13 ms·

Allowing 19-year-old kids to have their name and photo published in the newspaper of record in an article that quotes their snarky comments about how they're no

Allowing 19-year-old kids to have their name and photo published in the newspaper of record in an article that quotes their snarky comments about how they're not sure if they'd deign to work for any given company is journalistic malpractice. I don't blame the kids. They're young and naturally earnest, and are marinating in an environment where performative wokeness results in positive social reinforcement. They don't know any better.

Agathos 8y ago
Is it "wokeness" or just ambition? When I was 19 I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I'm pretty sure being yet another cog in a 30,000-employee machine was not high on the list.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  My intended point with regard to wokeness was that college is a place where there is limited downside to screaming your carefully considered, morally pure opinions from the rooftops. People accultured to that kind of environment often don't understand how people outside the college bubble will interpret their comments.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Just because there are no downsides to screaming you carefully considered, morally pure opinions doesn’t make them any less valid. Actually, I’d think the opposite: someone who’s dependent on getting a job at Facebook is far more likely to be be disingenuous in their criticism of the company than someone who has no reason to filter their views.
    - projektir 8y ago
      People seem to have this one backwards. They seem to think only people in the worst position get to make moral statements. Except that's the opposite of how it works. Upholding morality requires leverage and power. Any person can be broken. That's not a good measure of validity of valid claims.
dionidium 8y ago
The only people to blame here are hiring managers who think the snarky comments you made when you were 19 are in any way relevant or representative. Why would an employer ever even see this unless their hiring practices are so broken that they think it's a good idea to go looking for this kind of thing in the first place? And if that's the case, then, sheesh, I don't even know what to say. That's so silly that it's not even wrong.
nradov 8y ago
What should the age limit be for publishing snarky comments?
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  I don't really think about it in terms of an age limit. To spell it out, my quibble is that the reporter quoted these kids by name and got them to agree to have their picture taken for publication, for a story that will likely give at least some prospective employers pause at some point.
  - cronix 8y ago
    It could also have the opposite effect and make the candidate more attractive, depending on who's doing the looking.
    - leroy_masochist 8y ago
      It totally could! If any of these kids want to work as, like, the software engineer-in-residence at a social impact VC, having this come up in a Google name search might very well be a positive.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    I think that people vastly overestimate how much detective work that employers do, when hiring people. I don't think companies are searching people's Twitter or Facebook accounts for controversial statements. The furthest that most would go is to call up a reference or talk to a previous employer. Hiring committees don't have time to scrutinize every little last comment that someone has made.
    - leroy_masochist 8y ago
      Scouring someone's Twitter history != Googling someone's name and browsing the first page of results. The former is overkill, the latter is done by everyone
- 8y ago
icedchai 8y ago
They're probably not smart enough to get in, anyway. If they were, they'd go to FB, milk that huge salary, unload their RSU's on a regular basis, save and invest, and FIRE by age 35. Signed, a CS graduate and FB stock holder with 500% return.
- eropple 8y ago
  Sorry, but yes, they probably are smart enough to get in. Or capable enough, which is the real thing that the wise amongst us actually measure rather than how smart one is. Of the dozen or so folks I know at Facebook, I'd be excited to work with about two of them again. The others are...fine. Much like the folks Google hires now. They're fine. Once you hit a certain point, you start hiring ditch-diggers just like everybody else. Because you've got ditches to dig.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    Their standards for senior hires seem to be as high as ever. They seem to be unwilling to engage in the aggressive downleveling Google does, though.
- hacknat 8y ago
  Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook? There are plenty of reasons, beyond ideological ones, not to want to work there. I don’t think I have any ideological objections to Facebook, but the product itself doesn’t interest me and I’m not a user.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    I don't work at Facebook... I'm probably not smart enough, to be honest, and also don't have much interest in the product either. I just bought their stock after the IPO.
  - techelitism 8y ago
    >Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook? It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.
laingc 8y ago
I completely agree with you. When I was 19, I had far too many opinions and far too little wisdom. The same is probably true of me today, now in my 30s, but I think at least the trend is positive.
chuckgreenman 8y ago
I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer. I imagine hiring managers are Googling candidates, news sites tend to show up pretty high in search results. I can't imagine that would come off well.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer. I mean, if you are saying you don’t want to work there, why does it matter if their hiring managers see that? Also, just from personal experience: I’m pretty vocal about my criticisms for Facebook, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting recruiting material from them ;)
Wissmania 8y ago
I'm a similar age group / community and this sort of perspective is not at all uncommon, and it's legit. There is no "performative wokeness" going on in my experience.
- manfredo 8y ago
