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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?
dsacco 9y ago
You'll pass on a potentially excellent hire simply because of the name on their resume? You won't even expend a modicum of effort to interview the candidate or see if they're at all involved in the specific work you despise? Are over 20,000 employees guilty in your view? If this isn't irrational behavior, what would it take for you to be acting irrationally?
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.
  - msangi 9y ago
    > clear and studied effects Cough cough https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-reported-about-the-cambridge-analytica-facebook-hacking-controversy-is-wrong https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-...
    - tzakrajs 9y ago
      For those that don't have time to read it, the article you linked debunks misconceptions about the CA privacy breach. I think the article goes to show the type of culture that allows for such a privacy breach to occur. A quote from the article you linked: > Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: “Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on. Parakilas said he “always assumed there was something of a black market” for Facebook data that had been passed to external developers.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    What are those "clear and studied effects"? More importantly, just how "indirectly" do one of those 20,000 employees need to be tied to the work you dislike before you'd acknowledge that rebuffing them is silly? Are there other companies you'd indiscriminately never hire from? What about Google? How is their data mining materially different, in your view? What about a subcontractor for Facebook? Would you hire engineers from a startup which advertised on Facebook? If so, why are they not complicit?

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?

dsacco 9y ago

You'll pass on a potentially excellent hire simply because of the name on their resume? You won't even expend a modicum of effort to interview the candidate or see if they're at all involved in the specific work you despise? Are over 20,000 employees guilty in your view? If this isn't irrational behavior, what would it take for you to be acting irrationally?

tzakrajs 9y ago
If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.
- msangi 9y ago
  > clear and studied effects Cough cough https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-reported-about-the-cambridge-analytica-facebook-hacking-controversy-is-wrong https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-...
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    For those that don't have time to read it, the article you linked debunks misconceptions about the CA privacy breach. I think the article goes to show the type of culture that allows for such a privacy breach to occur. A quote from the article you linked: > Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: “Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on. Parakilas said he “always assumed there was something of a black market” for Facebook data that had been passed to external developers.
- dsacco 9y ago
  What are those "clear and studied effects"? More importantly, just how "indirectly" do one of those 20,000 employees need to be tied to the work you dislike before you'd acknowledge that rebuffing them is silly? Are there other companies you'd indiscriminately never hire from? What about Google? How is their data mining materially different, in your view? What about a subcontractor for Facebook? Would you hire engineers from a startup which advertised on Facebook? If so, why are they not complicit?