10 ms·

Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

by FLUX-YOU 9y ago

saagarjha 9y ago
How sure are you about that?
- mipmap04 9y ago
  Seems pretty unlikely that it would meaningfully stop engineers from finding work after Facebook. A lot of Arthur Andersen individuals were hired pretty easily after its dissolution following the Enron scandal.
- ascendantlogic 9y ago
  Because there are plenty of sociopaths in positions of power at companies all over the world that would probably gladly hire skilled coders that either have no moral compass or are fine with their moral compass spinning wildly while they cash their paychecks?
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    > there are plenty of sociopaths I think that's too strong of a word. It doesn't take a "sociopath" for a company to get to a bad place; merely the efforts of many engineers each doing something slightly immoral. Hopefully there are less of these now that they see what can happen to a company where such engineers work.
    - ascendantlogic 9y ago
      as you rise up the chain and the decision-making power of the people in question goes up I feel the sociopath label starts to stick.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  As sure as it's still a developer's market and FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals. Those accomplishments are easily untied from the politics of the situation. You may lose a small amount of jobs that would come your way, but you'd still likely have dozens of offers to choose from from companies that don't view you as 'tainted'. Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the-fact.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    > FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the-fact. I'll have to disagree with you there. Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. And these ethical standards are hardly "after-the-fact": the idea of a right to privacy has been around for a long time.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      >Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? The great thing about writing resumes is that you can leave things off. >Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. Give us legal protections and resources to stand up and to and report unethical behavior by companies then. You're arguing correctly on a moral ground, but you don't have good industry ethics without good legal precedents. Otherwise the best chance you've got is to get media attention and now you're fighting the company's PR. When you can point to "Defendant can no longer work in software development because of an ethical failure" cases, you will have a much stronger argument to get engineers to follow ethical guidelines (we're assuming those have been written down on something other than a Github-feelgood repo for that case).
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  When has it ever happened before?
paulie_a 9y ago
I will pass on a resume that includes Facebook.
- dbt00 9y ago
  Bias: I've refused to work on any adtech revenue business, and I've passed on opportunities at Uber multiple times due to ... moral and ethical concerns. I wouldn't hold experience at Uber or FB against any applicant.
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    Agreed. And besides that, I decided I didn't want to work for FB long ago, even if they somehow came calling... But it wasn't about ethics. Now it'd be about ethics, but I wasn't even aware they were doing anything unethical until now. I'd expect people working there to know the deal a bit better, but even so they might not be directly involved with anything unethical, and even if they knew about unethical things, they might not have had an opportunity to switch jobs.
  - karlkatzke 9y ago
    Yep. I once worked at a place that leveraged PII for profit. I won't work at a place like that again. But I wouldn't hold working at Facebook against anyone, unless they knew and worked directly on monetizing PII and didn't see problems with it. That's for other reasons -- there are certain things you can't engineer without having a really good idea how, where, and why it'll be used. I don't want an engineer that is blindly solving technical problems.
- heyheyhey 9y ago
  That's a bit much, don't you think? This reminds me of that baseball coach who would refuse anybody from Colorado simply because marijuana is legal there.
- francisofascii 9y ago
  Can you explain why?
- 9y ago
ryanSrich 9y ago
I think you greatly underestimate certain people's ability to overreact...
- tenpies 9y ago
  "Facebook? The ones that help get TRUMP ELECTED?" I think that would be enough to get you blacklisted in certain California crowds.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    Please don't be flippant. You know the what we mean here: the perception that those who work at Facebook are lacking in ethics or moral fiber. This isn't about politics.
    - tomc1985 9y ago
      Please don't tell other people what to do. As a Californian, the reaction he is describing is very plausible.
      - saagarjha 9y ago
        You do realize that I likely responded to them because I live in California as well, right? This isn't a political issue in the traditional sense of "on no they got Trump elected"; the issue would still exist if it was Clinton that ended up winning the election due to Facebook. The problem is that Facebook just should not have control over the politics, more so because the control they have was shown to be gained without their user's trust and without regard to their privacy.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      It's not a flippant remark - it's argument to extreme [1] (ie, paining those who question FB as only Trump-haters when many people have questioned FB long before CA/Trump entered the mainstream discussion). It doesn't help FB that Trump is associated with them and that he's in hot water already. [1] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/30/Appeal-to-Extremes https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway Depends on what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want a former Facebook employee near anything remotely customer data related, or anything with political or PR sensitivity.
- jsgo 9y ago
  Not sure, personally. The scandal is that the company is exposing user data, not that employees are siphoning data and selling it on the side. I can understand it if you're in a situation where the bottom can kind of dictate the company direction in a "hey, with this data, we could make the company a killing, our shareholders happy, etc." sort of way. Perhaps avoid the upper level employees, but engineering talent is probably safe.
- spinlock 9y ago
  This is just .... The people working on the political and PR areas at Facebook are badass. They come from places like the Obama administration. They now have a front-row seat in the negotiations for how governments around the world are negotiating with Facebook. After the dust settles, these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas I frequently see people try this when their employers start burning in political and criminal crosshairs. It’s a tough and treacherous strategy. It is likely just an easier thing to tell oneself than “I need this job for the pay cheque, the next 10 years be damned.” Unless you leverage the crisis into deep relationships with regulators and politicos who remain relevant afterwards, you walk away weaker. Low-touch Facebook PR folks saw their best days when they worked in the last administration.
21 9y ago
But it will tarnish your ability to do virtue signaling, which is the basis of many peoples identity today.
- ILikeConemowk 9y ago
  What are you talking about? They are equal opportunity data vacuums! Of course, they accept the data of all kinds of people. They are very diverse in they data collection efforts. They can still, and certainly will, virtue signal!
jiveturkey 9y ago
related: does having uber on your resume tarnish it? At $JOB-1, my boss (only good boss in the whole company, TBH) got fired soon after I left. As a knee-jerk reaction by upper mgmt. (poorly run company.) His replacement knows 1/10 of what he knows, and hails from Uber.
- zemo 9y ago
  > does having uber on your resume tarnish it? depends who's evaluating it and what their values are. If their values are aligned with Uber's values, then no. If their values are opposed to Uber's values, then yes. I'm squarely of the latter. Uber would be a major negative to me. But everyone is different. Some people might view it positively.
  - kfrzcode 9y ago
    Why would working at Uber be a detractor on a resume? It's major company with assuredly hefty tech - regardless of the HR issues rampant, shouldn't the hire be based on merit not association?
    - zemo 9y ago
      If you work for someone that does a bad thing, you are helping them do the bad thing. You are actively making the bad thing happen, and by doing so, you are also doing a bad thing. I think Uber is a bad thing. If you work for Uber, you have helped create a bad thing. At that point, I do not trust your judgement, and I do not want to work with people whose judgement I do not trust.
      - wenttomarket 9y ago
        Accessible transportation and flexible and life changing job opportunities for millions is a bad thing. Classic HN logic.
      - kfrzcode 9y ago
        Following your logic, then anyone who perhaps simply took an Uber to the interview should be off the list because they're providing revenue and therefore helping Uber do more of the Bad Thing....Uber clearly has an engineering staff still, and you can't tell me they're all Bad People doing Bad Things - that's unreasonable. Should we bar military veterans from these development jobs because the Military Industrial Complex has a toxic culture of killing millions around the world for profit?
gaius 9y ago
I suppose there will always be work for sociopaths
- dsacco 9y ago
  Really? Are we at the point now where we're openly calling Facebook employees sociopaths?
- sctb 9y ago
  Please don't. > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

