FB -> Apple. Smart idea?

Facebook
i🍎 🍏

Go to company page Facebook

i🍎 🍏
Nov 21, 2021 48 Comments

Ex-Google. Joined FB during the pandemic. So much πŸ’©-software, ever piece if the repo you open up is worse than the previous. Nobody cares about maintainability, extensibility of the code. It works on my sandbox, 🚒 it! Blow up the story to score more impact points.

The dev tools are antiquated. For occasional coding it is quite ok tbh. For hardcore all day coding the tooling is awful. The custom remote server code editor breaks every 30 mins on something. It is awful. For anything but php you only having syntax highlighting, no auto complete, no debuggers, nothing. For mobile it takes a day to checkout the code base and local compile is insane.

Have been talking with Apple recruiter. Apple sounds totally siloed. Seems you need luck to land the right team. I’m ok with a 20% pay cut for better WLB, tools that make me productive and a somewhat sane code base.

Should I pursue it? Or keep enduring FB?

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TOP 48 Comments
  • Can you contrast this with your experience at Google?
    Nov 21, 2021 2
    • Facebook
      i🍎 🍏

      Go to company page Facebook

      i🍎 🍏
      OP
      I was stuck at L5 at Google for years. Got too comfortable. Stuff at Google works, you are royalty and treated that way. But getting passed L5 comes down to luck and politics.

      FB offered more money, faster environment and level up out of the box. I can match the level, but the engineering practices are insanely bad. Everything looks like a time bomb. Leave the code alone for 3 months and it will fall apart by itself. The opposite of Google.

      I hate the productivity loss. At Google I wouldn’t be able to get to L6 by being a coding machine. At FB I’m one of most productive coders, yet the tooling holds me back at a mere 25% of my Google output. So I love the chains of process have been taking of, I hate I have been given a blunt utility knife instead of a professional knife set.
      Nov 21, 2021
    • Beautifully put. Thanks for taking the time. I hope you find a situation where you're happy soon
      Nov 21, 2021
  • Apple
    ItsNotTrue

    Go to company page Apple

    ItsNotTrue
    Well at least FB has tooling. At Apple, tools are non-existent.
    Nov 21, 2021 7
  • I'm in infra too and don't mind the tooling. Maybe connect internally to show how to use the vscode debugger/autocomplete and how to use CodeHub to find references.
    Nov 21, 2021 7
    • Facebook
      i🍎 🍏

      Go to company page Facebook

      i🍎 🍏
      OP
      Interesting. I tried setting things up over a year ago, couldn’t get it to work, was told it didn’t and left it for what it was. Will try it! Hope it is better than the debugger in hack, cause that one is hit or miss.

      There is a lot of praise for better engineering cross all of infra. It needs it. But… the end impact of that is low. So I personally improve things that I touch or I come across consistently. Sadly, mainly in the hack code base, some other engineer massacres my efforts a few months later by bolting something horrible on again.
      Nov 21, 2021
    • If I were you, I would try to setup tooling/codebase like Google and show productivity gain accross the whole team. Let's say you can go from 600 to 2000. Maybe your teammates can also go from 100 to 150 with your tooling help. Document that and go for promo.
      Nov 21, 2021
  • Amazon
    NewBanana

    Go to company page Amazon

    NewBanana
    Did you Consider coding is not all swe is supposed to do ?
    Nov 21, 2021 1
  • Hulu
    deeessess

    Go to company page Hulu

    deeessess
    So many other options. Why limit to Apple?
    Nov 21, 2021 0