  On the flip side I'm still roughly in that age group (first half of my 20s) and I absolutely did engage in performative wokeness at that age and continue to do so today. Not to the degree of interviewing with the NYT, but I definitely voice support in view if my peers and co-workers for social issues I don't really care about. Maybe people do believe in the trending issues, plenty are just playing along because failure to do so results in loss of status and respect. With respect to the original comment, though, I agree that 20 year olds are mature enough make their views public. Sure their views may change, but that's life. It doesn't mean they should refrain from sharing their views.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  I agree it's a legit perspective and I know it's not uncommon. That's not my point. My point is that the students quoted likely do not grasp the potential future consequences of their name being in the newspaper this way.
  - Agathos 8y ago
    I'm twice their age and I don't either. What consequences do you refer to?
    - leroy_masochist 8y ago
      I think their comments will come across as arrogant and entitled to potential employers and/or colleagues who google them in the future. I think the kids are probably not that way, they're just really earnest, but the reporter did them a disservice by putting their juicy hot college sophomore takes into the ether for all of eternity.
    - manfredo 8y ago
ggggtez 8y ago
Oh please. "19-year-old kids" can sign their life away to the military. They can vote in elections. To suggest that we shouldn't allow people who are adults by every meaning of the word, voice their opinions publicly and attributed to themselves is ludicrous.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  It's not an issue of human rights but rather of journalistic ethics. See my other comments on this thread.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    It's not unethical to accurately quote 19 year olds. This is an eccentric position you've staked out.
    - leroy_masochist 8y ago
      If you had to bet $5 on whether or not the reporter sat these kids down before interviewing them for the record and said something like, "Be advised, what you say in this article is going to be seen by every potential employer for the next 5+ years, are you ready to drop some truth bombs?" how would you bet? I would bet that she did not...
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        I mean, most of the people raised on the internet have generally learned by now that anything they say online will probably show up to their potential employers. So I’m pretty sure they do realize that this might hurt their chances of working at Facebook, which is a risk they are willing to make.
- jpmoyn 8y ago
  I don't think they're saying the students aren't "allowed" to voice their opinions. They're making the point that this is obviously what a college student would say when asked a question like this in the current social climate. No one is saying they are bad for doing so. The point is that it's an easy, ultimately fruitless article that highlights the well-known views of a large population of young adults.
ForHackernews 8y ago
On the other hand, maybe making a public pledge will help strengthen their ethical resolve in a year or two. That's the idea behind this pledge, for example: http://neveragain.tech/ http://neveragain.tech/ (though I've yet to see any of the Palantir employees actually quitting)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eesmith 8y ago
The 'kids' of the late 1960s included many college students and enlisted men who were against US involvement in Vietnam. They were ridiculed for not knowing any better, for being 'young and naturally earnest', etc., though the exact phrasing used was different. And yet, they were right. It was their elders who didn't know better. Since it seems you are using an argument which is structurally similar to the ones used against the kids of the 1960s, it doesn't seem like it should put much trust in it. Here's a famous snarky comment from a then 24-year old: "Don't trust anyone over 30" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_anyone_over_30%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_a... “I was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter, and he was making me very angry. It seemed to me his questions were implying that we were being directed behind the scenes by Communists or some other sinister group. I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.”
imgabe 8y ago
These kids are computer science students from Berkeley. They're not going to be hurting for job offers. If it helps filter out dumbass employers who are going to hold their opinions about Facebook against them, so much the better.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  Of course they're not going to be hurting for job offers, in general. The issue is that hiring teams at high-performing, stressed-out early stage startups (including many that are doing important work that will change people's lives for the better) can be ridiculously petty and catty in the hiring process -- especially when they're looking at 10+ qualified candidates for every new hire. Regardless of how well these students are set up for life in general, it would still suck for them if they lost out on a great career opportunity because the people guarding the door for that opportunity, on the day that they reviewed that candidate, decided to be douchily dismissive of the fact that said candidate decided to provide overeager quotes for a NYT article back when they were a college student.
  - imgabe 8y ago
    I get what you're saying, but I think people waste way too much time worrying about what hypothetical future employers might think about something. Yes, it's possible some future employer might take offense to what they said and throw their resume in the trash. It's equally likely some other employer with an equally awesome opportunity will agree with them and admire them for having the guts to speak their mind and with 10 bland inoffensive candidates and one who was quoted in the NY Times, they'll choose to call the latter. As a bonus, they're probably going to get along much better with the employer who liked what they said. You can't predict how some imaginary future people are going to react. Be true to yourself and let the rest work itself out. Optimizing to try and please the sensibilities of every imaginable person is both impossible and miserable.
freyir 8y ago
How about allowing teenagers to tag photos of each other drunk or high or doing something regrettable? How about not actually deleting those photos from your servers when the kids request them to be deleted?

