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Such a shame Facebook is considered a prestigious place to work. Sure, you can become a millionaire, but at what cost? Is this what you imagined you would do as

Such a shame Facebook is considered a prestigious place to work. Sure, you can become a millionaire, but at what cost? Is this what you imagined you would do as a kid interested in math/computers/science?

rozap 5y ago
It's a useful tool for hiring though. I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there. At least at my current job, a functioning moral compass is required due to the impact our clients (governments) have on the general population. It's part of our interview process to figure out if someone cares about how their work effects people. Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway.
- throwaway10895 5y ago
  If Facebook was only full of people without a functioning moral compass then none of this research would have been done in the first place.
  - gilrain 5y ago
    “Not all of them are bad” isn’t a very strong argument against the general heuristic.
    - cybernautique 5y ago
      I have one caveat: people whose immigration to the USA was conditioned on their employment in Silicon Valley. Aside from that, I think _every single person_ that works at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. (the uncivil technology corps) is morally bankrupt. Every last one of them is fundamentally compromised by their work.
      - vlovich123 5y ago
        How many people with prior experience at these companies have you worked with or know on a personal level that you're drawing this conclusion from?
        cybernautique 5y ago
        This is a good question! I've known only applicants to Google, never anyone that's worked at or meaningfully aspired to work at Facebook. I'm not making this judgment on a rational basis; my stance is based purely on my ethical values and ideological commitments. If you find this silly, or think that it invalidates my opinion then: power to you! I do not believe that my ethical values are universal statements, nor that my ethics must be shared by anyone. I simply don't care to qualify every one of my statements with "it seems," "in my opinion," etc. I genuinely wish to engage on this topic, so I welcome any further reply from you.
        vlovich123 5y ago
        I happened to have worked at Apple, Facebook and Google. I’ve found all the people there to be generally pretty morale people who try to positively influence decisions. Sometimes it’s a losing battle and decisions get made that you disagree with. However that’s broadly true of any group of people so saying all members of a group are morally compromised seems unhelpful. You could say the same about anyone working on the government or any business or even generally associating with people. I disagree with the position taken that you can evaluate a person’s principles solely by their choice of employment or association. It’s only one factor and usually an unhelpfully reductive way to look at the world IMO.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        Weird. I know a lot of people who work in that space. None of them are morally corrupt. What kind of people are you seeking out?
        cybernautique 5y ago
        "Seeking out" in which sense? As in, "who are the people that I seek to condemn?" Or, "who are the people that I seek out to speak with?" Or some other sense? I'm not asking this to be obtuse; I'm genuinely interested in engaging on this topic, so I want to be sure I'm not speaking past your meaning. "Who are the people I seek to condemn?" The information workers that find employment with massive, human-rights-violating corporations. I condemn these people for their willingness to dedicate such talent and intelligence towards actively making the world a more user-hostile place. "Who are the people I seek to speak with?" Generally, everyone and anyone, including you or any of your acquaintances that happen to be reading this thread. With respect, I think this speaks to a difference in our ethical values. I 100% believe that Facebook employees are fundamentally compromised by their employment. Don't get me twisted: I'm not accusing them of being Nazis, nor any such equivalence; these specific condemnations are very prevalent in our modern discourse. I'm not saying anything like this. I'm also not saying that such people are necessarily unpleasant, or that their company might not be enjoyable. However, at the end of the day, they are making the world worse for me, the people I associate with, and (in my opinion) the people of the world at large. For these reasons, owing to my ideological commitments, I remain firm in my position. Facebook employees are ethically compromised.
        tomrod 5y ago
        > Facebook employees are ethically compromised. Again, I disagree heartily. I know FB employees who aren't ethically compromised, which serves as a counterexample to your claim. I can't think of any legal, large employer with whom people are ethically compromised simply by employment. Also, your original claim was that they are morally corrupt. How do you distinguish between these two? > they are making the world worse for me, the people I associate with As a gentle reminder, a single person isn't the world, and your life being assessed by you as worse (without mention of baseline) is not a huge price to pay for free connections, central marketplace, and not to mention the groups that have been extraordinarily helpful for the marginalized. I've been in that place (marginalized), and finding support through groups facilitated by FB's platform was essential to my well-being. So again, counterexample to the totalizing claim. Am I a fan of FB? No. But it's a really hard stretch to assume that everyone is compromised for being involved with them. Such claims aren't novel, but seem to be histrionics in most cases.
  - errantmind 5y ago
    The people who work at companies that seem 'immoral' are able to justify it because they work on such a small part as to avoid any feeling of responsibility. The same could be said of soldiers in an army used for oppression. They don't feel responsible for the outcomes because they aren't the ones making the decisions, or they work 'behind the scenes'. I personally don't judge any of them but I can see how you could argue that simply by working for such a company or institution you are partly to blame for their immorality.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      Ah, the Nuremberg defence: "I was just following orders".[1] Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
    - snuser 5y ago
      It feels off, before working at facebook I was unable to buy a house and wouldn't have been able to retire at 67 I've worked a for a lot of 'nicer' small companies and they pretty much threw me in the trash
      - errantmind 5y ago
        I'm not sure I understand. The companies were nice and threw you in the trash? Perhaps you mean they were 'moral' in mission but bad employers? Ultimately Google and Facebook are ad agencies (by profit). They need to pay a premium to attract workers because their mission is less attractive, although they dress it up by publicizing ancillary projects. If you go several steps farther, porn companies do the same.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Ultimately Google and Facebook are ad agencies. T Now. They are a combination of advertising venues and ad placement agency. “Ad agencies” are the companies you hire to make ads. Though Google branching out into using AI to generate ads probably isn't too far off.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there > Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway Those grapes sure are sour.
