10 ms·

How do people working at FB feel about spending their time building a huge advertising engine, compared to working at, say, Tesla? Genuinely curious!

randomdude10 9y ago
Pays the mortgage. And its better than working for Wall St, the NSA, Indian body shop or random chaotic startup.
- beagle3 9y ago
  Does not pay as well as Wall Street. Not sure which one is less ethical, though. Also, both provide useful services but destroy a lot of the ecosystem they operate in.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Probably less pressure and bureaucracy than Wall Street though
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Finance and the internet giants both cover a wide range of pay and a wide range of bureaucracy. The top end of both domains pay rather well and has moderate bureaucracy.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Depends where you're at. Levandowski got paid $120 million, IIRC? Obviously an edge case, but it's hard to imagine an engineer in Wall Street making that much. (And he may never work again after this scandal runs through... but he also probably will never truly need to work again anyways.)
deprave 9y ago
People working at Facebook and Google lie to themselves that they're doing something important while working for a "cool" tech company. They're ignorant to the fact that these companies make their entire revenue from advertisements.
- sebleon 9y ago
  They're not ignorant. They either don't care, or don't see source of revenue as the defining quality of their work.
  - tendo6 9y ago
    I used to work at Intel and then Microsoft during the anti-trust years. We were totally oblivious to what mgmt did and were quite happy to accept the company line. It was after all delivered by nice respectable people and we were getting paid well. Also realized engineers are not revolutionaries. We like to work on things that a textbook talks about. The kind of problems these articles talk about most engineers have no idea how to solve. And it's in our nature to say so and shrink away from such problem. Look at Elon Musk today talking about how depressing it would be not to goto space. Poverty and War are depressing too but Engineers know how to build rockets better than they know how to address poverty and peace. What ends up happening is the space we shrink away from gets filled with characters who don't know what they are doing. They compensate by pandering to the public and buying time mostly for themselves to retire to a nice little island. Having said all that as an Engineer reaching his retirement I feel quite disappointed in the culture we have left behind for the next generation.
    - dhcode 9y ago
      > Poverty and War are depressing too but Engineers know how to build rockets better than they know how to address poverty and peace. Colonizing Mars would require engineers to develop more than just rockets. At some point political-economic models of colonies would have to be developed, in order to determine whether colonies will be economically sustainable without subsidies from Earth. Asking people to imagine how these colonies should be organized, and how to measure whether they will be economically sustainable, requires them to consider economic and political ideas which could be later applied to the problems of poverty and political instability on Earth. One potential model that could work well for Mars in order to reduce political tensions between competing colonies and to establish a clear and efficient mechanism for financing territorial public services is cellular democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_democracy
sebleon 9y ago
Fb employees likely see their work in a much more positive light, i.e. fostering community and strong social ties between billions of people.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Strong social ties? Strong social ties is what you find in places that don't have internet.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    You don't have to be actually fostering strong social ties to believe you are.
  - longesthunt 9y ago
    Exactly. I sure haven't seen an improvement in community or social ties thanks to facebook. It is funny how Mark Zuckerberg seems to think he is doing something good for the world, at least according to his speeches.
    - danso 9y ago
      I have. Facebook became big just around the time I graduated from college. I don't know how it was for people older than me, or the kids afterward, but Facebook let us make the kind of "weak" connections that became strong. I'm talking about high school classmates whom in past generations, would have only re-connected by staying in the same town, or at the 10th-year reunion. During FB's initial worldwide rollout, it was exciting to just "friend" everyone whom you had an acquaintance, because it wasn't yet taboo or uncool to do so. Some of my best friends today are people who I never talked to at all in high school, or even strongly disliked. When Facebook reconnected us all as post-college adults, I realized it was dumb to let past high school cliqueyness get in the way of a good friendship. Sure, ideally this gets worked out in heartfelt conversations in person. But the thing is that you don't prioritize those kinds of past relationships, because the friction of reconnecting is substantial. Facebook lowered that connection cost, while also making it easier to communicate with close friends.
