8 ms·

> 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 l

by ryandvm 12d 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.

mcmcmc 12d ago
I wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for
dozerly 12d ago
They are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you
drewg123 12d ago
This person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview.
- ryandrake 12d ago
  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?"
  - vorpalhex 12d ago
    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.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 12d ago
    You may remember this story, from a month or two ago: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-years-most-wanted-fugitive-caught-hiding-as-a-biotech-exec/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...
    - trhway 12d ago
      man, that's grand, especially the last paragraph. I definitely should be less modest with my resume :) "Stat reported that in 2017, Richard Graydon self-published a book titled The Genetic Risks of Cancer: The Effects of DNA, Genomics and Inheritance on Aging and Survival.” The book described Graydon as an oncologist who had served as a chief medical officer in the biotech and drug development industry. It had no reviews on Amazon. In October 2022, Atossa Therapeutics, a Seattle-based biotech, announced it had hired Richard Graydon as its interim chief medical officer. “We are privileged to welcome Richard to Atossa, where his deep experience in CAR-T cell therapy fits well with our current strategic direction as we explore our opportunities in cell therapy,” Steven Quay, Atossa’s CEO, said in a statement at the time. In March, Immix announced hiring Graydon, calling him a “board-certified hematologist-oncologist with over 20 years of experience in clinical development, most recently at Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, where he led new and supplemental new drug applications and biologics license applications for 7 approved drugs including Darzalex, Carvykti, Keytruda, and Imbruvica.” Stat noted that these are some of the bestselling cancer medicines in the world."
- jjtheblunt 12d ago
  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?
  - SmasherEpilepti 12d ago
    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.
  - phonon 12d ago
    "Officer" is typically anyone who can bind the company contractually.
  - red-iron-pine 12d ago
    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.
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
- eyepea2007 12d ago
  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-behind-key-ip-address-in-adult-film-piracy-lawsuit/ https://torrentfreak.com/meta-confirms-data-engineer-is-behi...
  - defrost 12d ago
    Multiple articles, multiple cases, multiple people. Today's Torrentfreak article is about "an executive" and references the article you have linked thus: This is not the first time a Reality Labs employee has surfaced in the case. Earlier this summer, Meta confirmed that a former data engineer at the division was behind a Comcast connection linked to 97 films. Close reading of both allows for a not spelled out possibility ... that "the data engineer" is also the son of the first mentioned "an executive". Or not - still much is under the fog of reporting ongoing partial disclosures.
sandworm101 12d ago
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.
- red-iron-pine 12d ago
  we was all running napster but i ain't dumb enough to do it off work IPs
- gammarator 12d ago
  Zuck & co released Wirehog in late 2004… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog
ElProlactin 12d ago
Did you apply for the VR porn training team?
bartread 12d ago
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.
- foobarbecue 12d ago
  Cambridge alum here. Agree; admissions is a crapshoot. Job interviews are a crapshoot. C'est la vie.
  - hunterpayne 12d ago
    I went to a similar school. It depended on major. If it was a major that the school was known for, say the top ranked CS school...then it was 100% that a grad was someone who was noticeably much, much smarter than most people. If they were at the same school but in a much less well recognized major (at my school...let's say history), then they were much closer to the average. If you are seeing students at Cambridge who are in prestige majors but without obvious skills...something else is happening and it isn't good. Otherwise, you are probably just seeing the differences between different majors.
    - Symbiote 12d ago
      Cambridge is top ranked for everything they offer. But there's going to be a difference between the students who finished with the highest grades, and those who scraped through.
throwyawayyyy 12d ago
Who'd have thought a Meta exec would be arrogant enough to assume they can get away with this (!!). /s
morkalork 12d ago
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.
- dfxm12 12d ago
  In my experience, executives get special treatment.
  - red-iron-pine 12d ago
    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.
  - kotaKat 12d ago
    as someone once forced to put Windows XP back on a hospital CEO's laptop in 201X... yeah. also all the incident reports i used to file about doctors getting malware went to the circular file. maybe that's why they got nailed with ransomware years later (:
dgellow 12d ago
It’s a massive company, with more than 75k employees. At that scale you have to have a lot of dumb people
- doublerabbit 12d ago
  To be fair, you'd have to be pretty dumb to apply to work at Meta anyway.
  - dgellow 12d ago
    Or ideologically aligned
- itronitron 12d ago
  The employees at any particular company are a random sample of the population, and will therefore have traits that occur in the larger population.
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
  - dgellow 12d ago
    No? It’s not a random selection. The interview process doesn’t just randomly pick people
- red-iron-pine 12d ago
  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.
  - ElProlactin 12d ago
    > ...you need average folks who are going to STFU and get the unfun, unsexy tasks done. This task might have been the sexiest work available at Meta, and there's nothing average about a guy that can single-handedly "process" 2,973 porn vids. If Mark ever needs a right hand, this man is it.
anonym00se1 12d ago
I worked there for years. I assure you, based on my experience, that there are a lot of dumb people there making > $500k/year.
- echelon 12d ago
  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.
  - hunterpayne 12d ago
    20 years ago, this wasn't the case (at least in tech in SV). If you are seeing this today, its because of something (or somethings) specific. Could be the general increase in size of the companies or industry, a problem with recruiting or a problem with the universities that feed into that industry. Maybe a combination of those things. But 20 years ago, you could tell who worked in tech and who didn't.
  - bitexploder 12d ago
    I still hold the line on interviewing. Maybe some don’t. I am sure it is true. My team us too small with too much responsibility to tolerate mediocrity to any real extent
giancarlostoro 12d ago
It's even worse that they overpay people who do this type of thing while at work.
bluefirebrand 12d ago
Just tell yourself that they rejected you because they thought you had too strong a moral compass and you wouldn't click with the company's overall lack of ethics

by ryandvm 12d ago

mcmcmc 12d ago

I wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for

dozerly 12d ago

They are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you

drewg123 12d ago

This person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview.