saagarjha 9y ago

How sure are you about that?

mipmap04 9y ago
Seems pretty unlikely that it would meaningfully stop engineers from finding work after Facebook. A lot of Arthur Andersen individuals were hired pretty easily after its dissolution following the Enron scandal.
ascendantlogic 9y ago
Because there are plenty of sociopaths in positions of power at companies all over the world that would probably gladly hire skilled coders that either have no moral compass or are fine with their moral compass spinning wildly while they cash their paychecks?
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > there are plenty of sociopaths I think that's too strong of a word. It doesn't take a "sociopath" for a company to get to a bad place; merely the efforts of many engineers each doing something slightly immoral. Hopefully there are less of these now that they see what can happen to a company where such engineers work.
  - ascendantlogic 9y ago
    as you rise up the chain and the decision-making power of the people in question goes up I feel the sociopath label starts to stick.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
As sure as it's still a developer's market and FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals. Those accomplishments are easily untied from the politics of the situation. You may lose a small amount of jobs that would come your way, but you'd still likely have dozens of offers to choose from from companies that don't view you as 'tainted'. Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the-fact.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the-fact. I'll have to disagree with you there. Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. And these ethical standards are hardly "after-the-fact": the idea of a right to privacy has been around for a long time.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    >Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? The great thing about writing resumes is that you can leave things off. >Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. Give us legal protections and resources to stand up and to and report unethical behavior by companies then. You're arguing correctly on a moral ground, but you don't have good industry ethics without good legal precedents. Otherwise the best chance you've got is to get media attention and now you're fighting the company's PR. When you can point to "Defendant can no longer work in software development because of an ethical failure" cases, you will have a much stronger argument to get engineers to follow ethical guidelines (we're assuming those have been written down on something other than a Github-feelgood repo for that case).
s73v3r_ 9y ago
When has it ever happened before?

paulie_a 9y ago

I will pass on a resume that includes Facebook.

