soul-crushing work for a soul-crushing company. Hard to feel much sympathy.
The "soul's crushing work" they are crying about is actually not enough of work or not enough interesting work. Not the sole volume. They sound like angry kids.
“I joined this fine company to help accelerate the destruction of society, and now instead I’m expected to help it destroy society in a _different way_ by creating puzzles for AI. Now my morale is low. Poor me. “
Sign me up, I will gladly give up my blue collar hell to torture an AI to failure.
TBT to one of the best comments about the Meta situation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47881678
funny when they're being dog food their product suddenly it's not cool, woe is me. u reap what u sow facebookers!
Sounds like the Metaverse is moving right along according to plan.
We just came out of a period in which solving CRUD apps and cat pictures at high scale chose winners of the whole economy. Now we're in a big mess with them thinking they're capable of doing much more difficult things.
For real, though. Why in the fuck do you still work at Facebook? Just quit.
Same reason any of us work: money.
If I had taken a Reddit/HN approved job instead of working at FAANGs for 20 years, I’d be looking at another 20 years of soul crushing work. Instead, I’m retired. Sure you have to roll your eyes at the corporate nonsense sometimes but I’m happy I made that trade-off.
Gas stations pay money
They could be truck drivers
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