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Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

634 points by Despegar 7y ago

algaeontoast 7y ago
I actively turned down a facebook offer out of college, however, boy does facebook throw money at people who seem to turn a blind eye to online ethics... $$$
- Kinnard 7y ago
  Is it possible that ppl who work at facebook have ethics that merely differ from yours?
  - badrequest 7y ago
    As possible as it is they have no morality at all.
    - matz1 7y ago
      Everyone has moral, it's just might be different than you.
  - beart 7y ago
    It's also possible that the Saudi Prince's ethics are merely different from someone at Facebook but I don't think beheadings are commonly considered a good thing in the U.S.
  - warp_factor 7y ago
    The same kind of ethics that can justify every terrible action. As usual if you feel fine and inline with the company's ethic then go for it. I suspect that most engineers and Facebook employee know deep down how shitty the product they build really is.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Obviously that's exactly why they are NOT at facebook, though I chuckle at your attempt to reducing it to something as inconsequential as personal preference.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
JohnFen 7y ago
Wow! Every so often, I see something that makes me feel hopeful about the future. This is one of those times.
- bloopernova 7y ago
  I feel bad for the Facebook employees below middle management level, but I also really would like some harsh penalties directed at Zuckerberg et al. I hate that huge corporations can just kind of shrug and say "oops" to egregious crimes, without any meaningful consequences. Same with corporations not paying tax while still benefiting from the stable society created by those taxes.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    There are real signs of a moral change in this upcoming generation. I suspect a lot of people are going to be very surprised when that wave comes in and breaks.
    - HarryHirsch 7y ago
      The only thing that I see is a complete loss of faith in the rule of the law. Hence the Twitter lynchmobs.
    - drcross 7y ago
      While I share the same hope, don't get too excited. There are billions in the rising ranks who don't care and may be from a country that exist lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs than first world countries.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      It's a double edged sword. They seem to live in thicker bubbles. They don't seem particularly tolerant or forgiving.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
bognition 7y ago
Honestly I think its more than just that, Facebook is no longer the cool start up building the world's favorite website. They're a multi-national advertising mega corp, and TBH most people just don't want to work there.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Is anyone?
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Yes, but you haven't heard of them yet.
    - Talanes 7y ago
      They're not "the cool startup building the world's favorite website" until we've heard of them.
      - silversconfused 7y ago
        My good dude, once you've heard of them, they are not cool anymore. Cool is exclusive. Cool is mysterious. Cool doesn't care what is popular. When cool goes mainstream, it's not cool anymore! The trendsetters have already moved on.
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    I can only think of SpaceX, but they're not a website.
- ppeetteerr 7y ago
  Totally agree. There are dozens of companies that aggregate user information (Google amongst them). Like @bognition said, FB lost its cool a while ago.
  - oska 7y ago
pan_peter 7y ago
So has AOL, friendster and MySpace I heard. Different DNA than Google and based on the foundation of voyeurism with text entry boxes cut and pasted from MySpace, who cut and pasted them from friendster and the list goes on. You don't cut and paste algorithmic search technology.
allthecybers 7y ago
This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency, civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also, if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany of abuses that they have either been horribly naive too or downright negligent in addressing. If you are bright-eyed optimistic about Facebook I'd be interested to hear your counterpoint to all of the scandal. I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise but it isn't surprising that FB would have a decline in hiring.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  > I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise I feel like Google started that way, and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012. Projects like Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Summer of Code, Google Reader, Google Open Source, Google.org, and pulling out of China didn't really have much of a business justification, but were simply something good that they could do. Unfortunately they're a public company, and when you start struggling to meet analysts' (perpetually inflating) estimates, being good - or at least not evil - is usually the first thing on the chopping block.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    I don't think that it has anything to do with altruism. Back then, it was not the right time to optimise for profit as new and exciting things were happening daily, it was time to explore not to exploit. These days the exciting things are happening in other areas, so for the Internet giants, it's time to optimize for profit.
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      > it was time to explore not to exploit. Is that not a pretty good definition of not being evil. IMO it is still the time to explore not exploit, even if that's not what they're doing.
neilv 7y ago
This is the most encouraging thing I've heard recently. We might be doing better culturally, and more resilient, than it sometimes seems.
skybrian 7y ago
If there will be fewer people who go to work at Facebook who care about privacy, that seems like bad news?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I don't think that people who care about privacy could possibly affect what Facebook does by working there.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Why not? Tech firms work collaboratively and even new employees participate in (some) decision-making.
    - jeromegv 7y ago
      It's the eternal debate. What has more impact? Employees joining the company and making changes from the inside? You always have the risk of having the employer be: "see! no need to change! there's no problem, people are still applying and we are filling all our position easily!" Or the employer realizing they can't hire anyone good anymore and decide to make real changes in order to be able to attract the right talent? It's hard to say which one has the most impact. At the end of the day, management needs to be on board to make changes
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      Making a decision that limits the growth of the core product means that you are a negatively impacting revenue... IE, career suicide. This isn't a government (ideally) trying to prevent conflict and unrest, this is just a company making money.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Facebook's entire business model depends on being very intrusive into people's privacy. It's is extraordinarily rare for non-board members to be able to affect a company to the extent of actually altering its business model.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
As a business, this is not a big problem for FB. FB will still find plenty of talent. What they will find less abundant is "top talent," whatever that means. I doubt FB actually needs that much "top talent" to continue successfully, anyway. They're not performing brain surgery on a rocket.
- qmanjamz 7y ago
  I agree. Amazon has been hiring mediocre talent for the last two decades and it hasn't slowed their growth at all.
natrik 7y ago
Facebook has began scaling back on hiring since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Alternative possible headline working just as well. People are still applying en masse to work at Facebook. Among top schools, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December. A fall in acceptance rates may mean saturation in needed roles at Facebook.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Then Facebook shouldn't be giving out offers or interviewing so many people? I think these are primarily offers given to interns. Otherwise, why go through the interview process if you don't want to work there? It may be a better place to go for internship than for full time. Then again, maybe their compensation packages may no longer be competitive. It's possible.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > their compensation packages may no longer be competitive They're competitive cash-wise. But the career hit is unmistakable. (My friends who had other options eventually got tired of carrying around reputation that comes with that place. If you have no other options, that's one thing. But not everyone loves broadcasting that fact.)
    - esoterica 7y ago
      There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume.
      - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        > There is no career hit associated with Facebook Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there in a way it isn't for e.g. Apple or Google or Amazon. > People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not universally respected within tech. (Neither Goldman nor Facebook care about public opinion, outside of managing political risk, since neither sells its product to the mass market [1].) [1] Goldman recently started doing this, though
jjuhl 7y ago
The sooner FB just dries up and dies, the better (IMHO). What do we need that junk for?
- asciident 7y ago