netrus 9y ago
Not working for Facebook, but while their business is an advertising engine, let's not pretend they do not offer something else to their users. Social media has changed the way our society works, how families, politics and friendships work, and Facebook played a big part in that. Maybe that's all just a byproduct, but that does not mean it is not an substantial contribution to society. Tesla is cool and does an important job, but it's not like they are the only people moving us forward.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  I understand how FB changed certain societies, but what worth did it give to Americans? I'm being completely honest. I signed up years ago looking for the one who didn't want me. The perfect person I pined for in my twenties. That's the only reason. I found her, and she had 439 friends. Fishing for compliments. Just someone I didn't recognize--on so many levels. Maybe, the worth was I finally stopped thinking about her? Other than that--I'm not sure what it provides. I'm older, so maybe that's what's wrong?
- bamboozled 9y ago
  Just because they've changed something, doesn't mean it's positive as your making out. Secondly, I've seen engineers running around with Facebook shirts on with the slogan "Connect the world" written on them, I would find it irritating if I couldn't see the irony in it, instead I just find it funny. There is a lot of cognitive bias happening with people working there. They wave big money carrots to keep staff and I feel for some people it's a way of validating their ability, so they stay no matter what impact the product is having on society, even if they don't agree with it inside.
- danieldk 9y ago
  Social media has changed the way our society works, how families, politics and friendships work, and Facebook played a big part in that. The problem is that we do not know what we would have gotten instead. Before Facebook (et al.) became big, more of my regular friends/family were on Jabber/XMPP. People were creating blogs that were not locked in a silo (Wordpress and Blogger were quite usable for non-experts). Etc.
MiddleEndian 9y ago
Hi, I work as an engineer at Google rather than Facebook, but I'll address this and some of the sub-comments (one of which mentioned Google). I am not speaking on behalf of Google. I actually work for a department that has non- advertising revenue, but regarding ads, a ton of companies, even many startups here on HN, generate revenue from ads. Regardless of revenue, many of Google's products are clearly very high quality. There's no social network lockin for gmail as a webmail client or Google maps as a map client but they're still perceived as the best. Google is truly flexible about hours and as long as I get my work done, communicate with the team and attend meetings I can effectively work any schedule I want (Microsoft actually had a similarly lax environment, one of my former team members there worked roughly noon-8), which for me varies day-to-day based on my non work schedule. This is great compared to a company I worked at where they one decreed that everyone solve bugs "after hours" (unsurprisingly many employees would just sit on the bugs and then mark them as fixed right after five). Free meals (along with microkitchens) are very convenient, and it is highly frowned upon to be in the office long enough for both breakfast and dinner. There's a gym right in the building and beds if I feel like taking a nap. I can't speak for the main campus in California, but my office is in an urban area so I am not isolated from my interests and I don't need to own a car. If I have an appointment for something at 3pm I won't be impeded assuming I don't have a meeting around then. Although many interesting projects are limited to the main campus, there's still a decent variety of work here as we have 1000+ employees in the office. The development tools+environment are not perfect but give me fewer problems than anywhere else I've worked. The main downside is that things can get bureaucratic at times which is the nature of giant organizations, although I never feel pressured by PMs. Sometimes the company's internal self promotion gets a bit silly as well but it's relatively easy to ignore. Tesla+SpaceX seem neat but to work there I'd have to move to the West Coast, which I'm not interested in. Most of the financial industry would require me to be at work by nine and/or require me to wear some sort of specific attire, along with a lower variety of work and likely more stress. Many startups offer the same perks in theory but have extremely long hours in practice and the unspoken expectation that you socialize almost exclusively within the startup. Basically I'm treated more like a human than I would be at many other companies, so when I'm looking to change what I work on, I'd rather look internally than externally.
- 9y ago
longesthunt 9y ago
I don't think Tesla is any better. It is a continued attempt to move the world in a direction it cannot go. There is no technological way out of the modern world's problems. Personally, I hate computers yet work everyday because I need money. There is no good feeling about what I do.