ryandrake 12d ago
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?"
- vorpalhex 12d ago
  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.
- ChrisMarshallNY 12d ago
  You may remember this story, from a month or two ago: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-years-most-wanted-fugitive-caught-hiding-as-a-biotech-exec/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...
  - trhway 12d ago
    man, that's grand, especially the last paragraph. I definitely should be less modest with my resume :) "Stat reported that in 2017, Richard Graydon self-published a book titled The Genetic Risks of Cancer: The Effects of DNA, Genomics and Inheritance on Aging and Survival.” The book described Graydon as an oncologist who had served as a chief medical officer in the biotech and drug development industry. It had no reviews on Amazon. In October 2022, Atossa Therapeutics, a Seattle-based biotech, announced it had hired Richard Graydon as its interim chief medical officer. “We are privileged to welcome Richard to Atossa, where his deep experience in CAR-T cell therapy fits well with our current strategic direction as we explore our opportunities in cell therapy,” Steven Quay, Atossa’s CEO, said in a statement at the time. In March, Immix announced hiring Graydon, calling him a “board-certified hematologist-oncologist with over 20 years of experience in clinical development, most recently at Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, where he led new and supplemental new drug applications and biologics license applications for 7 approved drugs including Darzalex, Carvykti, Keytruda, and Imbruvica.” Stat noted that these are some of the bestselling cancer medicines in the world."
jjtheblunt 12d ago
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?
- SmasherEpilepti 12d ago
  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.
- phonon 12d ago
  "Officer" is typically anyone who can bind the company contractually.
- red-iron-pine 12d ago
  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.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
eyepea2007 12d ago
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-behind-key-ip-address-in-adult-film-piracy-lawsuit/ https://torrentfreak.com/meta-confirms-data-engineer-is-behi...
- defrost 12d ago
  Multiple articles, multiple cases, multiple people. Today's Torrentfreak article is about "an executive" and references the article you have linked thus: This is not the first time a Reality Labs employee has surfaced in the case. Earlier this summer, Meta confirmed that a former data engineer at the division was behind a Comcast connection linked to 97 films. Close reading of both allows for a not spelled out possibility ... that "the data engineer" is also the son of the first mentioned "an executive". Or not - still much is under the fog of reporting ongoing partial disclosures.

sandworm101 12d ago

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.

red-iron-pine 12d ago
we was all running napster but i ain't dumb enough to do it off work IPs
gammarator 12d ago
Zuck & co released Wirehog in late 2004… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog

ElProlactin 12d ago

Did you apply for the VR porn training team?

bartread 12d ago

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.

foobarbecue 12d ago
Cambridge alum here. Agree; admissions is a crapshoot. Job interviews are a crapshoot. C'est la vie.
- hunterpayne 12d ago
  I went to a similar school. It depended on major. If it was a major that the school was known for, say the top ranked CS school...then it was 100% that a grad was someone who was noticeably much, much smarter than most people. If they were at the same school but in a much less well recognized major (at my school...let's say history), then they were much closer to the average. If you are seeing students at Cambridge who are in prestige majors but without obvious skills...something else is happening and it isn't good. Otherwise, you are probably just seeing the differences between different majors.
  - Symbiote 12d ago
    Cambridge is top ranked for everything they offer. But there's going to be a difference between the students who finished with the highest grades, and those who scraped through.

throwyawayyyy 12d ago

Who'd have thought a Meta exec would be arrogant enough to assume they can get away with this (!!). /s

morkalork 12d ago

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.

dfxm12 12d ago
In my experience, executives get special treatment.
- red-iron-pine 12d ago
  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.
- kotaKat 12d ago
  as someone once forced to put Windows XP back on a hospital CEO's laptop in 201X... yeah. also all the incident reports i used to file about doctors getting malware went to the circular file. maybe that's why they got nailed with ransomware years later (:

dgellow 12d ago

It’s a massive company, with more than 75k employees. At that scale you have to have a lot of dumb people

doublerabbit 12d ago
To be fair, you'd have to be pretty dumb to apply to work at Meta anyway.
- dgellow 12d ago
  Or ideologically aligned
itronitron 12d ago
The employees at any particular company are a random sample of the population, and will therefore have traits that occur in the larger population.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- dgellow 12d ago
  No? It’s not a random selection. The interview process doesn’t just randomly pick people
red-iron-pine 12d ago
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.
- ElProlactin 12d ago
  > ...you need average folks who are going to STFU and get the unfun, unsexy tasks done. This task might have been the sexiest work available at Meta, and there's nothing average about a guy that can single-handedly "process" 2,973 porn vids. If Mark ever needs a right hand, this man is it.

anonym00se1 12d ago

I worked there for years. I assure you, based on my experience, that there are a lot of dumb people there making > $500k/year.

echelon 12d ago
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.
- hunterpayne 12d ago
  20 years ago, this wasn't the case (at least in tech in SV). If you are seeing this today, its because of something (or somethings) specific. Could be the general increase in size of the companies or industry, a problem with recruiting or a problem with the universities that feed into that industry. Maybe a combination of those things. But 20 years ago, you could tell who worked in tech and who didn't.
- bitexploder 12d ago
  I still hold the line on interviewing. Maybe some don’t. I am sure it is true. My team us too small with too much responsibility to tolerate mediocrity to any real extent

giancarlostoro 12d ago

It's even worse that they overpay people who do this type of thing while at work.

bluefirebrand 12d ago

Just tell yourself that they rejected you because they thought you had too strong a moral compass and you wouldn't click with the company's overall lack of ethics