  I get a lot of value from Facebook, and it greatly improves my life, even just this past week. I found out about some career opportunities through friends' posts. I saw photos of old friends that made me happy. I got answers to questions I had about a specific uncommon musical instrument I had via a Facebook group. I searched for people who would be in a city I was visiting, to message them to meet up while I was there. I learned news about acquaintences having kids or moving between cities. I read some backstory about a city hall decision that made me more informed about what particular politicians have been focused on and why. I bet I'm in the majority actually, and people who get nothing from it are probably already not using it.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Literally none of those things depend on facebook though. Mastodon, reddit, IRC, or just sitting in your aunt's kitchen for an afternoon could substitute nicely. They have no niche.
    - jeromegv 7y ago
      You forget about the network effect. None of our friends are on IRC. Reddit is great for some niche groups, but there are tons of facebook groups specific to a niche that really have no equivalent anywhere else.
      - silversconfused 7y ago
        The value being in the network means the value is subject to social whims. That's not a secure place to do business long term. All other places I listed have networks as well. You have chosen to think this network is better for you, but if/when people move then you might need to re-evaluate that as well.
5trokerac3 7y ago
Facebook's brand is tainted enough now that smart engineers don't want any of the bleedover into their personal brand that would come from working there. How many engineers, in hiring positions, do you know that have a positive opinion of FB?
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  Ok but how many engineers use React, yarn, or graphql? Facebook is still leading the way in front end development and it’s still a net positive to have that name on your resume. Their brand isn’t any more tainted than Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.
  - ActorNightly 7y ago
    Open source libraries like React should not be attributed to companies. It just so happened that Jordan Walke worked for FB when he wrote the library. Its not like any of these companies specifically target creation of such tools as part of their business goals.
    - camjohnson26 7y ago
      Those companies have teams that maintain them and they get tons of work done internally before they’re released. Microsoft has been great for Typescript just because of the brand that’s behind it and the teams that get paid to maintain it. React is the same way.
  - sushisushisushi 7y ago
    I've got good news for you. You can contribute to these projects (and put your contributions on your résumé) without having the Facebook taint. e.g.: * https://github.com/facebook/react/pulls https://github.com/facebook/react/pulls
    - camjohnson26 7y ago
      It’s a lot easier when you’re getting paid for your time and are surrounded by other people working on the project.
jasaloo 7y ago
"In general, Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters." That made me smile <3
decebalus1 7y ago
Hmm... the headline is in direct contradiction with what I read on Blind. People are still flocking at Facebook's gate for an offer.
- mrkstu 7y ago
  The difference being, the very best, with multiple offers, are choosing another path. Its like the very best high school students with offers from Harvard, Princeton and Yale- but suddenly Facebook is being treated as if it's Dartmouth or Cornell instead of Princeton and being left with the leavings of the very best instead of having its pick. Still very talented people to be sure, but not the 'best.'
  - malandrew 7y ago
    how do we know that the ones no longer seeking employment are the very best and not just the ones that are most woke? > Among top schools, such as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ivy League universities, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December, according to former Facebook recruiters. The biggest decline came from Carnegie Mellon University, where the acceptance rate for new recruits dropped to 35%. It's entirely possible that the 35-55% of those that are still accepting offers at FB are the most talented of the people that have interviewed at FB and gotten offers. I know a lot of great engineers, woke and politically indifferent. The most effective ones that I've worked with are the least politically engaged because they are more heavily engaged with building things than politics.
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    > The difference being, the very best,... ... at doing LeetCode all day.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  Ok, but Blind is filled with the type of people who would fit right in at FB.
jfasi 7y ago
I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook. > Usually half of the close is done for recruiters with the brand Facebook has I'm also finding that company brand plays a huge role in closing candidates. Our company's brand is generally pretty strong, and I've found one of the things candidates respond to most is the story we tell about our company's past, present, and future. Facebook's story has become "we were founded by a jerk who didn't care about privacy, our not caring about privacy has had massive consequences for American and global society, and our promises to improve our approach to privacy in the future have proven to be disingenuous smokescreens." It's no wonder the substantial portion of people who care about their employer's ethics are turned off.
- clairity 7y ago
  > "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.
  - rongenre 7y ago
    I wonder how much of it is that Facebook isn't all that much fun anymore, and working there would provoke all sorts of "I don't use it anymore" comments from one's peers.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      Or maybe prospects don't use Facebook either and it seems odd to contribute to a website you don't even visit.
    - code_duck 7y ago
warp_factor 7y ago
The general feel I get from most of my engineer friends is that Facebook's product is definitely not inspiring and doesn't "make the world a better place" (whatever that means). But the consensus is that given the right amount of money, they would all accept an offer from them. And Facebook is known to pay very well.
- varelse 7y ago
  AMZN<FB<GOOG<Wall Street in my experience for AI skills. #OneDatapoint
  - pferde 7y ago
    You seem to be lost. Twitter is down the hall, second door on the left.
    - varelse 7y ago
      W/r to comp, that's my data point, don't like? Then don't like... FB has a salary cap below GOOG, AMZN is just cheap and prefers people leaving to countering. Then AMZN makes a big deal of hiring such people back for what they should have countered, proudly calling them "boomerangs."
- subparwheat 7y ago
  It's pretty true that the pay trumps them all. But Google is generally pretty good at matching Facebook's offer. So when choosing between FB and Google, or any of FAANG, the pay is usually less of a concern. So being considered "not inspiring" and "evil" is definitively not helping FB to close on the candidates.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    FAANG's hiring processes are so arbitrary and non-repeatable that it's entirely possible (even likely, I suspect) for a person to have offers from just one of these. Other than Amazon, an offer from these companies is practically a lottery ticket.
gambler 7y ago
>Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters. This narrative is highly suspicious. Zukerberg openly and repeatedly said that he doesn't care about anyone's privacy for well over a decade[1]. The whole company is built around collecting and selling private information. Why would people who care about privacy interview with Facebook in the first place? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...
- seisvelas 7y ago
  Perhaps developers now value privacy more on average than they did back then.
  - acdha 7y ago
    Yeah, I think it's really common to downplay this as an “everyone knows” situation but there seemed to be a sea-change where it went from “maybe people see more spam than they used to” to “major world events are impacted”.
- simonh 7y ago
  Maybe they’re just more aware of what Zuckerberg is saying now than what he has said and done in the past.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mithr 7y ago
  I think that over the past couple of years in particular, the real-world consequences of all of this have really come into the spotlight. It's one thing to hear a tech CEO talk about something you may not agree with -- many people just categorize it as "a Facebook thing" (as in, huh, maybe I'll try to use their products less) and move on with their day. It's quite another to come to the realization that non-trivial parts of (what many see as) seriously negative political consequences have come from these products and, being fully aware of these, the CEO/company still hasn't meaningfully acted. And with all the recent publicity (there's a difference between being mentioned in the technology section of a paper, and giving a congressional testimony), pretty much no one can say anymore that they aren't aware of it, or haven't thought about it.
mtgx 7y ago
Forget Cambridge Analytica. There have been several reports about how badly they've been treating their executives. Why would anyone else trust them after those reports?
- decebalus1 7y ago
  do you think the rank-and-file employees give a damn about how they're treating the executives?
  - stebann 7y ago
    Haha So true!
julianozen 7y ago
[deleted]
- Basketb926 7y ago
  source?
uerobert 7y ago
Correction: Facebook has struggled to hire talent [from top universities] since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  Everyone knows if you didn’t go to a top school you don’t matter /s. Anecdotally nobody who went to my undergrad got a new grad offer and then declined it at FB. Because most of them just can’t get offers there, and if they do they can’t get equivalent ones.