randomdude10 9y ago

Pays the mortgage. And its better than working for Wall St, the NSA, Indian body shop or random chaotic startup.

beagle3 9y ago
Does not pay as well as Wall Street. Not sure which one is less ethical, though. Also, both provide useful services but destroy a lot of the ecosystem they operate in.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Probably less pressure and bureaucracy than Wall Street though
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Finance and the internet giants both cover a wide range of pay and a wide range of bureaucracy. The top end of both domains pay rather well and has moderate bureaucracy.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Depends where you're at. Levandowski got paid $120 million, IIRC? Obviously an edge case, but it's hard to imagine an engineer in Wall Street making that much. (And he may never work again after this scandal runs through... but he also probably will never truly need to work again anyways.)

deprave 9y ago

People working at Facebook and Google lie to themselves that they're doing something important while working for a "cool" tech company. They're ignorant to the fact that these companies make their entire revenue from advertisements.

sebleon 9y ago
They're not ignorant. They either don't care, or don't see source of revenue as the defining quality of their work.
- tendo6 9y ago
  I used to work at Intel and then Microsoft during the anti-trust years. We were totally oblivious to what mgmt did and were quite happy to accept the company line. It was after all delivered by nice respectable people and we were getting paid well. Also realized engineers are not revolutionaries. We like to work on things that a textbook talks about. The kind of problems these articles talk about most engineers have no idea how to solve. And it's in our nature to say so and shrink away from such problem. Look at Elon Musk today talking about how depressing it would be not to goto space. Poverty and War are depressing too but Engineers know how to build rockets better than they know how to address poverty and peace. What ends up happening is the space we shrink away from gets filled with characters who don't know what they are doing. They compensate by pandering to the public and buying time mostly for themselves to retire to a nice little island. Having said all that as an Engineer reaching his retirement I feel quite disappointed in the culture we have left behind for the next generation.
  - dhcode 9y ago
    > Poverty and War are depressing too but Engineers know how to build rockets better than they know how to address poverty and peace. Colonizing Mars would require engineers to develop more than just rockets. At some point political-economic models of colonies would have to be developed, in order to determine whether colonies will be economically sustainable without subsidies from Earth. Asking people to imagine how these colonies should be organized, and how to measure whether they will be economically sustainable, requires them to consider economic and political ideas which could be later applied to the problems of poverty and political instability on Earth. One potential model that could work well for Mars in order to reduce political tensions between competing colonies and to establish a clear and efficient mechanism for financing territorial public services is cellular democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_democracy

sebleon 9y ago

Fb employees likely see their work in a much more positive light, i.e. fostering community and strong social ties between billions of people.

jacquesm 9y ago
Strong social ties? Strong social ties is what you find in places that don't have internet.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  You don't have to be actually fostering strong social ties to believe you are.
- longesthunt 9y ago
  Exactly. I sure haven't seen an improvement in community or social ties thanks to facebook. It is funny how Mark Zuckerberg seems to think he is doing something good for the world, at least according to his speeches.
  - danso 9y ago
    I have. Facebook became big just around the time I graduated from college. I don't know how it was for people older than me, or the kids afterward, but Facebook let us make the kind of "weak" connections that became strong. I'm talking about high school classmates whom in past generations, would have only re-connected by staying in the same town, or at the 10th-year reunion. During FB's initial worldwide rollout, it was exciting to just "friend" everyone whom you had an acquaintance, because it wasn't yet taboo or uncool to do so. Some of my best friends today are people who I never talked to at all in high school, or even strongly disliked. When Facebook reconnected us all as post-college adults, I realized it was dumb to let past high school cliqueyness get in the way of a good friendship. Sure, ideally this gets worked out in heartfelt conversations in person. But the thing is that you don't prioritize those kinds of past relationships, because the friction of reconnecting is substantial. Facebook lowered that connection cost, while also making it easier to communicate with close friends.

