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This long article doesnt address the most critical point. If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? This isn't a new dillemm

This long article doesnt address the most critical point. If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? This isn't a new dillemma. People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.

paulgb 6y ago
> This long article doesnt address the most critical point. > If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? The article opens with a story of someone who quit.
- DannyB2 6y ago
  You're right. He quit. However he seems to be the exception.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Maybe, I guess it's hard to know without knowing their retention metrics. As one anecdote, I was in the negotiation phase of an Oculus offer earlier this year and turned it down the same weekend of that infamous post[1] and I know a few people in my network whose employment status has quietly changed away from Facebook. [1] Less because I was certain they should moderate it, and more because I thought it was weak how Zuckerberg threw Jack Dorsey under the bus, and how cynically the company steers the conversation to free speech to avoid taking responsibility for the adverse effects of product decisions. artfulhippo made the point I'm trying to make up-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929769
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  It took him 9 years of collecting a fat paycheck and enabling Facebook to find his moral compass. Is it wrong to be skeptical of these millionaire developers who ride off into the sunset to retire but leave a final "oh btw, lots of problematic stuff at my former employer" message?
  - paulgb 6y ago
    It's not wrong to be skeptical. I do think there's a sort of boiling frog effect, though. Internal company culture never matches public perception, and you're always able to tell yourself a story that the public misunderstands what drives the company. After all, you hang out with your colleagues and you know they aren't bad people. But then some big controversy snaps you out of it and you realize that the company's internal collective fiction is no more accurate than the public perception, and perhaps you are the baddies after all.
    - mxawng 6y ago
      hello, i'm the ex-employee in question and can speak authoritatively on the subject of myself :) i joined FB for the first time as an intern almost a decade ago. i suspect i have a substantively different view of the company and the people who built it—even compared to many other employees, and certainly compared to folks who have not been in the ~room where it happens~ (heh). even accounting for some amount of insider bias, i think there's still a material discrepancy between how the public viewed certain major FB "scandals"—via the lens of media spin and profitable reporting—and how many folks like myself, who were privy to additional context and private information, viewed them. to some people, the recent discord around hate moderation might seem like just more of the same FB badstuff. not so for me! even folks at FB who don't work directly on certain products and policies are often immersed in discussion about them (unless they aggressively unsubscribe). these discussions, again, have their bias, but i hope we can concede that it's still a lot of passive brain cycles being spent swimming among these topics. folks develop deeper intuitions for how troubling X or Y publicized issue actually is, relative to all the things (of all flavors) that happen at FB and among its users. there's also a ton more discussion of legitimately positive societal work and how to extend those successes, whereas those rarely make good media narratives. the good doesn't cancel out the bad—that's never how it works—but you do have to consider both together at every decision point. in the leaked audio of my internal video post, i say that my long road to the door started in 2019. i still stand by that inflection point, and feel that before the, FB—while clearly on the back foot for some time due to rampant abuses by powerful groups of its product—was on balance moving in a direction i supported. you may have made a different choice—or you may feel you would make a different choice, though you may not have the full slate of inputs right now to be sure you would, in situ. but, at least for me, i have reasons why the questions around the 2016 election or fake news or data breaches were things which, to me, seemed categorically different from the questions concerning hate moderation. feel free to DM any earnest questions about why these things don't all congeal into one mass of problem for me (and i suspect other current and former FBers).
ciarannolan 6y ago
> If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? $ > Ethics
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
notacoward 6y ago
> If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? Always super easy to say for someone else. Why haven't most of the people in the US government quit by now? In fact, insecurity about getting an equivalent job is a real thing. Not wanting to abandon a project you've worked on and expertise you've developed is a thing. Not wanting to abandon people you've worked with is a thing. Thinking you can do more good from within is a thing. Even for those who consider quitting in protest, waiting until just after the next bonus/vesting day seems like a reasonable concession to other psychological or financial needs. Then that date rolls around, and all of that inertia is still there. Expecting others to make a hard decision that you've never been in a position to make yourself seems unrealistic and unhelpful. [ETA: I don't mean to say this particular person has never been in that position. I don't know them. I've even forgotten their name. But I've seen this sentiment expressed many times and it always seems facile.]
- mxawng 6y ago
  agreed with this. for me personally, leaving FB was a confluence of directional concerns which arose for me in 2019 (as described in the leaked internal post), with a concomitant desire to spend my time on new, more human purposes. this was balanced against me enjoying my time working with the remarkable people on my team, a few logistical considerations, a surprise global pandemic, and also years of trust and good faith that FB had earned from me as both employer and societal phenomenon. i spent a little time scoping out stuff within FB as well (it's a big place), but factoring that out it still took me almost a year. the inertia is clearly there. but i consider myself lucky! there are many people who experience all sorts of work-related insecurity with real gravitas. folks on work visas. folks paying off student loans or other debt. folks who had been working much worse tech jobs before and feel their FB offer was a lucky break. also the many folks at FB not on the tech side who don't earn stereotypical tech comp. i have no idea how many people there are who satisfy these conditions or similar ones, but my guess is that if you're ever thinking to yourself, "why don't more people just quit?" it's because you're underestimating the scale of folks in that group.
frostmatthew 6y ago
> People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat. That's not a very fair comparison - there aren't exactly any huge positives associated with tobacco use. So it's not like someone could work for a tobacco company and say "sure some people die from consuming our product but on the other hand look at all the good we're doing..." That's very different than Facebook where yes there may be some negatives but there's also positives (e.g. it's certainly raised countless millions for various charities, helped people keep in touch with others and discover (or rediscover) relationships, and spread the awareness of important social issues).
- st1ck 6y ago
  The positives you listed are features of most social networks, not just Facebook. If Facebook disappeared overnight, another platform(s), hopefully more ethical, would quickly take over its role, and it could be a net positive for the world.
  - notacoward 6y ago
    That seems very optimistic to me. Ethically, Facebook is the perfect exemplar of an internet-oriented company. No better, perhaps, but no worse either because it's such a low bar. It seems at least as likely that any replacement would turn out to be even scummier, simply because it would absolutely have to hire from the same talent pool and would have had even less time to figure out what all the ethical dangers are. But it's simply not going to happen, so this is all moot.
justapassenger 6y ago
Majority of people stay there. It's likely for one of 2 reasons: 1. They're morally bankrupt and prefer $ 2. This is very complex issue, and there's no simple right or wrong solution.
KaiserPro 6y ago
$1.5 million dollars.
geodel 6y ago
FB employees launched very strong virtual protest in recent times. Some had even skipped dessert after their meals. I do not know what further moral courage one can show beyond this.

