59 pointsby momentmaker3 hours ago22 comments
  • xnx2 hours ago
    > “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.

    • rdedevan hour ago
      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

      • nvme0n1p126 minutes ago
        Sounds like you already have the skills to automate your new responsibilities.
    • g0232 hours ago
      How come people these days treat jobs like its a social gathering?
      • nozzlegear6 minutes ago
        We are social creatures and naturally want to socialize.
      • Avicebronan hour ago
        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.
      • tamimioan hour ago
        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.
        • andrew_lettucean hour ago
          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.
        • ElProlactinan hour ago
          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.
        • hackable_sandan hour ago
          Working with others only works if you work with others
    • meindnoch2 hours ago
      A day in the life of Ivan Slopisovich :'(
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    • hsuduebc22 hours ago
      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.

    • PakG12 hours ago
      Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/725/
    • SilverElfin2 hours ago
      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.

      • TheTaytay2 hours ago
        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
      • sumenoan hour ago
        The emphatic literally has been in use for over 300 years, it's time to let it go
      • nemomarx2 hours ago
        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
        • shaknaan hour ago
          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.

    • storusan hour ago
      [dead]
  • kajman2 hours ago
    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.
    • epgui2 hours ago
      I think everyone deserves to participate in meaningful and dignified work.
      • inopinatus2 hours ago
        That is why I have no sympathy to spare for anyone who chose to work for Zuckerberg's social toilet.
        • ComplexSystems13 minutes ago
          Yes, they certainly should have taken one of the many other jobs that are widely available right now.
      • Dylan168072 hours ago
        They can all get that if they want it! At a very nice but not as high wage.
      • metaletadfan hour ago
        [dead]
      • coherentpony2 hours ago
        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.

    • nik2820002 hours ago
      Plenty of entry level positions looking for the experience these 'engineers' claim to have.
    • bluedevil2kan hour ago
      Woah…they’re paid WAY more than $200k for this.
    • loeg2 hours ago
      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.
  • DropkickM162 hours ago
    I wish these losers the worst. Working for zuck is its own reward.
    • kirubakaran2 hours ago
      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"
    • shimman2 hours ago
      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.
    • hsuduebc22 hours ago
      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.

  • HotGarbage2 hours ago
    Stop glamorizing the grind and start glamorizing whatever this is.
  • JSR_FDED2 hours ago
    They should rotate all employees between divisions.

    When done creating AI puzzles they can enjoy a stint in the Content Review team.

  • iammrpayments2 hours ago
    This alone should keep anyone away from using React.
    • bluedevil2kan hour ago
      React, the web framework that’s now 100% independent of Facebook/Meta. Not sure anyone should listen to this suggestion.
  • fullshark2 hours ago
    So they "draft" their own workers to create toy examples to train/evaluate LLAMA performance? Is this a temporary role/rotation? That seems goofy.
    • shitter2 hours ago
      Temporary in the sense that it's a stop or two away from getting laid off.
      • fullshark2 hours ago
        Agreed that's the only way this makes any sense.
        • dylan6042 hours ago
          what is the expectation that they'd had such a shitty job and quit instead avoiding any potential legal potholes?
  • JKCalhoun2 hours ago
    It feels like, when the history of Facebook is written, it will be clear that the company destroyed itself.
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  • bravetraveler2 hours ago
    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.

  • Avicebron2 hours ago
    Is the child they hired for 250 million dollars still there?
    • wmfan hour ago
      Who do you think created the "gulag"?
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  • dabedee2 hours ago
    Soul-crushing work for a soul-crushing company. Hard to feel much sympathy.
    • hsuduebc2an hour ago
      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.
  • JSR_FDED2 hours ago
    “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. “
    • nik2820002 hours ago
      Sign me up, I will gladly give up my blue collar hell to torture an AI to failure.
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  • brcmthrowaway2 hours ago
    TBT to one of the best comments about the Meta situation

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47881678

  • madhacker2 hours ago
    funny when they're being dog food their product suddenly it's not cool, woe is me. u reap what u sow facebookers!
  • jqpabc1232 hours ago
    Sounds like the Metaverse is moving right along according to plan.
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  • add-sub-mul-div2 hours ago
    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.
  • jcgrillo2 hours ago
    For real, though. Why in the fuck do you still work at Facebook? Just quit.
    • tjwebbnorfolk2 hours ago
      Same reason any of us work: money.
      • qwerpyan hour ago
        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.
      • hackable_sand43 minutes ago
        Gas stations pay money

        They could be truck drivers

        Like