redwards510 7y ago
As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.
- trailingZeroes 7y ago
  Agreed. I would argue that Facebook is not considered cool as a direct result of all the outrage surrounding it.
  - tomdell 7y ago
    Facebook was uncool before the outrage really took off. It's bloated and fewer young people from each cohort take to it each year.
- heyyyouu 7y ago
  Yeah, it's seen as the platform your parents (or worse, grandparents) use. Pretty much a step above Next Door. Why would you want to work for that over some of the other companies out there?
  - golemiprague 7y ago
    Facebook is also instagram and whatsapp, two platforms used by young people
    - heyyyouu 7y ago
      My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those.
      - djhaskin987 7y ago
        > My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those. Out of curiosity what have they moved on to?
option 7y ago
in a current climate of talent shortage in tech and especially in machine learning/deep learning there is really no excuse for going to FB
nabla9 7y ago
They have to pay more. Median monthly pay for intern: $8,000 https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-double-us-salary-glassdoor https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-doub...
- what_ever 7y ago
  That's been the common intern pay for a while at FAANG companies. Heck I got paid more than $8k at a non-FAANG company back in 2012.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
karthikb 7y ago
I have seen cold emails from Facebook and Instagram recruiters recently and they all start on the defensive about privacy, how it's "Zuck's" big thing and how he's taking it seriously. Seems a little desperate.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Does anyone actually believe Zuck's new found interest in privacy? His entire company is built on the sharing of data (even in ways users don't understand).
  - apazzolini 7y ago
    Anyone who trusts his newfound interest in privacy is indeed a Dumb Fuck.
ykhoury 7y ago
I deleted my Facebook profile 2 months ago. Best decision ever, but now I'm just wasting more time on Twitter haha.
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Why stop at facebook? Nuke twitter and join mastodon!
azangru 7y ago
An anecdotal piece of evidence. There’s this senior engineer, by name of Jafar Husain. Used to work at Microsoft, where he learned RxJS (from Matt Podwysocki, I shouldn’t wonder). Then he moved to Netflix and brought his RxJS know-how there. Worked there as a senior software engineer for about 7 years. Authored the Falcor library (a graphql competitor in the early days of graphql). Then, in October 2018, he joined Facebook. And he is a very talented engineer :-)
- throwaway_9168 7y ago
  So he worked at MSFT till ~2011 (before they became open source friendly), and joined Netflix ~2011 (when they announced Qwikster [1]) and joined Facebook just a short while after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out? He may be talented, but boy does he have to work on his timing. [1] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix
bogomipz 7y ago
I can't help but think of Zuckerberg's famous quote "young people are just smarter."[1] I guess they are Mark. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-valley-ageist-or-just-smart/#6484f18ed659 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-sili...
- imsofuture 7y ago
  The older I get, the funnier that quote gets.
TheTruth1234 7y ago
Good. Good to hear some peope have a spine.
buttholesurfer 7y ago
They'll probably use this as an excuse to use even more h1bs and to outsource even more work.
Glyptodon 7y ago
My career is and has always been defined by a refusal to work for companies I'm not ethically comfortable with. Hopefully it becomes more of a norm.
- wnmurphy 7y ago
  This is a luxury and a privilege many people can't afford, and I am right there with you in exercising it consciously.
  - Glyptodon 7y ago
    I agree, but there are many people who are in positions to exercise this kind of discretion who refuse or who only do so after they've extracted tainted benefits.
baoha 7y ago
Recently I think the scandals haven't been the single biggest factor when deciding between Facebook and other firms. The common reason I heard from most of my friends who turned down FB, or quitted FB was that the working culture is too demanding and kind of pressure. Google on the other hand is more laid back and family friendly. So people who started building a family will prefer Google over FB. The nice thing is FB tends to offer higher level than Google, so in some cases, if you get matched, it works out pretty well. I have a friend who worked at FB, after he came back from paternity leave, his manager told him he has been slacking (his reviews were always "meet all"/"exceeding" before), it's time to put in more work, he quitted after a month.
dblock 7y ago
I’ve recently left a CTO job and am going to a large software thing. Facebook was the one company I didn’t consider. Facebook being “the past” played an equal role to “Facebook being evil” in my decision.
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
As a current student, I'm actually surprised by this. Maybe I just hang out with evil people, but I don't get the impression most young programmers care that much about ethics. Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. Perhaps there's other reasons? I do joke with my friend who works at Bloomberg that the "evil" finance view has now flipped completely. Bloomberg is a pretty ethical company compared to Facebook, Google, etc.
- bendoernberg 7y ago
  Why do you hang out with people who don't care about ethics?
  - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
    Fair question. I'd like to think my close friends are ethical people, although it's not like I've seen them do the trolley problem. I'd categorize the people who would accept a Facebook (or even Palantir) offer in a second as casual acquaintances. As for why I'd be casual acquaintances with people who don't care about ethics, well, sometimes you can hang out with people who you don't trust completely.
- meesles 7y ago
  What you think you want while in classes and the shifting realities once you enter the workforce and be pretty night-and-day. Personally I would have entertained the idea at working at a "Big 4"-type company out of school knowing that they were ethically opposed to me. I guess mostly because the name on a resume is worth multiple other jobs in some scenarios and gives you an advantage over your peers. Just a few years later, a 6-figure salary doesn't seem that outrageous and unique to those big corporations. Now that the difference is only in the $10s of thousands, these decisions become a little more nuanced and uncertain. Besides that, once you hit the high 5-figures, money becomes less and less of a driver in your life unless you are in desperate need due to your circumstances. My point is that I think fresh graduates will put aside their ethical qualms because they don't yet know their worth and place in the workforce. That can change pretty quick. That being said, plenty of people just don't care, and that's why these companies still have thousands of developers. It's easy to be blissfully ignorant of your contributions to privacy degeneration and corporate takeovers of our lives when "all you do" is write some React components or speed up some data pipelines. The executives and managers are the ones who will really need to reckon with their consciences, knowing they implemented all these nasty programs.
randyrand 7y ago
Wahoo! This is great for people who are interested in working for FB who can now have more bargaining room.
mooneater 7y ago
A manager from fb reached out about a position, I told him to take a good look at what he is supporting with his work, and that I might reconsider if the leadership ever sees the light.
freedomben 7y ago
I've known several people that would no longer work for Facebook, but the Cambridge Analytica isn't the biggest concern. It's the fact that they are censoring people, even within private groups. I have a friend that jokingly said (in a private group) that men are vile pigs. We knew she was joking - it was good natured. Yet, Facebook issued her a warning and removed her post and threatened her with a ban. First they came for Alex Jones and I said nothing because I don't like Alex Jones (and think he's insane), but now that the precedent is set that Facebook is the speech police, it will expand to us all (especially with their machine learning advancements that are here and yet to come). The EFF has a really important article about this that I implore everyone to read[1]. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-not-best-way-fight-hate-or-defend-democracy-here-are-some https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-not...
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  How did FB find out about her post?
  - username90 7y ago
    Privacy in any unencrypted cloud service is an illusion.
    - hycaria 7y ago
      What if someone in the group reported it ?
      - freedomben 7y ago
        I suppose it's possible but unlikely. I'd be shocked if that were true.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    I have no idea. I would guess they have an algorithm that checks every post and makes determinations. I would have thought a private group would be immune, but apparently not.
return1 7y ago
The self-righteous people should be alarmed by this: this means facebook will be hiring even worse scum and do more evil things. Save the world from evil facebook, go work for them.
- 50656E6973 7y ago
  Let it die, this accelerates the process
pacetherace 7y ago
While many people may not care about a company's morals, they definitely will care about the reputation of a company in terms of how the company is perceived by the general population and others in the industry.
wnmurphy 7y ago
