At Meta, 90% of my coworkers were Chinese, and non-Chinese were routinely excluded, disadvantaged, and targeted for layoffs. 6 out of the 7 layoffs I observed targeted non-Chinese despite non-Chinese being the vast minority. Certain orgs like ads and MRS are notorious for being Chinese dominated. I think Americans would be outraged if they knew that their own citizens were getting marginalized and laid off at their own companies, while Chinese promote themselves up, conquer entire orgs, and reap millions.
Imagine if Huawei in Shenzhen had entire orgs and leadership chains completely dominated by Japanese people who brazenly spoke Japanese at work without a care in the world that their Chinese coworkers don't understand, imposed their own work culture without respecting Chinese culture, excluded the Chinese, and laid off Chinese people while promoting their own. I imagine Chinese citizens would be outraged, and never allow that to happen in the first place.
The most blatant and obvious way that non-Chinese are excluded is that Chinese primarily speak Mandarin at work. I'm not talking about one-off conversations, I'm talking about every single conversation. Loudly and brazenly with no respect for others. 10+ teammates and leaders having a group conversation in Mandarin while the 2 non-Chinese don't understand and feel excluded from the team. Although everyone at least has the decency to speak English during formal meetings with a non-speaker present, it was common that right after the meeting ended everyone would immediately switch to Mandarin.
Funny I'm in Korea right now and was just on a double date with 3 other Koreans, and I was shocked that when the conversation would split into two, the other couple would speak to each other in English in my presence just out of respect. A Korean couple on a double-date had the courtesy to speak to each other in English in front of me even though I'd never expect that from them, but my Chinese coworkers did not.
Lunch was another place where non-Chinese were blatantly excluded. Recall that the team I joined was an all Chinese team with only one other non-Chinese person. The Chinese would always get lunch together and never invite us (except for one of them who occasionally would, though at some point stopped). Me and the non-Chinese person would invite them, they'd always refuse, and then shortly after they'd disappear and get lunch together. As a result, it was usually just the two of us getting lunch. (caveat, some of the newer Chinese who joined afterwards also experienced similar treatment. So it's moreso a clique thing than a Chinese vs. non-Chinese thing, though 100% of the clique was Chinese)
On Wednesdays and Fridays I'd often be the only non-Chinese person on my team in the office, and they'd all get lunch together without inviting me. It was depressing, and made me not want to come into the office on those days.
One team dinner we went to a Korean BBQ. I arrived with a non-Chinese coworker and the first table was full, so we sat at one end of the next empty table. Shortly after one of the Tech Leads walked in, and sat at the complete opposite end of our table, alone and not in talking distance to anyone. We invited her over, and she declined. Later another Tech Lead came in and sat across from her. Non-Chinese and Chinese at opposite ends of a long table at a team dinner, and they refused to sit with us. Eventually more people came and the TLs joined our side because I guess maybe it was too obviously anti-social, and they spent the entire dinner speaking speaking Chinese to each other. These were our tech leads.
I could not understand how Meta could have "Tech Leads" that so blatantly excluded teammates. I thought Tech Leads were supposed to uplift the team, and that Meta would hold tech leads to a higher standard.
Now someone might say that it's just lunch or a one-off team dinner, who cares? To that I vehemently disagree. Lunch is extremely important for team bonding, and so much information is transferred through informal socializing. I'm not saying that everyone needs to get lunch together everyday, but if a minority of people are excluded from getting lunch with the rest of the team, and especially the most tenured and senior employees, then naturally that minority is going to feel alienated, disadvantaged, and excluded from opportunities. And the very fact that they're excluded from lunch is reflective of being excluded in general.
When 90% of an org and the entire leadership chain is dominated by one ethnicity, naturally their work culture is going to spill through. Chinese culture is completely different from American work culture, and learning to navigate that was a huge obstacle for me. For example I'm the type that tends to question everything and isn't afraid to challenge a "superior", but I quickly realized that my TL seemed to take offense to that, and would punish/retaliate me for it.
I want to make it clear - I have nothing against Chinese people. Most of them are very kind (strong correlation between kindness and not engaging in the kind of exclusionary behavior I mentioned above), and I have many good friends who are Chinese. I get that some barely speak English (though I question how they got hired). I do genuinely believe that most are good people, and not deliberately trying to exclude others. But regardless of intent, the result is that non-Chinese get excluded. The fact that 6 of the 7 layoffs I observed were not Chinese in a 80-90% Chinese dominated org is testament to this. The fact that 90% Chinese dominated orgs even exist in the first place is testament to this.