  - rozap 5y ago
    I'm doing really well, thanks!
- kodah 5y ago
  Applying morality to jobs is a pretty piss poor strategy. I'm a big fan of privacy, how many companies have employees that I cannot morally hire with your perspective? How can a Libertarian ever hire anyone who has served in a war? How can a religious person sell goods to all people in the community they serve? The thing about morals is that they're written by the individual, and meant to guide the individual. They're fine to have until you try to apply them to other people.
  - rozap 5y ago
    Yeah I agree. Though I don't mean morality in a general sense. All I'm saying is, it's important to figure out if someone will contribute to a product that is shown to be harmful. It has nothing to do with an individual's beliefs or feelings, only actions people take in the workplace.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    > The thing about morals is that they're written by the individual, and meant to guide the individual. And in doing so, guide the individual's decisions, which then affect society.
- tourist2d 5y ago
  I really hate this recent virtue signalling circlejerk topic on Hacker News lately. Would you also not hire from Microsoft because they have military contracts? Not hire from the American government because the lack of free healthcare killing millions? Someone working on content moderation or video streaming at Facebook isn't making these evil decisions. Governments (your clients) should be creating new laws and issuing larger fines to combat behaviour such as Facebooks.
lostlogin 5y ago
> Such a shame Facebook is considered a prestigious place to work. Is it? It’s not my industry but I haven’t got that impression from reading threads here.
- zffr 5y ago
  Look up the FAANG acronym. It’s a collection of companies that are supposedly the “best” to work for. Facebook is the F Edit: Here’s an example Reddit thread of what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_everyone_want_to_work_for_faang/ https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_e...
  - munk-a 5y ago
    FAANG is composed of large companies - not great companies. Those employers rarely make it onto genuine lists of best employers and if you want real pedigree on your resume you'll want to come out of a small but successful company. You can be asleep at the wheel for two years and leave a FAANG with neutral or positive reviews because you were sociable - if you helped grow a tiny company into a small company recruiters will take immediate notice.
    - polyomino 5y ago
      lets be real, recruiters will take notice no matter what
      - VRay 5y ago
        I think your average "asleep at the wheel" Facebook employee could easily do the work of 10 or 20 ethical guys from your average Midwestern consulting firm. (Unless the work involves having some sort of strong moral compass anyway)
    - Vadoff 5y ago
      Facebook is one the highest paying companies, the highest among FAANG. High paying companies = high demand = selective = high prestige. I would say Google and Facebook are probably the two most in demand companies (out of all companies) to work for among software engineers. (I frequent career fairs, blind and cscareerquestions)
voidfunc 5y ago
I like money. Not at Facebook but would join if I was looking again. Someone’s gonna get the money, it might as well be me.
- na85 5y ago
  >Someone’s gonna get the money, it might as well be me. Ethics are disappointingly rare in Software. Such a shame.
  - ghuin 5y ago
    Or people don't share your views on ethics.
    - cybernautique 5y ago
      I'd be interested in seeing which set of ethical values helps someone reconcile the two notions of "I'm not a bad person" and "I directly enable human rights abuses on a scale never-before-seen in human history;" or, otherwise, which perspective a person can take that doesn't commit them to the second notion (precluding fundamentally self-deceptive perspectives, such as willful ignorance).
      - Nasrudith 5y ago
        Well for one a stance based upon human agency. "Enabling" is also a massive weasel word of propaganda to attribute all indirect actions and consequences to the target while ignoring the actual actors. The ones committing human rights violations. Limiting everyone to only non-toxic crayons short, dull, plastic knives that cannot even cut bread would reduce ability to inflict harm. To call blaming the tool childish is an insult to children. Is Sony now responsible for production and distribution of child pornography for making camcorders, screens, and computer memory? I don't even like Facebook but I can see the prevailing arguments are utterly deranged.
        cybernautique 5y ago
discobot 5y ago
Some believe that facebook is a positive force in the world, despite being hated.
- modriano 5y ago
  If someone wanted to make the case that Facebook is a net-good force in the world, I'd read that. But I haven't seen anyone even try to lay out evidence of Facebook doing any good things. I like pytorch, prophet, and their decent job policing the pedophiles on the FB platform, but what else do they do that's good and responsible?
  - discobot 5y ago
    they enable communication for 3 billion people on the scale not previously seen in the history of mankind?
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      WHy is that good? Seems like it just leads to 13% of teenagers just wanting to kill themselves.
      - discobot 5y ago
        Why is anything good objectively? It is good for me because I can stay connected with my mom despite living in different country. Also facebook group for my town is nice and useful, and my wife enjoys posting in instagram from our trips. Now multiply this by several billions.
        williamtrask 5y ago
        All these things existed before facebook
        strulovich 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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vmception 5y ago
I mean in like 2 years, half of which is in matchmaking after a six figure signing bonus. Not really a moral sacrifice. By the time you think it's a good idea to voice a contrarian opinion in a company group chat, you've already graduated.
sjg007 5y ago
The FB app has become bloated.. I don't want the shop, I don't want the TikTok or Youtube stuff. I just want my friends.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  You're not the customer, you're the product. What you want doesn't matter. They keep you happy enough to keep from uninstalling the app, and that's it.
redditmigrant 5y ago
Its such a shame US is considered a great place to live. Sure you can have a good life, but at what cost? Your government props up dictators, goes and blows up a country over imaginary WMDs etc. etc. Is this what you imagined as being an enabler of through your taxes and votes?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BeetleB 5y ago
> Is this what you imagined you would do as a kid interested in math/computers/science? I work a job that I imagined I'd like as a kid. Work is interesting, but it's a crappy job. Of the jobs I've had, all the ones that aligned with my passion sucked. It's no longer a criterion when I look for jobs. If you can find a job that aligns with your passion, and it's not a crappy job, by all means go for it! For many, they tire of hopping from job to job in search of satisfaction. Optimizing for money (or time) tends to be the next logical step.