They pay well, it's a good brand name to have on your resume, but on principle, I ignore any recruiter from Facebook. It's glorified MySpace that exists to build de facto detailed psychological profiles on unsuspecting participants, and it's specifically engineered to manipulate their behavior. No thanks.
- robertAngst 7y ago
  Same feeling about the recruiters from Tesla. It sounds horrible to work there, there are lots of companies that make cars.
bwasti 7y ago
I'm not sure how the journalist fact checked this, but in 2016 CMU sent 12 people to Facebook[1]. In 2018 CMU sent 27 people to Facebook[2]. [1] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs-ba.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs... [2] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-Pager_SCS%20BS%202018%20rev%202.1.19.kc.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-P...
- wsetchell 7y ago
  Or 29 if you include WhatsApp.
- username90 7y ago
  Those numbers are almost perfectly inline with the growth of Facebook, 17k employees in 2016 to 36k in 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...
- niceonedude 7y ago
  Those are just SCS numbers. The CNBC article cites all of CMU. Facebook recruits from the math, engineering (EE), and info systems programs as well.
  - bwasti 7y ago
    fair point, 2016 - 1 total from math and engineering https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece... https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mathematical%20sciences.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mat... 2018 - 4 total from math and engineering https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE%20BS%20one-pager%202018.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE... https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-Pager_Math_B.S.%202018.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-P... If you're curious to do some more research, here's the link https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-us/salaries_and_destinations/2016.html https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-us/salaries_and_destination...
jarjoura 7y ago
FWIW, I think this past year everyone has been expecting Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Pintrest to unlock a flood of money. Anecdotally, a researcher friend of mine turned down FB to work in Snap Inc, research and someone else's wife also turned down FB to work at Lyft went to get in before the IPO specifically and no other real reason. So as much as it makes a good story about ethics or privacy concerns, I think it's lots of things, but probably very little about Cambridge Analytica.
- robertAngst 7y ago
  If US "Defense" is any indicator, just pay more money. Someone is willing to kill people for more money.
zippzom 7y ago
Personal anecdote: I had a job offer from Facebook and a couple other big tech companies. The Facebook offer was substantially better fiscally than the other ones and it was clear to me that they were having trouble hiring. Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck. However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job.
- Panini_Jones 7y ago
  > Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck. * Google got rid of the cliff too. * The $75K sign-on bonus is nothing new. These are not signals that we're having trouble hiring now. > However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job. Honestly, working at FB as a SWE is awesome. Like beyond awesome. If impressing other people is what you're optimizing for, you do you, but just know that you're missing out big time.
  - pertymcpert 7y ago
    They said it was also ethical concerns, so not just about impressing other people. If you don’t have ethical doubts, you do you, but some companies have beyond awesome ethical standards.
  - blub 7y ago
    A timely commit, because at this rate Fb will soon be just as cool to work for as big tobacco and bragging about all the awesome "cancer-causing" projects will be kinda awkward.
axaxs 7y ago
I tell everyone I can to avoid them, just based on my own personal experience. It was by far the worst process of any company I interviewed with.
dymk 7y ago
> After the publication of this story, Harrison contacted CNBC to say “these numbers are totally wrong.” > “Facebook regularly ranks high on industry lists of most attractive employers,” Harrison said in a statement. “For example, in the last year we were rated as #1 on Indeed’s Top Rated Workplaces, #2 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies, and #7 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work. Our annual intern survey showed exceptionally strong sentiment and intent to return and we continue to see strong acceptance rates across University Recruiting.” Perhaps it's best not to take a couple ex-recruiters word as blanket truth about company wide trends. Of course, the article simply mentions this then goes straight back to asserting company wide morale problems, which is an interesting narrative to pursue, when that's not really what the majority of employees are feeling (which is further reflected by strong hiring numbers and low engineer attrition).
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Also, every one of the metrics he cites there are of dubious value in terms of real-world meaning.
fune_fr 7y ago
Most companies go through this transition as they fill their niche, the raw eng talent starts to get hidden under an empire-building layer of middle management. They've been able to hire some middle management to mind what remains. Replacing change-makers with reject managers from Netflix, etc. Not necessarily bad folks, just not going to be doing a lot of work.
kerng 7y ago
What I know from friends at Facebook is that there is a mass exodus at the moment, at the same time mass hiring to compensate. Overall pretty uncomfortable so most of them consider leaving to other places.
asynchrony 7y ago
I interviewed at Facebook with the intention of getting an offer letter I could use as a bargaining chip with my first choices. I was rejected, but fortunately got into my first choice anyway. Despite all the perks and compensation, I would never want to work for Facebook.
jonthepirate 7y ago
Last time FB recruiters wrote to me on LinkedIn I told them I'm not interested in working for a scandal factory.
holoduke 7y ago
I believe (strong personal assumption) that this is something not only for Facebook, but also for Google and Apple. Back 3 years ago, a lot of people from my network had dreams to work for Google or Facebook . Today it's no longer the case. They demand a company who is serious about things like privacy, environment. Things like career possibilities are still important, but so many companies these days offer similar work experience. Surprisingly I hear more and more positive news coming from old evil: Microsoft.
- pat2man 7y ago
  Isn't Apple serious about privacy and the environment?
  - _lpa_ 7y ago
    I always had the impression that the incentive alignment between Apple and it's users was far better than any of the other big tech companies.
  - quantumsequoia 7y ago
    Privacy, maybe. Environment? They make their phones in Chinese factories with suicide nets
- quantumsequoia 7y ago
  Nearly every criticism of Google also applies to Microsoft. Google considered a censored search engine in China. Microsoft actually has one. Google had a contract with the military but didn't renew it. Microsoft actively has one. Microsoft products also collect large amounts of data on you, and provide less privacy than Google I can't imagine anyone who no longer wants to work at Google wanting to work at Microsoft
pm24601 7y ago
I will believe this story when the stock price actually goes down. Until then it is wishful schadenfreude. As a point of reference Boeing's stock price hasn't really gone down, and Boeing's action killed people. If the stock price doesn't go down Zuck will not care.
newscracker 7y ago
If this is true, then it would be good for humankind! My position on this has always been that people still working at Facebook and its other properties don't think much about what affects millions of other people negatively (they got their money and some interesting work though). I wish that sometime in the next few years, a past job at Facebook is seen as a personal blemish and a question of character and conduct.
enibundo 7y ago
Let's let facebook die peacefully. Talents have many more options to work for. Be that for money (in finance), or passion (in other fields where their consciousness will be cleaner).
rb666 7y ago
It's certainly no longer cool to mention you work for Facebook in my area. Google is still a very strong and popular brand.
zeristor 7y ago
So is Facebook going the way of MySpace? If so what will replace it?
gigatexal 7y ago
Good. Maybe the scarce resource is good talent and this being harder to find for FB they’ll quit being so creepy and too hopped on their own greatness.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Great discussion here, both about FB and G! There are trade offs between getting valuable services in exchange for user data vs. not wanted to live in a dystopian future (or, are we already almost there?) It seems like an almost impossible optimization problem (for me) to balance wanting my country to be competitive in developing useful future AI and other tech to solve health, climate, resource, etc. problems, and, protecting people’s private information. I am positively biased in favor of FB and G for personal reasons: I have been working in the field of AI and ML since 1982 and my recent work has been spectacularly helped by frameworks and pre-trained models released by G and FB. I want a future world of combined privacy and tech-fueled hyper productivity. I just don’t know how to get there. I act consistently for these two goals but I have no control over how other people act, nor do I want to dictate what other people do. I think the best we can all hope for is some large degree of personal sovereignty over our own individual lives.
qbaqbaqba 7y ago
They are still php based business.

