| ▲ | ryandvm 3 hours ago |
| > Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN Man, if Facebook is hiring people this dumb, it's going to make me feel a lot worse about getting rejected after interviewing there. |
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| ▲ | bartread 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Mate, I got rejected by Cambridge University. I've lived in and around Cambridge for a very long time now. I've met a lot of Cambridge undergrads and graduates. Let me tell you: they are a mixed bag. Don't misunderstand me: there are some very smart people at Cambridge University. Very smart indeed. And I think if you took any cohort from Cambridge Uni versus a similar cohort from another university you'd certainly find that, against most universities, the Cambridge cohort would be smarter on average. In fact the place is genuinely awash with very smart people literally everywhere. But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people that went to Cambridge who clearly found a way to blag their way through the interview process that may not have been particularly closely correlated with their intellect. The same will be true of Meta, Google, etc. I swear, the interview processes at these companies are probably more of a sop to the egos of company leadership and people who already work there than they are any more effective at filtering down to good talent than less byzantine and overwrought hiring processes. You just have to make your peace with it. |
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| ▲ | foobarbecue 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Cambridge alum here. Agree; admissions is a crapshoot. Job interviews are a crapshoot. C'est la vie. |
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| ▲ | anonym00se1 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I worked there for years. I assure you, based on my experience, that there are a lot of dumb people there making > $500k/year. |
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| ▲ | echelon an hour ago | parent [-] | | There's a strong luck component to interviewing. Which interviewers you get, vibes, which team is hiring, whether the folks in your hiring bar are grumpy, ... Best thing you can do is know several people who can act as direct hiring manager. |
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| ▲ | drewg123 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview. |
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| ▲ | eyepea2007 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | In a related article linked at the bottom of the article's page, it says Meta confirmed it was a former data engineer: https://torrentfreak.com/meta-confirms-data-engineer-is-behi... | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I doubt executives even go through the typical employee interview hazing. It's more vibes and "do you know the right people or go to the right prestigious school?" | | |
| ▲ | ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | You may remember this story, from a month or two ago: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea... | |
| ▲ | vorpalhex 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Executive (and upper management) hiring is much more about owning and using risk, getting the management unit (your part of the org) all aligned and singing the same tune, and for executives showing that you've done this successfully across distinct business units (eg sales and engineering). There's then a much more serious alignment pass. Relationships can and do pre-vouch for big pieces of this such as alignment - if you've worked with someone for a decade, you are probably mission aligned. |
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| ▲ | jjtheblunt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | is "executive" a well defined term for american corporate law? like "a person who can allocate funds from the master bank account without approval" or something like that? | | |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | generally unilateral decision making (up to a point) + supervisory functions of an entire group / department / vertical e.g. they own all of Finance (or Ops, or Legal, or whatever), and have the ability to hire, fire, and use their own budget, albeit it with strings. | |
| ▲ | phonon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "Officer" is typically anyone who can bind the company contractually. | |
| ▲ | SmasherEpilepti 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really, It's just another term for upper management. It's just shorthand for any employee whose title begins with "Chief" or has "Executive" in it (among others like Chairman, President, etc). Usually, people who can make large decisions for the business without approval from higher-level employees. |
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| ▲ | dozerly 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you |
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| ▲ | ElProlactin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Did you apply for the VR porn training team? |
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| ▲ | dgellow 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s a massive company, with more than 75k employees. At that scale you have to have a lot of dumb people |
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| ▲ | red-iron-pine an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | and, like, literally you need some dumb or mediocre people. you don't need 75k generals or fighter pilots, you need average folks who are going to STFU and get the unfun, unsexy tasks done. you go trying to hire a Stanford/MIT hot-shot rockstar type and they'll either crash out or jump ASAP once they realize they got nailed with drudgery. | |
| ▲ | itronitron 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The employees at any particular company are a random sample of the population, and will therefore have traits that occur in the larger population. | | |
| ▲ | dgellow an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | No? It’s not a random selection. The interview process doesn’t just randomly pick people | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | doublerabbit 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | To be fair, you'd have to be pretty dumb to apply to work at Meta anyway. | | |
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| ▲ | mcmcmc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for |
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| ▲ | giancarlostoro an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's even worse that they overpay people who do this type of thing while at work. |
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| ▲ | morkalork 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How is their network security that lax? I feel like if I tried run a torrent at work, netops would be hunting my ass down immediately. |
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| ▲ | dfxm12 an hour ago | parent [-] | | In my experience, executives get special treatment. | | |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine an hour ago | parent [-] | | like, literally send a request to the board for unlimited, no restrictions stuff. this has happened at two (2) orgs I've been at. executives take risks and responsibility, so the CTO/CISO got sign offs from everyone and took it to the board and got full CYA in both cases, too. |
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| ▲ | sandworm101 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does anyone honestly believe that Zuck doesn't have his own history with filesharing? Any computer nerd from that time would have deep knowledge of filesharing. |
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| ▲ | throwyawayyyy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Who'd have thought a Meta exec would be arrogant enough to assume they can get away with this (!!). /s |