'Tell Him He's a Piece of Shit': Meta's New AI Unit Is a Total Mess

mmomentmaker about 4 hours ago 65 commentsRead Article on wired.com

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Discussion (65 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

xnx•about 3 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.

rdedev•about 2 hours 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

classified•26 minutes ago

Did you think making unholy amounts of money came with no strings attached?

nvme0n1p1•about 2 hours ago

Sounds like you already have the skills to automate your new responsibilities.

g023•about 3 hours ago

How come people these days treat jobs like its a social gathering?

Avicebron•about 3 hours 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.

nozzlegear•about 2 hours ago

We are social creatures and naturally want to socialize.

tamimio•about 3 hours 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_lettuce•about 3 hours 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.

ElProlactin•about 3 hours 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_sand•about 2 hours ago

Working with others only works if you work with others

meindnoch•about 3 hours ago

A day in the life of Ivan Slopisovich :'(

hsuduebc2•about 3 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.

PakG1•about 3 hours ago

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/725/

SilverElfin•about 3 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.

sumeno•about 2 hours ago

The emphatic literally has been in use for over 300 years, it's time to let it go

TheTaytay•about 3 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

nemomarx•about 3 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

shakna•about 2 hours 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.

kajman•about 4 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.

epgui•about 3 hours ago

I think everyone deserves to participate in meaningful and dignified work.

Dylan16807•about 3 hours ago

They can all get that if they want it! At a very nice but not as high wage.

yallpendantools•about 1 hour ago

From the article, it seems to me they've been "relegated" to coming up with Leetcode problems for AI. Which, let's face it, a bunch of them probably already did before for their SWE interview circus. I can see why they may feel under-employed/under-utilized but aside from the dystopian data gathering, I really find it hard to see what they are complaining about.

The article even admits that their current tasks are easier than before. For the same paycheck! For 200K I will dredge through the most obscure IMO/Leetcode/ICPC problems and the palm of my hands will remain delicately smooth, in danger only of drying from the air conditioning. If there is no meaning and dignity in that I'm sure I'll have plenty leftover from that comp to find meaning and dignity elsewhere be it a side gig, charity work, or heck even just good times with my family and my social circle. A lot of people "just do a job" for much, much less and still live rich inner lives.

Really, an orchestra of small violins playing while I read this one.

inopinatus•about 3 hours ago

That is why I have no sympathy to spare for anyone who chose to work for Zuckerberg's social toilet.

ComplexSystems•about 2 hours ago

Yes, they certainly should have taken one of the many other jobs that are widely available right now.

coherentpony•about 3 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.

nik282000•about 3 hours ago

Plenty of entry level positions looking for the experience these 'engineers' claim to have.

loeg•about 3 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.

bluedevil2k•about 3 hours ago

Woah…they’re paid WAY more than $200k for this.

altbdoor•about 4 hours ago

https://archive.is/NndS8

DropkickM16•about 4 hours ago

I wish these losers the worst. Working for zuck is its own reward.

kirubakaran•about 3 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"

shimman•about 3 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.

hsuduebc2•about 4 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.

simianwords•4 minutes ago

> Indeed. Zero sympathy for someone helping creating this man his slop machine

I don't get these kind of accusations. They are working to build the AI model so that it is not slop anymore.

> It's kinda funny that their main problem is that they don't have enough work.

Why is this funny? Do people not want to have good work?

bombcar•about 4 hours ago

The Gulag AIpeono is such a letdown compared to the original.

At least they have the decency to not compare themselves to chattel slaves.

SilverElfin•about 3 hours ago

I assume that’s a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

HotGarbage•about 3 hours ago

Stop glamorizing the grind and start glamorizing whatever this is.

JSR_FDED•about 3 hours ago

They should rotate all employees between divisions.

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

nik282000•8 minutes ago

They should spend one day working at a McDonalds or as a last mile delivery driver. Ill bet playing with a chat bot looks a lot better after that.

iammrpayments•about 3 hours ago

This alone should keep anyone away from using React.

bluedevil2k•about 3 hours ago

React, the web framework that’s now 100% independent of Facebook/Meta. Not sure anyone should listen to this suggestion.

JKCalhoun•about 3 hours ago

It feels like, when the history of Facebook is written, it will be clear that the company destroyed itself.

fullshark•about 4 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.

shitter•about 3 hours ago

Temporary in the sense that it's a stop or two away from getting laid off.

fullshark•about 3 hours ago

Agreed that's the only way this makes any sense.

dylan604•about 3 hours ago

what is the expectation that they'd had such a shitty job and quit instead avoiding any potential legal potholes?

bravetraveler•about 4 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.

Avicebron•about 3 hours ago

Is the child they hired for 250 million dollars still there?

wmf•about 2 hours ago

Who do you think created the "gulag"?

dabedee•about 3 hours ago

Soul-crushing work for a soul-crushing company. Hard to feel much sympathy.

hsuduebc2•about 3 hours 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.

brcmthrowaway•about 3 hours ago

TBT to one of the best comments about the Meta situation

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

jqpabc123•about 4 hours ago

Sounds like the Metaverse is moving right along according to plan.

madhacker•about 3 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!

JSR_FDED•about 3 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. “

nik282000•about 3 hours ago

Sign me up, I will gladly give up my blue collar hell to torture an AI to failure.

add-sub-mul-div•about 3 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.

jcgrillo•about 3 hours ago

For real, though. Why in the fuck do you still work at Facebook? Just quit.

tjwebbnorfolk•about 3 hours ago

Same reason any of us work: money.

jcgrillo•34 minutes ago

Upvoted. Only solid reason there is.

qwerpy•about 2 hours 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.

jcgrillo•about 1 hour ago

Nothing wrong with that in principle, I just can't imagine it. I've never worked at FAANGs, but I have at some pretty closely adjacent outfits (swarming with ex-FAANGs) and 3-4yr is just about the most I can stand before I have to quit (or get myself fired) for a while and reset. Whenever push comes to shove between the medieval politicking and just.. engineering fact, I just can't bring myself to throw what I know to be true and accurate under the wheels of petty nonsense. Surely there must be some middle ground, where companies can grow beyond O(100) people and not lose the plot entirely?

hackable_sand•about 2 hours ago

Gas stations pay money

They could be truck drivers

jcgrillo•about 1 hour ago

I quite like welding. Every time a tech job has gotten to the point where it's like "fuck you, fire me or I'll quit" I always fall back on that. If nobody will hire me to program computers, I'm a pretty good fabricator and I can lay down decent welds all day long. MIG, stick, torch, TIG.. whatever you got. It's less money but life isn't all about that.