634 points by Despegar 7y ago

I actively turned down a facebook offer out of college, however, boy does facebook throw money at people who seem to turn a blind eye to online ethics... $$$

Kinnard 7y ago
Is it possible that ppl who work at facebook have ethics that merely differ from yours?
- badrequest 7y ago
  As possible as it is they have no morality at all.
  - matz1 7y ago
    Everyone has moral, it's just might be different than you.
- beart 7y ago
  It's also possible that the Saudi Prince's ethics are merely different from someone at Facebook but I don't think beheadings are commonly considered a good thing in the U.S.
- warp_factor 7y ago
  The same kind of ethics that can justify every terrible action. As usual if you feel fine and inline with the company's ethic then go for it. I suspect that most engineers and Facebook employee know deep down how shitty the product they build really is.
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Obviously that's exactly why they are NOT at facebook, though I chuckle at your attempt to reducing it to something as inconsequential as personal preference.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

JohnFen 7y ago

Wow! Every so often, I see something that makes me feel hopeful about the future. This is one of those times.

bloopernova 7y ago
I feel bad for the Facebook employees below middle management level, but I also really would like some harsh penalties directed at Zuckerberg et al. I hate that huge corporations can just kind of shrug and say "oops" to egregious crimes, without any meaningful consequences. Same with corporations not paying tax while still benefiting from the stable society created by those taxes.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  There are real signs of a moral change in this upcoming generation. I suspect a lot of people are going to be very surprised when that wave comes in and breaks.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    The only thing that I see is a complete loss of faith in the rule of the law. Hence the Twitter lynchmobs.
  - drcross 7y ago
    While I share the same hope, don't get too excited. There are billions in the rising ranks who don't care and may be from a country that exist lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs than first world countries.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    It's a double edged sword. They seem to live in thicker bubbles. They don't seem particularly tolerant or forgiving.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

bognition 7y ago

Honestly I think its more than just that, Facebook is no longer the cool start up building the world's favorite website. They're a multi-national advertising mega corp, and TBH most people just don't want to work there.

lallysingh 7y ago
Is anyone?
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Yes, but you haven't heard of them yet.
  - Talanes 7y ago
    They're not "the cool startup building the world's favorite website" until we've heard of them.
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      My good dude, once you've heard of them, they are not cool anymore. Cool is exclusive. Cool is mysterious. Cool doesn't care what is popular. When cool goes mainstream, it's not cool anymore! The trendsetters have already moved on.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  I can only think of SpaceX, but they're not a website.
ppeetteerr 7y ago
Totally agree. There are dozens of companies that aggregate user information (Google amongst them). Like @bognition said, FB lost its cool a while ago.
- oska 7y ago

pan_peter 7y ago

So has AOL, friendster and MySpace I heard. Different DNA than Google and based on the foundation of voyeurism with text entry boxes cut and pasted from MySpace, who cut and pasted them from friendster and the list goes on. You don't cut and paste algorithmic search technology.

allthecybers 7y ago

This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency, civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also, if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany of abuses that they have either been horribly naive too or downright negligent in addressing. If you are bright-eyed optimistic about Facebook I'd be interested to hear your counterpoint to all of the scandal. I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise but it isn't surprising that FB would have a decline in hiring.

nostrademons 7y ago
> I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise I feel like Google started that way, and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012. Projects like Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Summer of Code, Google Reader, Google Open Source, Google.org, and pulling out of China didn't really have much of a business justification, but were simply something good that they could do. Unfortunately they're a public company, and when you start struggling to meet analysts' (perpetually inflating) estimates, being good - or at least not evil - is usually the first thing on the chopping block.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  I don't think that it has anything to do with altruism. Back then, it was not the right time to optimise for profit as new and exciting things were happening daily, it was time to explore not to exploit. These days the exciting things are happening in other areas, so for the Internet giants, it's time to optimize for profit.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    > it was time to explore not to exploit. Is that not a pretty good definition of not being evil. IMO it is still the time to explore not exploit, even if that's not what they're doing.

neilv 7y ago

This is the most encouraging thing I've heard recently. We might be doing better culturally, and more resilient, than it sometimes seems.

skybrian 7y ago

If there will be fewer people who go to work at Facebook who care about privacy, that seems like bad news?

JohnFen 7y ago
I don't think that people who care about privacy could possibly affect what Facebook does by working there.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Why not? Tech firms work collaboratively and even new employees participate in (some) decision-making.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    It's the eternal debate. What has more impact? Employees joining the company and making changes from the inside? You always have the risk of having the employer be: "see! no need to change! there's no problem, people are still applying and we are filling all our position easily!" Or the employer realizing they can't hire anyone good anymore and decide to make real changes in order to be able to attract the right talent? It's hard to say which one has the most impact. At the end of the day, management needs to be on board to make changes
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Making a decision that limits the growth of the core product means that you are a negatively impacting revenue... IE, career suicide. This isn't a government (ideally) trying to prevent conflict and unrest, this is just a company making money.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Facebook's entire business model depends on being very intrusive into people's privacy. It's is extraordinarily rare for non-board members to be able to affect a company to the extent of actually altering its business model.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

As a business, this is not a big problem for FB. FB will still find plenty of talent. What they will find less abundant is "top talent," whatever that means. I doubt FB actually needs that much "top talent" to continue successfully, anyway. They're not performing brain surgery on a rocket.

qmanjamz 7y ago
I agree. Amazon has been hiring mediocre talent for the last two decades and it hasn't slowed their growth at all.

natrik 7y ago

Facebook has began scaling back on hiring since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Alternative possible headline working just as well. People are still applying en masse to work at Facebook. Among top schools, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December. A fall in acceptance rates may mean saturation in needed roles at Facebook.

lallysingh 7y ago
Then Facebook shouldn't be giving out offers or interviewing so many people? I think these are primarily offers given to interns. Otherwise, why go through the interview process if you don't want to work there? It may be a better place to go for internship than for full time. Then again, maybe their compensation packages may no longer be competitive. It's possible.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > their compensation packages may no longer be competitive They're competitive cash-wise. But the career hit is unmistakable. (My friends who had other options eventually got tired of carrying around reputation that comes with that place. If you have no other options, that's one thing. But not everyone loves broadcasting that fact.)
  - esoterica 7y ago
    There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > There is no career hit associated with Facebook Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there in a way it isn't for e.g. Apple or Google or Amazon. > People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not universally respected within tech. (Neither Goldman nor Facebook care about public opinion, outside of managing political risk, since neither sells its product to the mass market [1].) [1] Goldman recently started doing this, though

jjuhl 7y ago

The sooner FB just dries up and dies, the better (IMHO). What do we need that junk for?

asciident 7y ago
I get a lot of value from Facebook, and it greatly improves my life, even just this past week. I found out about some career opportunities through friends' posts. I saw photos of old friends that made me happy. I got answers to questions I had about a specific uncommon musical instrument I had via a Facebook group. I searched for people who would be in a city I was visiting, to message them to meet up while I was there. I learned news about acquaintences having kids or moving between cities. I read some backstory about a city hall decision that made me more informed about what particular politicians have been focused on and why. I bet I'm in the majority actually, and people who get nothing from it are probably already not using it.
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Literally none of those things depend on facebook though. Mastodon, reddit, IRC, or just sitting in your aunt's kitchen for an afternoon could substitute nicely. They have no niche.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    You forget about the network effect. None of our friends are on IRC. Reddit is great for some niche groups, but there are tons of facebook groups specific to a niche that really have no equivalent anywhere else.
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      The value being in the network means the value is subject to social whims. That's not a secure place to do business long term. All other places I listed have networks as well. You have chosen to think this network is better for you, but if/when people move then you might need to re-evaluate that as well.