Agathos 8y ago

Is it "wokeness" or just ambition? When I was 19 I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I'm pretty sure being yet another cog in a 30,000-employee machine was not high on the list.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
My intended point with regard to wokeness was that college is a place where there is limited downside to screaming your carefully considered, morally pure opinions from the rooftops. People accultured to that kind of environment often don't understand how people outside the college bubble will interpret their comments.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Just because there are no downsides to screaming you carefully considered, morally pure opinions doesn’t make them any less valid. Actually, I’d think the opposite: someone who’s dependent on getting a job at Facebook is far more likely to be be disingenuous in their criticism of the company than someone who has no reason to filter their views.
  - projektir 8y ago
    People seem to have this one backwards. They seem to think only people in the worst position get to make moral statements. Except that's the opposite of how it works. Upholding morality requires leverage and power. Any person can be broken. That's not a good measure of validity of valid claims.

dionidium 8y ago

The only people to blame here are hiring managers who think the snarky comments you made when you were 19 are in any way relevant or representative. Why would an employer ever even see this unless their hiring practices are so broken that they think it's a good idea to go looking for this kind of thing in the first place? And if that's the case, then, sheesh, I don't even know what to say. That's so silly that it's not even wrong.

nradov 8y ago

What should the age limit be for publishing snarky comments?

leroy_masochist 8y ago
I don't really think about it in terms of an age limit. To spell it out, my quibble is that the reporter quoted these kids by name and got them to agree to have their picture taken for publication, for a story that will likely give at least some prospective employers pause at some point.
- cronix 8y ago
  It could also have the opposite effect and make the candidate more attractive, depending on who's doing the looking.
  - leroy_masochist 8y ago
    It totally could! If any of these kids want to work as, like, the software engineer-in-residence at a social impact VC, having this come up in a Google name search might very well be a positive.
- stale2002 8y ago
  I think that people vastly overestimate how much detective work that employers do, when hiring people. I don't think companies are searching people's Twitter or Facebook accounts for controversial statements. The furthest that most would go is to call up a reference or talk to a previous employer. Hiring committees don't have time to scrutinize every little last comment that someone has made.
  - leroy_masochist 8y ago
    Scouring someone's Twitter history != Googling someone's name and browsing the first page of results. The former is overkill, the latter is done by everyone
8y ago

icedchai 8y ago

They're probably not smart enough to get in, anyway. If they were, they'd go to FB, milk that huge salary, unload their RSU's on a regular basis, save and invest, and FIRE by age 35. Signed, a CS graduate and FB stock holder with 500% return.

eropple 8y ago
Sorry, but yes, they probably are smart enough to get in. Or capable enough, which is the real thing that the wise amongst us actually measure rather than how smart one is. Of the dozen or so folks I know at Facebook, I'd be excited to work with about two of them again. The others are...fine. Much like the folks Google hires now. They're fine. Once you hit a certain point, you start hiring ditch-diggers just like everybody else. Because you've got ditches to dig.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  Their standards for senior hires seem to be as high as ever. They seem to be unwilling to engage in the aggressive downleveling Google does, though.
hacknat 8y ago
Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook? There are plenty of reasons, beyond ideological ones, not to want to work there. I don’t think I have any ideological objections to Facebook, but the product itself doesn’t interest me and I’m not a user.
- icedchai 8y ago
  I don't work at Facebook... I'm probably not smart enough, to be honest, and also don't have much interest in the product either. I just bought their stock after the IPO.
- techelitism 8y ago
  >Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook? It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.

laingc 8y ago

I completely agree with you. When I was 19, I had far too many opinions and far too little wisdom. The same is probably true of me today, now in my 30s, but I think at least the trend is positive.

chuckgreenman 8y ago

I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer. I imagine hiring managers are Googling candidates, news sites tend to show up pretty high in search results. I can't imagine that would come off well.

saagarjha 8y ago
> I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer. I mean, if you are saying you don’t want to work there, why does it matter if their hiring managers see that? Also, just from personal experience: I’m pretty vocal about my criticisms for Facebook, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting recruiting material from them ;)

Wissmania 8y ago

I'm a similar age group / community and this sort of perspective is not at all uncommon, and it's legit. There is no "performative wokeness" going on in my experience.