netrus 9y ago

Not working for Facebook, but while their business is an advertising engine, let's not pretend they do not offer something else to their users. Social media has changed the way our society works, how families, politics and friendships work, and Facebook played a big part in that. Maybe that's all just a byproduct, but that does not mean it is not an substantial contribution to society. Tesla is cool and does an important job, but it's not like they are the only people moving us forward.

icantdrive55 9y ago
I understand how FB changed certain societies, but what worth did it give to Americans? I'm being completely honest. I signed up years ago looking for the one who didn't want me. The perfect person I pined for in my twenties. That's the only reason. I found her, and she had 439 friends. Fishing for compliments. Just someone I didn't recognize--on so many levels. Maybe, the worth was I finally stopped thinking about her? Other than that--I'm not sure what it provides. I'm older, so maybe that's what's wrong?
bamboozled 9y ago
Just because they've changed something, doesn't mean it's positive as your making out. Secondly, I've seen engineers running around with Facebook shirts on with the slogan "Connect the world" written on them, I would find it irritating if I couldn't see the irony in it, instead I just find it funny. There is a lot of cognitive bias happening with people working there. They wave big money carrots to keep staff and I feel for some people it's a way of validating their ability, so they stay no matter what impact the product is having on society, even if they don't agree with it inside.
danieldk 9y ago
Social media has changed the way our society works, how families, politics and friendships work, and Facebook played a big part in that. The problem is that we do not know what we would have gotten instead. Before Facebook (et al.) became big, more of my regular friends/family were on Jabber/XMPP. People were creating blogs that were not locked in a silo (Wordpress and Blogger were quite usable for non-experts). Etc.

MiddleEndian 9y ago

Hi, I work as an engineer at Google rather than Facebook, but I'll address this and some of the sub-comments (one of which mentioned Google). I am not speaking on behalf of Google. I actually work for a department that has non- advertising revenue, but regarding ads, a ton of companies, even many startups here on HN, generate revenue from ads. Regardless of revenue, many of Google's products are clearly very high quality. There's no social network lockin for gmail as a webmail client or Google maps as a map client but they're still perceived as the best. Google is truly flexible about hours and as long as I get my work done, communicate with the team and attend meetings I can effectively work any schedule I want (Microsoft actually had a similarly lax environment, one of my former team members there worked roughly noon-8), which for me varies day-to-day based on my non work schedule. This is great compared to a company I worked at where they one decreed that everyone solve bugs "after hours" (unsurprisingly many employees would just sit on the bugs and then mark them as fixed right after five). Free meals (along with microkitchens) are very convenient, and it is highly frowned upon to be in the office long enough for both breakfast and dinner. There's a gym right in the building and beds if I feel like taking a nap. I can't speak for the main campus in California, but my office is in an urban area so I am not isolated from my interests and I don't need to own a car. If I have an appointment for something at 3pm I won't be impeded assuming I don't have a meeting around then. Although many interesting projects are limited to the main campus, there's still a decent variety of work here as we have 1000+ employees in the office. The development tools+environment are not perfect but give me fewer problems than anywhere else I've worked. The main downside is that things can get bureaucratic at times which is the nature of giant organizations, although I never feel pressured by PMs. Sometimes the company's internal self promotion gets a bit silly as well but it's relatively easy to ignore. Tesla+SpaceX seem neat but to work there I'd have to move to the West Coast, which I'm not interested in. Most of the financial industry would require me to be at work by nine and/or require me to wear some sort of specific attire, along with a lower variety of work and likely more stress. Many startups offer the same perks in theory but have extremely long hours in practice and the unspoken expectation that you socialize almost exclusively within the startup. Basically I'm treated more like a human than I would be at many other companies, so when I'm looking to change what I work on, I'd rather look internally than externally.

9y ago

longesthunt 9y ago

I don't think Tesla is any better. It is a continued attempt to move the world in a direction it cannot go. There is no technological way out of the modern world's problems. Personally, I hate computers yet work everyday because I need money. There is no good feeling about what I do.