5trokerac3 7y ago

Facebook's brand is tainted enough now that smart engineers don't want any of the bleedover into their personal brand that would come from working there. How many engineers, in hiring positions, do you know that have a positive opinion of FB?

camjohnson26 7y ago
Ok but how many engineers use React, yarn, or graphql? Facebook is still leading the way in front end development and it’s still a net positive to have that name on your resume. Their brand isn’t any more tainted than Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.
- ActorNightly 7y ago
  Open source libraries like React should not be attributed to companies. It just so happened that Jordan Walke worked for FB when he wrote the library. Its not like any of these companies specifically target creation of such tools as part of their business goals.
  - camjohnson26 7y ago
    Those companies have teams that maintain them and they get tons of work done internally before they’re released. Microsoft has been great for Typescript just because of the brand that’s behind it and the teams that get paid to maintain it. React is the same way.
- sushisushisushi 7y ago
  I've got good news for you. You can contribute to these projects (and put your contributions on your résumé) without having the Facebook taint. e.g.: * https://github.com/facebook/react/pulls https://github.com/facebook/react/pulls
  - camjohnson26 7y ago
    It’s a lot easier when you’re getting paid for your time and are surrounded by other people working on the project.

jasaloo 7y ago

"In general, Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters." That made me smile <3

decebalus1 7y ago

Hmm... the headline is in direct contradiction with what I read on Blind. People are still flocking at Facebook's gate for an offer.

mrkstu 7y ago
The difference being, the very best, with multiple offers, are choosing another path. Its like the very best high school students with offers from Harvard, Princeton and Yale- but suddenly Facebook is being treated as if it's Dartmouth or Cornell instead of Princeton and being left with the leavings of the very best instead of having its pick. Still very talented people to be sure, but not the 'best.'
- malandrew 7y ago
  how do we know that the ones no longer seeking employment are the very best and not just the ones that are most woke? > Among top schools, such as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ivy League universities, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December, according to former Facebook recruiters. The biggest decline came from Carnegie Mellon University, where the acceptance rate for new recruits dropped to 35%. It's entirely possible that the 35-55% of those that are still accepting offers at FB are the most talented of the people that have interviewed at FB and gotten offers. I know a lot of great engineers, woke and politically indifferent. The most effective ones that I've worked with are the least politically engaged because they are more heavily engaged with building things than politics.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  > The difference being, the very best,... ... at doing LeetCode all day.
throwaway55554 7y ago
Ok, but Blind is filled with the type of people who would fit right in at FB.

jfasi 7y ago

I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook. > Usually half of the close is done for recruiters with the brand Facebook has I'm also finding that company brand plays a huge role in closing candidates. Our company's brand is generally pretty strong, and I've found one of the things candidates respond to most is the story we tell about our company's past, present, and future. Facebook's story has become "we were founded by a jerk who didn't care about privacy, our not caring about privacy has had massive consequences for American and global society, and our promises to improve our approach to privacy in the future have proven to be disingenuous smokescreens." It's no wonder the substantial portion of people who care about their employer's ethics are turned off.

clairity 7y ago
> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.
- rongenre 7y ago
  I wonder how much of it is that Facebook isn't all that much fun anymore, and working there would provoke all sorts of "I don't use it anymore" comments from one's peers.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    Or maybe prospects don't use Facebook either and it seems odd to contribute to a website you don't even visit.
  - code_duck 7y ago

warp_factor 7y ago

The general feel I get from most of my engineer friends is that Facebook's product is definitely not inspiring and doesn't "make the world a better place" (whatever that means). But the consensus is that given the right amount of money, they would all accept an offer from them. And Facebook is known to pay very well.

varelse 7y ago
AMZN<FB<GOOG<Wall Street in my experience for AI skills. #OneDatapoint
- pferde 7y ago
  You seem to be lost. Twitter is down the hall, second door on the left.
  - varelse 7y ago
    W/r to comp, that's my data point, don't like? Then don't like... FB has a salary cap below GOOG, AMZN is just cheap and prefers people leaving to countering. Then AMZN makes a big deal of hiring such people back for what they should have countered, proudly calling them "boomerangs."
subparwheat 7y ago
It's pretty true that the pay trumps them all. But Google is generally pretty good at matching Facebook's offer. So when choosing between FB and Google, or any of FAANG, the pay is usually less of a concern. So being considered "not inspiring" and "evil" is definitively not helping FB to close on the candidates.
- sidlls 7y ago
  FAANG's hiring processes are so arbitrary and non-repeatable that it's entirely possible (even likely, I suspect) for a person to have offers from just one of these. Other than Amazon, an offer from these companies is practically a lottery ticket.

gambler 7y ago

>Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters. This narrative is highly suspicious. Zukerberg openly and repeatedly said that he doesn't care about anyone's privacy for well over a decade[1]. The whole company is built around collecting and selling private information. Why would people who care about privacy interview with Facebook in the first place? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...

seisvelas 7y ago
Perhaps developers now value privacy more on average than they did back then.
- acdha 7y ago
  Yeah, I think it's really common to downplay this as an “everyone knows” situation but there seemed to be a sea-change where it went from “maybe people see more spam than they used to” to “major world events are impacted”.
simonh 7y ago
Maybe they’re just more aware of what Zuckerberg is saying now than what he has said and done in the past.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mithr 7y ago
I think that over the past couple of years in particular, the real-world consequences of all of this have really come into the spotlight. It's one thing to hear a tech CEO talk about something you may not agree with -- many people just categorize it as "a Facebook thing" (as in, huh, maybe I'll try to use their products less) and move on with their day. It's quite another to come to the realization that non-trivial parts of (what many see as) seriously negative political consequences have come from these products and, being fully aware of these, the CEO/company still hasn't meaningfully acted. And with all the recent publicity (there's a difference between being mentioned in the technology section of a paper, and giving a congressional testimony), pretty much no one can say anymore that they aren't aware of it, or haven't thought about it.

mtgx 7y ago

Forget Cambridge Analytica. There have been several reports about how badly they've been treating their executives. Why would anyone else trust them after those reports?

decebalus1 7y ago
do you think the rank-and-file employees give a damn about how they're treating the executives?
- stebann 7y ago
  Haha So true!

julianozen 7y ago

[deleted]

Basketb926 7y ago
source?

uerobert 7y ago

Correction: Facebook has struggled to hire talent [from top universities] since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

akhilcacharya 7y ago
Everyone knows if you didn’t go to a top school you don’t matter /s. Anecdotally nobody who went to my undergrad got a new grad offer and then declined it at FB. Because most of them just can’t get offers there, and if they do they can’t get equivalent ones.

redwards510 7y ago

As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.

trailingZeroes 7y ago
Agreed. I would argue that Facebook is not considered cool as a direct result of all the outrage surrounding it.
- tomdell 7y ago
  Facebook was uncool before the outrage really took off. It's bloated and fewer young people from each cohort take to it each year.
heyyyouu 7y ago
Yeah, it's seen as the platform your parents (or worse, grandparents) use. Pretty much a step above Next Door. Why would you want to work for that over some of the other companies out there?
- golemiprague 7y ago
  Facebook is also instagram and whatsapp, two platforms used by young people
  - heyyyouu 7y ago
    My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those.
    - djhaskin987 7y ago
      > My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those. Out of curiosity what have they moved on to?

