Facebook is very prestigious among devs and is probably #2 behind Google, but how long will Facebook remain this prestigious? I see that prestige is is swaying people toward FB in competitive offer situations with equivalent TC. I wonder if it is wise to weight FB’s prestige so highly? Back in the year 2000 Microsoft was considered the #1 most prestigious company and Cisco was also pretty high up. Microsoft maintained very high prestige levels through the early 2010s but Cisco's declined much more so. Prestige can change a lot over time especially if a company runs into financial difficulties (prestige plummets) or growth slows (slow decline in prestige). Unlike the other tech giants like Google and Amazon, I believe Facebook has a massively weaker economic moat. It would be far harder to disrupt Amazon or Google than to disrupt Facebook and therefore I am much less bullish on Facebook’s ability to maintain their current prestige levels for the long term. In the US and Europe facebook usage is flat or declining depending on country and there is a sharp decline in usage among <= 20 year olds. People are spending less time on the site. Many of these users are going to instagram (which Facebook owns) so that has mitigated the financial impact but what if another product comes along? Image sharing sites are easy to build so this is a constant fear. Instagram is also cluttered with advertisements how long will people put up with that before they bail to another platform? How long will Facebook’s prestige last?
Facebook's value isn't solely based on the number of users the facebook app has. They are branching out into EVERYTHING (whatsapp, AR, React, Portal, etc). I don't know if all their branches are gonna last, but I think they've got contingency plans. Let's see how they work out.
Google did similar branching starting 15 years ago. Umm... ya... I think Search still comprises 95% or more of their revenue. If they were doing old school multi-decade scientific R&D where just one hit could revolutionize an industry or create brand new industries (transistor, laser, etc) ok, that makes sense, but friggin autonomous cars (all major car manufacturers been doing R&D for decades on this, they just don’t hype it with marketing) and neato, yay, some office clone, yippee (who cares). Google doesn’t do real R&D. so they are another one trick pony too.
How many portals have you seen in actual use? Not even my friends that work at Facebook use it (not trolling). Wondering what their penetration is
Why this obsession? If you don’t want to, then don’t join Facebook. Don’t Interview with them. Their prestige will last as long as they make money, give top salaries, and have good challenging CS problems for engineers. This happens with all the companies there was and there will be on earth.
🍿
What is prestige ? It’s artificial and superficial, people can have high impact and earn more anywhere , the key is hard work and honesty. You work for your family and your satisfaction not what others will think about you . Prestige is personal and if your prestige increases with association to companies , your prestige is low to start with and will always be low (your perception that your prestige increased is also superfluous)
I agree with you.
Let the TC flow.
The TC must flow
Your definition of a moat is technical...but that's not correct. The power is in the users and the platform, not the fact that it's easy to build another Instagram.
OP, people who worked at Microsoft in early 2000s are still looked up to and they are doing very well in their careers. They were smart, worked on good things and learnt a lot of useful skills. Working at FB now would be the same.
FB moat looks fine to me. It will be as tough to disrupt as any other, with diverse portfolio of FB/IG deeply ingrained into peoples’ everyday lives. Google’s economic moat is almost entirely Ads, just like FB. They will be equally easy to disrupt: kill ads. FWIW, FB has a superior Ads product. (I work in G Ads, and used to date someone that worked in advertising.) When it comes to users, simplicity wins out over accurate complexity (eg why Google search dominated in the first place), and FB Ads delivers on user simplicity. G has no real path to simplification and the tooling is disparate and complex. So tl;dr: Consumers will continue using FB/IG despite any Snapchats, etc. Advertisers will continue buying ads. As long as FB maintains high TC it should be here to stay. As far as unseating it? Some other consumer (not enterprise) focused company/product generates ridiculous money advertising to hundreds of millions of DAU and pays its employees high TC with good WLB.
I think it would be harder to disrupt google because: 1) harder to build a search engine at least as good as googles. Much easier to build a social site (see original instagram team) 2) google is providing a pure utility (searching for stuff) and is therefore more immune to fashion swings that could cause people to gravitate toward different social sites. As long as google continues to provide the best search utility they are safe. The second their search is no longer the best they are f*cked. Social sites can go in and out of fashion like clothing, music, or restaurants. The herd is now migrating to Instagram but who knows where they will be in 10 years FWIW I think amazon has the largest moat because not only would you have to rebuild all their tech but they have billions invested in warehouses, robotics, fulfillment networks.
I don't think you can use IG as an example here. It didnt just grow organically to become what it is today and without FB supporting and scaling it would probably never reach anything close to what it is today. The FB <-> IG integration was a game changer (even for ads, which are worth much less for an ig user)
Every company has a weakness
India
Yesterday
247
Heard congress distributing wealth
Tech Industry
2d
40637
Worried that our top performer is an attrition risk. How do managers handle this?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1008
I haven’t done shit today!
Tech Industry
Yesterday
3015
Avoid teams with only Chinese or Indians especially with a Chinese/Indian manager
Tech Industry
Yesterday
2196
I’m Sooo Happy about Biden signing TikTok ban bill today!!
As long as they pay well
And if their business erodes it won’t be as easy for them to pay well.
Then people will just move to whoever pays the most next. 🤷🏻♂️