paulgb 6y ago

> This long article doesnt address the most critical point. > If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? The article opens with a story of someone who quit.

DannyB2 6y ago
You're right. He quit. However he seems to be the exception.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Maybe, I guess it's hard to know without knowing their retention metrics. As one anecdote, I was in the negotiation phase of an Oculus offer earlier this year and turned it down the same weekend of that infamous post[1] and I know a few people in my network whose employment status has quietly changed away from Facebook. [1] Less because I was certain they should moderate it, and more because I thought it was weak how Zuckerberg threw Jack Dorsey under the bus, and how cynically the company steers the conversation to free speech to avoid taking responsibility for the adverse effects of product decisions. artfulhippo made the point I'm trying to make up-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929769
ciarannolan 6y ago
It took him 9 years of collecting a fat paycheck and enabling Facebook to find his moral compass. Is it wrong to be skeptical of these millionaire developers who ride off into the sunset to retire but leave a final "oh btw, lots of problematic stuff at my former employer" message?
- paulgb 6y ago
  It's not wrong to be skeptical. I do think there's a sort of boiling frog effect, though. Internal company culture never matches public perception, and you're always able to tell yourself a story that the public misunderstands what drives the company. After all, you hang out with your colleagues and you know they aren't bad people. But then some big controversy snaps you out of it and you realize that the company's internal collective fiction is no more accurate than the public perception, and perhaps you are the baddies after all.
  - mxawng 6y ago
    hello, i'm the ex-employee in question and can speak authoritatively on the subject of myself :) i joined FB for the first time as an intern almost a decade ago. i suspect i have a substantively different view of the company and the people who built it—even compared to many other employees, and certainly compared to folks who have not been in the ~room where it happens~ (heh). even accounting for some amount of insider bias, i think there's still a material discrepancy between how the public viewed certain major FB "scandals"—via the lens of media spin and profitable reporting—and how many folks like myself, who were privy to additional context and private information, viewed them. to some people, the recent discord around hate moderation might seem like just more of the same FB badstuff. not so for me! even folks at FB who don't work directly on certain products and policies are often immersed in discussion about them (unless they aggressively unsubscribe). these discussions, again, have their bias, but i hope we can concede that it's still a lot of passive brain cycles being spent swimming among these topics. folks develop deeper intuitions for how troubling X or Y publicized issue actually is, relative to all the things (of all flavors) that happen at FB and among its users. there's also a ton more discussion of legitimately positive societal work and how to extend those successes, whereas those rarely make good media narratives. the good doesn't cancel out the bad—that's never how it works—but you do have to consider both together at every decision point. in the leaked audio of my internal video post, i say that my long road to the door started in 2019. i still stand by that inflection point, and feel that before the, FB—while clearly on the back foot for some time due to rampant abuses by powerful groups of its product—was on balance moving in a direction i supported. you may have made a different choice—or you may feel you would make a different choice, though you may not have the full slate of inputs right now to be sure you would, in situ. but, at least for me, i have reasons why the questions around the 2016 election or fake news or data breaches were things which, to me, seemed categorically different from the questions concerning hate moderation. feel free to DM any earnest questions about why these things don't all congeal into one mass of problem for me (and i suspect other current and former FBers).