option 7y ago

in a current climate of talent shortage in tech and especially in machine learning/deep learning there is really no excuse for going to FB

nabla9 7y ago

They have to pay more. Median monthly pay for intern: $8,000 https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-double-us-salary-glassdoor https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-doub...

what_ever 7y ago
That's been the common intern pay for a while at FAANG companies. Heck I got paid more than $8k at a non-FAANG company back in 2012.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

karthikb 7y ago

I have seen cold emails from Facebook and Instagram recruiters recently and they all start on the defensive about privacy, how it's "Zuck's" big thing and how he's taking it seriously. Seems a little desperate.

dylan604 7y ago
Does anyone actually believe Zuck's new found interest in privacy? His entire company is built on the sharing of data (even in ways users don't understand).
- apazzolini 7y ago
  Anyone who trusts his newfound interest in privacy is indeed a Dumb Fuck.

ykhoury 7y ago

I deleted my Facebook profile 2 months ago. Best decision ever, but now I'm just wasting more time on Twitter haha.

silversconfused 7y ago
Why stop at facebook? Nuke twitter and join mastodon!

azangru 7y ago

An anecdotal piece of evidence. There’s this senior engineer, by name of Jafar Husain. Used to work at Microsoft, where he learned RxJS (from Matt Podwysocki, I shouldn’t wonder). Then he moved to Netflix and brought his RxJS know-how there. Worked there as a senior software engineer for about 7 years. Authored the Falcor library (a graphql competitor in the early days of graphql). Then, in October 2018, he joined Facebook. And he is a very talented engineer :-)

throwaway_9168 7y ago
So he worked at MSFT till ~2011 (before they became open source friendly), and joined Netflix ~2011 (when they announced Qwikster [1]) and joined Facebook just a short while after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out? He may be talented, but boy does he have to work on his timing. [1] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix

bogomipz 7y ago

I can't help but think of Zuckerberg's famous quote "young people are just smarter."[1] I guess they are Mark. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-valley-ageist-or-just-smart/#6484f18ed659 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-sili...

imsofuture 7y ago
The older I get, the funnier that quote gets.

TheTruth1234 7y ago

Good. Good to hear some peope have a spine.

buttholesurfer 7y ago

They'll probably use this as an excuse to use even more h1bs and to outsource even more work.

Glyptodon 7y ago

My career is and has always been defined by a refusal to work for companies I'm not ethically comfortable with. Hopefully it becomes more of a norm.

wnmurphy 7y ago
This is a luxury and a privilege many people can't afford, and I am right there with you in exercising it consciously.
- Glyptodon 7y ago
  I agree, but there are many people who are in positions to exercise this kind of discretion who refuse or who only do so after they've extracted tainted benefits.

baoha 7y ago

Recently I think the scandals haven't been the single biggest factor when deciding between Facebook and other firms. The common reason I heard from most of my friends who turned down FB, or quitted FB was that the working culture is too demanding and kind of pressure. Google on the other hand is more laid back and family friendly. So people who started building a family will prefer Google over FB. The nice thing is FB tends to offer higher level than Google, so in some cases, if you get matched, it works out pretty well. I have a friend who worked at FB, after he came back from paternity leave, his manager told him he has been slacking (his reviews were always "meet all"/"exceeding" before), it's time to put in more work, he quitted after a month.

dblock 7y ago

I’ve recently left a CTO job and am going to a large software thing. Facebook was the one company I didn’t consider. Facebook being “the past” played an equal role to “Facebook being evil” in my decision.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago

As a current student, I'm actually surprised by this. Maybe I just hang out with evil people, but I don't get the impression most young programmers care that much about ethics. Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. Perhaps there's other reasons? I do joke with my friend who works at Bloomberg that the "evil" finance view has now flipped completely. Bloomberg is a pretty ethical company compared to Facebook, Google, etc.

bendoernberg 7y ago
Why do you hang out with people who don't care about ethics?
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  Fair question. I'd like to think my close friends are ethical people, although it's not like I've seen them do the trolley problem. I'd categorize the people who would accept a Facebook (or even Palantir) offer in a second as casual acquaintances. As for why I'd be casual acquaintances with people who don't care about ethics, well, sometimes you can hang out with people who you don't trust completely.
meesles 7y ago
What you think you want while in classes and the shifting realities once you enter the workforce and be pretty night-and-day. Personally I would have entertained the idea at working at a "Big 4"-type company out of school knowing that they were ethically opposed to me. I guess mostly because the name on a resume is worth multiple other jobs in some scenarios and gives you an advantage over your peers. Just a few years later, a 6-figure salary doesn't seem that outrageous and unique to those big corporations. Now that the difference is only in the $10s of thousands, these decisions become a little more nuanced and uncertain. Besides that, once you hit the high 5-figures, money becomes less and less of a driver in your life unless you are in desperate need due to your circumstances. My point is that I think fresh graduates will put aside their ethical qualms because they don't yet know their worth and place in the workforce. That can change pretty quick. That being said, plenty of people just don't care, and that's why these companies still have thousands of developers. It's easy to be blissfully ignorant of your contributions to privacy degeneration and corporate takeovers of our lives when "all you do" is write some React components or speed up some data pipelines. The executives and managers are the ones who will really need to reckon with their consciences, knowing they implemented all these nasty programs.

randyrand 7y ago

Wahoo! This is great for people who are interested in working for FB who can now have more bargaining room.

mooneater 7y ago

A manager from fb reached out about a position, I told him to take a good look at what he is supporting with his work, and that I might reconsider if the leadership ever sees the light.

freedomben 7y ago

I've known several people that would no longer work for Facebook, but the Cambridge Analytica isn't the biggest concern. It's the fact that they are censoring people, even within private groups. I have a friend that jokingly said (in a private group) that men are vile pigs. We knew she was joking - it was good natured. Yet, Facebook issued her a warning and removed her post and threatened her with a ban. First they came for Alex Jones and I said nothing because I don't like Alex Jones (and think he's insane), but now that the precedent is set that Facebook is the speech police, it will expand to us all (especially with their machine learning advancements that are here and yet to come). The EFF has a really important article about this that I implore everyone to read[1]. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-not-best-way-fight-hate-or-defend-democracy-here-are-some https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-not...

pertymcpert 7y ago
How did FB find out about her post?
- username90 7y ago
  Privacy in any unencrypted cloud service is an illusion.
  - hycaria 7y ago
    What if someone in the group reported it ?
    - freedomben 7y ago
      I suppose it's possible but unlikely. I'd be shocked if that were true.
- freedomben 7y ago
  I have no idea. I would guess they have an algorithm that checks every post and makes determinations. I would have thought a private group would be immune, but apparently not.

return1 7y ago

The self-righteous people should be alarmed by this: this means facebook will be hiring even worse scum and do more evil things. Save the world from evil facebook, go work for them.