I might not even be posting about this given the sensitivity of the topic if not for the fact that I've seen and/or heard stories of some very toxic people who I do not believe would otherwise survive if not for their ability to exclude others, throwing others under the bus for the next layoff. The same people do this over and over again, and get away with it because they're part of the "clique" that essentially has immunity.
I think the company needs to take this more seriously. Some ideas would be enforcing English at the office (I've heard of other teams that do this), raising leaders to a higher bar when it comes to team inclusivity (eg. under the "People" axis), investigating potential discrimination cases (eg. layoffs and/or mistreatment disproportionally affecting certain groups) and having a zero tolerance policy around that, having a zero tolerance policy around injustice in general (eg. lying or deliberately throwing somebody under the bus), ensuring more diverse teams, etc.
But to be honest, I don't have faith that much would change so long as the entire leadership chain up to the VP level is dominated by the same ethnicity, language, and culture. Nor does it seem that leadership even remotely cares given that this has been happening in the HQ for probably at least the last decade, and is obvious to anyone who's stepped foot in the office.
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Anthropic just published an engineering guide on how to build always-on agents.
The biggest misconception: an always-on agent does NOT run 24/7. It sleeps almost all day, wakes up for short runs, saves state, and goes back to sleep.
The 5 core pieces I distilled:
1. Event Inbox
Put a database table between webhooks and your agent. Acknowledge webhooks fast, run only one active worker per user so runs never collide, and batch rapid messages together.
2. Timers
Keep timers in a separate table from the inbox. Split them into one-off follow-ups and recurring schedules. A background poller drops due timers into the inbox.
3. Lean Memory + Dreaming
Only store what cannot be looked up again: user instructions, user notes, past messages, and task progress. Load a small index at wakeup, not every file. Run periodic dreaming passes to clean out stale facts.
4. Unattended Permissions
Never put raw API keys inside the agent sandbox — inject them through an outside proxy. Use Deferred Tool Calls to pause risky actions for approval without blocking the worker.
5. Outbox
Queue outgoing replies so your agent paces notifications instead of spamming users at 3 AM.
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Everyone believes CUDA is NVIDIA's moat, the reason we've maintained our dominance in the AI era. I've never believed that.
NVIDIA has only one true moat: its people. And the most important of them is Jensen Huang.
I've worked on CUDA compilers, libraries, and DSLs for eight years, from Volta to Rubin. I think I've earned the right to share my perspective on what NVIDIA's moat really is. I hope you'll bear with me.
1. What is CUDA?
Many people think CUDA is just a programming language and its compiler, and that NVIDIA's moat comes from the massive amount of software written in CUDA, making it impossible for developers to leave NVIDIA GPUs.
This is completely wrong. It's an incredibly naive understanding of CUDA.
To me, CUDA is everything NVIDIA does.
CUDA isn't just a language, software, or hardware architecture. It's a product defined by a unique customer experience.
When you find GPU programming too difficult, CUDA gives you an easier way. When your GPU code isn't fast enough, NVIDIA engineers respond and help you solve it. When a handful of GPUs can no longer push your technology forward, NVIDIA has already scaled its computing platform from desktops to massive data centers. When you need more data centers than anyone else can supply, NVIDIA has already secured wafer and HBM capacity years in advance to meet your demand.
That experience is CUDA.
It's made possible by the relentless, day-to-day work of everyone at NVIDIA. And the person who brings all these people together, who gives them a shared vision and purpose, is Jensen Huang.
2. What made CUDA possible?
Patience. Perseverance. An unwavering commitment to a vision.
Around 2006, NVIDIA bet that the future would demand far more computing power, and began transforming GPUs from graphics processors into a platform for general-purpose computing. Initially, it was a commercial disaster. The added costs hurt margins, the market wasn't ready, and the strategy faced enormous skepticism and pressure, including questions from the board.
But Jensen persisted.
For roughly a decade, NVIDIA kept investing in CUDA, building its hardware, software, and developer ecosystem long before the commercial payoff became clear.
Eventually, deep learning arrived. And NVIDIA was ready.
Today, this sounds like an inspiring story. But for those who lived through it, it meant a decade of perseverance, doubt, and being misunderstood.
Looking back at the history of technology, how many people could have done the same?
This is what I've always loved most about NVIDIA.
And now, Jensen has been pushed out.
This won't kill NVIDIA. The company can still create tremendous commercial value. But it has killed NVIDIA's soul. And how far can a body go without its soul?
If this is how Jensen Huang is treated today, how will those of us who built CUDA be treated tomorrow?
I love NVIDIA deeply, but I have to say it: NVIDIA is dead.
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