ciarannolan 6y ago

> If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? $ > Ethics

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

notacoward 6y ago

> If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? Always super easy to say for someone else. Why haven't most of the people in the US government quit by now? In fact, insecurity about getting an equivalent job is a real thing. Not wanting to abandon a project you've worked on and expertise you've developed is a thing. Not wanting to abandon people you've worked with is a thing. Thinking you can do more good from within is a thing. Even for those who consider quitting in protest, waiting until just after the next bonus/vesting day seems like a reasonable concession to other psychological or financial needs. Then that date rolls around, and all of that inertia is still there. Expecting others to make a hard decision that you've never been in a position to make yourself seems unrealistic and unhelpful. [ETA: I don't mean to say this particular person has never been in that position. I don't know them. I've even forgotten their name. But I've seen this sentiment expressed many times and it always seems facile.]

mxawng 6y ago
agreed with this. for me personally, leaving FB was a confluence of directional concerns which arose for me in 2019 (as described in the leaked internal post), with a concomitant desire to spend my time on new, more human purposes. this was balanced against me enjoying my time working with the remarkable people on my team, a few logistical considerations, a surprise global pandemic, and also years of trust and good faith that FB had earned from me as both employer and societal phenomenon. i spent a little time scoping out stuff within FB as well (it's a big place), but factoring that out it still took me almost a year. the inertia is clearly there. but i consider myself lucky! there are many people who experience all sorts of work-related insecurity with real gravitas. folks on work visas. folks paying off student loans or other debt. folks who had been working much worse tech jobs before and feel their FB offer was a lucky break. also the many folks at FB not on the tech side who don't earn stereotypical tech comp. i have no idea how many people there are who satisfy these conditions or similar ones, but my guess is that if you're ever thinking to yourself, "why don't more people just quit?" it's because you're underestimating the scale of folks in that group.

frostmatthew 6y ago

> People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat. That's not a very fair comparison - there aren't exactly any huge positives associated with tobacco use. So it's not like someone could work for a tobacco company and say "sure some people die from consuming our product but on the other hand look at all the good we're doing..." That's very different than Facebook where yes there may be some negatives but there's also positives (e.g. it's certainly raised countless millions for various charities, helped people keep in touch with others and discover (or rediscover) relationships, and spread the awareness of important social issues).

st1ck 6y ago
The positives you listed are features of most social networks, not just Facebook. If Facebook disappeared overnight, another platform(s), hopefully more ethical, would quickly take over its role, and it could be a net positive for the world.
- notacoward 6y ago
  That seems very optimistic to me. Ethically, Facebook is the perfect exemplar of an internet-oriented company. No better, perhaps, but no worse either because it's such a low bar. It seems at least as likely that any replacement would turn out to be even scummier, simply because it would absolutely have to hire from the same talent pool and would have had even less time to figure out what all the ethical dangers are. But it's simply not going to happen, so this is all moot.

justapassenger 6y ago

Majority of people stay there. It's likely for one of 2 reasons: 1. They're morally bankrupt and prefer $ 2. This is very complex issue, and there's no simple right or wrong solution.

KaiserPro 6y ago

$1.5 million dollars.

geodel 6y ago

FB employees launched very strong virtual protest in recent times. Some had even skipped dessert after their meals. I do not know what further moral courage one can show beyond this.