50656E6973 7y ago
Let it die, this accelerates the process

pacetherace 7y ago

While many people may not care about a company's morals, they definitely will care about the reputation of a company in terms of how the company is perceived by the general population and others in the industry.

wnmurphy 7y ago

They pay well, it's a good brand name to have on your resume, but on principle, I ignore any recruiter from Facebook. It's glorified MySpace that exists to build de facto detailed psychological profiles on unsuspecting participants, and it's specifically engineered to manipulate their behavior. No thanks.

robertAngst 7y ago
Same feeling about the recruiters from Tesla. It sounds horrible to work there, there are lots of companies that make cars.

bwasti 7y ago

I'm not sure how the journalist fact checked this, but in 2016 CMU sent 12 people to Facebook[1]. In 2018 CMU sent 27 people to Facebook[2]. [1] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs-ba.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs... [2] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-Pager_SCS%20BS%202018%20rev%202.1.19.kc.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-P...

wsetchell 7y ago
Or 29 if you include WhatsApp.
username90 7y ago
Those numbers are almost perfectly inline with the growth of Facebook, 17k employees in 2016 to 36k in 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...
niceonedude 7y ago
Those are just SCS numbers. The CNBC article cites all of CMU. Facebook recruits from the math, engineering (EE), and info systems programs as well.
- bwasti 7y ago
  fair point, 2016 - 1 total from math and engineering https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece... https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mathematical%20sciences.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mat... 2018 - 4 total from math and engineering https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE%20BS%20one-pager%202018.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE... https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-Pager_Math_B.S.%202018.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-P... If you're curious to do some more research, here's the link https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-us/salaries_and_destinations/2016.html https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-us/salaries_and_destination...

jarjoura 7y ago

FWIW, I think this past year everyone has been expecting Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Pintrest to unlock a flood of money. Anecdotally, a researcher friend of mine turned down FB to work in Snap Inc, research and someone else's wife also turned down FB to work at Lyft went to get in before the IPO specifically and no other real reason. So as much as it makes a good story about ethics or privacy concerns, I think it's lots of things, but probably very little about Cambridge Analytica.

robertAngst 7y ago
If US "Defense" is any indicator, just pay more money. Someone is willing to kill people for more money.

zippzom 7y ago

Personal anecdote: I had a job offer from Facebook and a couple other big tech companies. The Facebook offer was substantially better fiscally than the other ones and it was clear to me that they were having trouble hiring. Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck. However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job.

Panini_Jones 7y ago
> Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck. * Google got rid of the cliff too. * The $75K sign-on bonus is nothing new. These are not signals that we're having trouble hiring now. > However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job. Honestly, working at FB as a SWE is awesome. Like beyond awesome. If impressing other people is what you're optimizing for, you do you, but just know that you're missing out big time.
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  They said it was also ethical concerns, so not just about impressing other people. If you don’t have ethical doubts, you do you, but some companies have beyond awesome ethical standards.
- blub 7y ago
  A timely commit, because at this rate Fb will soon be just as cool to work for as big tobacco and bragging about all the awesome "cancer-causing" projects will be kinda awkward.

axaxs 7y ago

I tell everyone I can to avoid them, just based on my own personal experience. It was by far the worst process of any company I interviewed with.

dymk 7y ago

> After the publication of this story, Harrison contacted CNBC to say “these numbers are totally wrong.” > “Facebook regularly ranks high on industry lists of most attractive employers,” Harrison said in a statement. “For example, in the last year we were rated as #1 on Indeed’s Top Rated Workplaces, #2 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies, and #7 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work. Our annual intern survey showed exceptionally strong sentiment and intent to return and we continue to see strong acceptance rates across University Recruiting.” Perhaps it's best not to take a couple ex-recruiters word as blanket truth about company wide trends. Of course, the article simply mentions this then goes straight back to asserting company wide morale problems, which is an interesting narrative to pursue, when that's not really what the majority of employees are feeling (which is further reflected by strong hiring numbers and low engineer attrition).

JohnFen 7y ago
Also, every one of the metrics he cites there are of dubious value in terms of real-world meaning.

fune_fr 7y ago

Most companies go through this transition as they fill their niche, the raw eng talent starts to get hidden under an empire-building layer of middle management. They've been able to hire some middle management to mind what remains. Replacing change-makers with reject managers from Netflix, etc. Not necessarily bad folks, just not going to be doing a lot of work.

kerng 7y ago

What I know from friends at Facebook is that there is a mass exodus at the moment, at the same time mass hiring to compensate. Overall pretty uncomfortable so most of them consider leaving to other places.

asynchrony 7y ago

I interviewed at Facebook with the intention of getting an offer letter I could use as a bargaining chip with my first choices. I was rejected, but fortunately got into my first choice anyway. Despite all the perks and compensation, I would never want to work for Facebook.

jonthepirate 7y ago

Last time FB recruiters wrote to me on LinkedIn I told them I'm not interested in working for a scandal factory.

holoduke 7y ago

I believe (strong personal assumption) that this is something not only for Facebook, but also for Google and Apple. Back 3 years ago, a lot of people from my network had dreams to work for Google or Facebook . Today it's no longer the case. They demand a company who is serious about things like privacy, environment. Things like career possibilities are still important, but so many companies these days offer similar work experience. Surprisingly I hear more and more positive news coming from old evil: Microsoft.

pat2man 7y ago
Isn't Apple serious about privacy and the environment?
- _lpa_ 7y ago
  I always had the impression that the incentive alignment between Apple and it's users was far better than any of the other big tech companies.
- quantumsequoia 7y ago
  Privacy, maybe. Environment? They make their phones in Chinese factories with suicide nets
quantumsequoia 7y ago
Nearly every criticism of Google also applies to Microsoft. Google considered a censored search engine in China. Microsoft actually has one. Google had a contract with the military but didn't renew it. Microsoft actively has one. Microsoft products also collect large amounts of data on you, and provide less privacy than Google I can't imagine anyone who no longer wants to work at Google wanting to work at Microsoft

pm24601 7y ago

I will believe this story when the stock price actually goes down. Until then it is wishful schadenfreude. As a point of reference Boeing's stock price hasn't really gone down, and Boeing's action killed people. If the stock price doesn't go down Zuck will not care.

newscracker 7y ago

If this is true, then it would be good for humankind! My position on this has always been that people still working at Facebook and its other properties don't think much about what affects millions of other people negatively (they got their money and some interesting work though). I wish that sometime in the next few years, a past job at Facebook is seen as a personal blemish and a question of character and conduct.

enibundo 7y ago

Let's let facebook die peacefully. Talents have many more options to work for. Be that for money (in finance), or passion (in other fields where their consciousness will be cleaner).

rb666 7y ago

It's certainly no longer cool to mention you work for Facebook in my area. Google is still a very strong and popular brand.

zeristor 7y ago

So is Facebook going the way of MySpace? If so what will replace it?

gigatexal 7y ago

Good. Maybe the scarce resource is good talent and this being harder to find for FB they’ll quit being so creepy and too hopped on their own greatness.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Great discussion here, both about FB and G! There are trade offs between getting valuable services in exchange for user data vs. not wanted to live in a dystopian future (or, are we already almost there?) It seems like an almost impossible optimization problem (for me) to balance wanting my country to be competitive in developing useful future AI and other tech to solve health, climate, resource, etc. problems, and, protecting people’s private information. I am positively biased in favor of FB and G for personal reasons: I have been working in the field of AI and ML since 1982 and my recent work has been spectacularly helped by frameworks and pre-trained models released by G and FB. I want a future world of combined privacy and tech-fueled hyper productivity. I just don’t know how to get there. I act consistently for these two goals but I have no control over how other people act, nor do I want to dictate what other people do. I think the best we can all hope for is some large degree of personal sovereignty over our own individual lives.

qbaqbaqba 7y ago

They are still php based business.