manfredo 8y ago
On the flip side I'm still roughly in that age group (first half of my 20s) and I absolutely did engage in performative wokeness at that age and continue to do so today. Not to the degree of interviewing with the NYT, but I definitely voice support in view if my peers and co-workers for social issues I don't really care about. Maybe people do believe in the trending issues, plenty are just playing along because failure to do so results in loss of status and respect. With respect to the original comment, though, I agree that 20 year olds are mature enough make their views public. Sure their views may change, but that's life. It doesn't mean they should refrain from sharing their views.
leroy_masochist 8y ago
I agree it's a legit perspective and I know it's not uncommon. That's not my point. My point is that the students quoted likely do not grasp the potential future consequences of their name being in the newspaper this way.
- Agathos 8y ago
  I'm twice their age and I don't either. What consequences do you refer to?
  - leroy_masochist 8y ago
    I think their comments will come across as arrogant and entitled to potential employers and/or colleagues who google them in the future. I think the kids are probably not that way, they're just really earnest, but the reporter did them a disservice by putting their juicy hot college sophomore takes into the ether for all of eternity.
  - manfredo 8y ago

ggggtez 8y ago

Oh please. "19-year-old kids" can sign their life away to the military. They can vote in elections. To suggest that we shouldn't allow people who are adults by every meaning of the word, voice their opinions publicly and attributed to themselves is ludicrous.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
It's not an issue of human rights but rather of journalistic ethics. See my other comments on this thread.
- dionidium 8y ago
  It's not unethical to accurately quote 19 year olds. This is an eccentric position you've staked out.
  - leroy_masochist 8y ago
    If you had to bet $5 on whether or not the reporter sat these kids down before interviewing them for the record and said something like, "Be advised, what you say in this article is going to be seen by every potential employer for the next 5+ years, are you ready to drop some truth bombs?" how would you bet? I would bet that she did not...
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I mean, most of the people raised on the internet have generally learned by now that anything they say online will probably show up to their potential employers. So I’m pretty sure they do realize that this might hurt their chances of working at Facebook, which is a risk they are willing to make.
jpmoyn 8y ago
I don't think they're saying the students aren't "allowed" to voice their opinions. They're making the point that this is obviously what a college student would say when asked a question like this in the current social climate. No one is saying they are bad for doing so. The point is that it's an easy, ultimately fruitless article that highlights the well-known views of a large population of young adults.

ForHackernews 8y ago

On the other hand, maybe making a public pledge will help strengthen their ethical resolve in a year or two. That's the idea behind this pledge, for example: http://neveragain.tech/ http://neveragain.tech/ (though I've yet to see any of the Palantir employees actually quitting)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

eesmith 8y ago

The 'kids' of the late 1960s included many college students and enlisted men who were against US involvement in Vietnam. They were ridiculed for not knowing any better, for being 'young and naturally earnest', etc., though the exact phrasing used was different. And yet, they were right. It was their elders who didn't know better. Since it seems you are using an argument which is structurally similar to the ones used against the kids of the 1960s, it doesn't seem like it should put much trust in it. Here's a famous snarky comment from a then 24-year old: "Don't trust anyone over 30" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_anyone_over_30%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_a... “I was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter, and he was making me very angry. It seemed to me his questions were implying that we were being directed behind the scenes by Communists or some other sinister group. I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.”

imgabe 8y ago

These kids are computer science students from Berkeley. They're not going to be hurting for job offers. If it helps filter out dumbass employers who are going to hold their opinions about Facebook against them, so much the better.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
Of course they're not going to be hurting for job offers, in general. The issue is that hiring teams at high-performing, stressed-out early stage startups (including many that are doing important work that will change people's lives for the better) can be ridiculously petty and catty in the hiring process -- especially when they're looking at 10+ qualified candidates for every new hire. Regardless of how well these students are set up for life in general, it would still suck for them if they lost out on a great career opportunity because the people guarding the door for that opportunity, on the day that they reviewed that candidate, decided to be douchily dismissive of the fact that said candidate decided to provide overeager quotes for a NYT article back when they were a college student.
- imgabe 8y ago
  I get what you're saying, but I think people waste way too much time worrying about what hypothetical future employers might think about something. Yes, it's possible some future employer might take offense to what they said and throw their resume in the trash. It's equally likely some other employer with an equally awesome opportunity will agree with them and admire them for having the guts to speak their mind and with 10 bland inoffensive candidates and one who was quoted in the NY Times, they'll choose to call the latter. As a bonus, they're probably going to get along much better with the employer who liked what they said. You can't predict how some imaginary future people are going to react. Be true to yourself and let the rest work itself out. Optimizing to try and please the sensibilities of every imaginable person is both impossible and miserable.

freyir 8y ago

How about allowing teenagers to tag photos of each other drunk or high or doing something regrettable? How about not actually deleting those photos from your servers when the kids request them to be deleted?