dbt00 9y ago
Bias: I've refused to work on any adtech revenue business, and I've passed on opportunities at Uber multiple times due to ... moral and ethical concerns. I wouldn't hold experience at Uber or FB against any applicant.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  Agreed. And besides that, I decided I didn't want to work for FB long ago, even if they somehow came calling... But it wasn't about ethics. Now it'd be about ethics, but I wasn't even aware they were doing anything unethical until now. I'd expect people working there to know the deal a bit better, but even so they might not be directly involved with anything unethical, and even if they knew about unethical things, they might not have had an opportunity to switch jobs.
- karlkatzke 9y ago
  Yep. I once worked at a place that leveraged PII for profit. I won't work at a place like that again. But I wouldn't hold working at Facebook against anyone, unless they knew and worked directly on monetizing PII and didn't see problems with it. That's for other reasons -- there are certain things you can't engineer without having a really good idea how, where, and why it'll be used. I don't want an engineer that is blindly solving technical problems.
heyheyhey 9y ago
That's a bit much, don't you think? This reminds me of that baseball coach who would refuse anybody from Colorado simply because marijuana is legal there.
francisofascii 9y ago
Can you explain why?
9y ago

ryanSrich 9y ago

I think you greatly underestimate certain people's ability to overreact...

tenpies 9y ago
"Facebook? The ones that help get TRUMP ELECTED?" I think that would be enough to get you blacklisted in certain California crowds.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Please don't be flippant. You know the what we mean here: the perception that those who work at Facebook are lacking in ethics or moral fiber. This isn't about politics.
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    Please don't tell other people what to do. As a Californian, the reaction he is describing is very plausible.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      You do realize that I likely responded to them because I live in California as well, right? This isn't a political issue in the traditional sense of "on no they got Trump elected"; the issue would still exist if it was Clinton that ended up winning the election due to Facebook. The problem is that Facebook just should not have control over the politics, more so because the control they have was shown to be gained without their user's trust and without regard to their privacy.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    It's not a flippant remark - it's argument to extreme [1] (ie, paining those who question FB as only Trump-haters when many people have questioned FB long before CA/Trump entered the mainstream discussion). It doesn't help FB that Trump is associated with them and that he's in hot water already. [1] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/30/Appeal-to-Extremes https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway Depends on what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want a former Facebook employee near anything remotely customer data related, or anything with political or PR sensitivity.

jsgo 9y ago
Not sure, personally. The scandal is that the company is exposing user data, not that employees are siphoning data and selling it on the side. I can understand it if you're in a situation where the bottom can kind of dictate the company direction in a "hey, with this data, we could make the company a killing, our shareholders happy, etc." sort of way. Perhaps avoid the upper level employees, but engineering talent is probably safe.
spinlock 9y ago
This is just .... The people working on the political and PR areas at Facebook are badass. They come from places like the Obama administration. They now have a front-row seat in the negotiations for how governments around the world are negotiating with Facebook. After the dust settles, these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas I frequently see people try this when their employers start burning in political and criminal crosshairs. It’s a tough and treacherous strategy. It is likely just an easier thing to tell oneself than “I need this job for the pay cheque, the next 10 years be damned.” Unless you leverage the crisis into deep relationships with regulators and politicos who remain relevant afterwards, you walk away weaker. Low-touch Facebook PR folks saw their best days when they worked in the last administration.

21 9y ago

But it will tarnish your ability to do virtue signaling, which is the basis of many peoples identity today.

ILikeConemowk 9y ago
What are you talking about? They are equal opportunity data vacuums! Of course, they accept the data of all kinds of people. They are very diverse in they data collection efforts. They can still, and certainly will, virtue signal!

jiveturkey 9y ago

related: does having uber on your resume tarnish it? At $JOB-1, my boss (only good boss in the whole company, TBH) got fired soon after I left. As a knee-jerk reaction by upper mgmt. (poorly run company.) His replacement knows 1/10 of what he knows, and hails from Uber.

zemo 9y ago
> does having uber on your resume tarnish it? depends who's evaluating it and what their values are. If their values are aligned with Uber's values, then no. If their values are opposed to Uber's values, then yes. I'm squarely of the latter. Uber would be a major negative to me. But everyone is different. Some people might view it positively.
- kfrzcode 9y ago
  Why would working at Uber be a detractor on a resume? It's major company with assuredly hefty tech - regardless of the HR issues rampant, shouldn't the hire be based on merit not association?
  - zemo 9y ago
    If you work for someone that does a bad thing, you are helping them do the bad thing. You are actively making the bad thing happen, and by doing so, you are also doing a bad thing. I think Uber is a bad thing. If you work for Uber, you have helped create a bad thing. At that point, I do not trust your judgement, and I do not want to work with people whose judgement I do not trust.
    - wenttomarket 9y ago
      Accessible transportation and flexible and life changing job opportunities for millions is a bad thing. Classic HN logic.
    - kfrzcode 9y ago
      Following your logic, then anyone who perhaps simply took an Uber to the interview should be off the list because they're providing revenue and therefore helping Uber do more of the Bad Thing....Uber clearly has an engineering staff still, and you can't tell me they're all Bad People doing Bad Things - that's unreasonable. Should we bar military veterans from these development jobs because the Military Industrial Complex has a toxic culture of killing millions around the world for profit?

gaius 9y ago

I suppose there will always be work for sociopaths

dsacco 9y ago
Really? Are we at the point now where we're openly calling Facebook employees sociopaths?
sctb 9y ago
Please don't. > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html