rozap 5y ago

It's a useful tool for hiring though. I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there. At least at my current job, a functioning moral compass is required due to the impact our clients (governments) have on the general population. It's part of our interview process to figure out if someone cares about how their work effects people. Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway.

throwaway10895 5y ago
If Facebook was only full of people without a functioning moral compass then none of this research would have been done in the first place.
- gilrain 5y ago
  “Not all of them are bad” isn’t a very strong argument against the general heuristic.
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    I have one caveat: people whose immigration to the USA was conditioned on their employment in Silicon Valley. Aside from that, I think _every single person_ that works at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. (the uncivil technology corps) is morally bankrupt. Every last one of them is fundamentally compromised by their work.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      How many people with prior experience at these companies have you worked with or know on a personal level that you're drawing this conclusion from?
      - cybernautique 5y ago
        This is a good question! I've known only applicants to Google, never anyone that's worked at or meaningfully aspired to work at Facebook. I'm not making this judgment on a rational basis; my stance is based purely on my ethical values and ideological commitments. If you find this silly, or think that it invalidates my opinion then: power to you! I do not believe that my ethical values are universal statements, nor that my ethics must be shared by anyone. I simply don't care to qualify every one of my statements with "it seems," "in my opinion," etc. I genuinely wish to engage on this topic, so I welcome any further reply from you.
        vlovich123 5y ago
        I happened to have worked at Apple, Facebook and Google. I’ve found all the people there to be generally pretty morale people who try to positively influence decisions. Sometimes it’s a losing battle and decisions get made that you disagree with. However that’s broadly true of any group of people so saying all members of a group are morally compromised seems unhelpful. You could say the same about anyone working on the government or any business or even generally associating with people. I disagree with the position taken that you can evaluate a person’s principles solely by their choice of employment or association. It’s only one factor and usually an unhelpfully reductive way to look at the world IMO.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      Weird. I know a lot of people who work in that space. None of them are morally corrupt. What kind of people are you seeking out?
      - cybernautique 5y ago
        "Seeking out" in which sense? As in, "who are the people that I seek to condemn?" Or, "who are the people that I seek out to speak with?" Or some other sense? I'm not asking this to be obtuse; I'm genuinely interested in engaging on this topic, so I want to be sure I'm not speaking past your meaning. "Who are the people I seek to condemn?" The information workers that find employment with massive, human-rights-violating corporations. I condemn these people for their willingness to dedicate such talent and intelligence towards actively making the world a more user-hostile place. "Who are the people I seek to speak with?" Generally, everyone and anyone, including you or any of your acquaintances that happen to be reading this thread. With respect, I think this speaks to a difference in our ethical values. I 100% believe that Facebook employees are fundamentally compromised by their employment. Don't get me twisted: I'm not accusing them of being Nazis, nor any such equivalence; these specific condemnations are very prevalent in our modern discourse. I'm not saying anything like this. I'm also not saying that such people are necessarily unpleasant, or that their company might not be enjoyable. However, at the end of the day, they are making the world worse for me, the people I associate with, and (in my opinion) the people of the world at large. For these reasons, owing to my ideological commitments, I remain firm in my position. Facebook employees are ethically compromised.
        tomrod 5y ago
        > Facebook employees are ethically compromised. Again, I disagree heartily. I know FB employees who aren't ethically compromised, which serves as a counterexample to your claim. I can't think of any legal, large employer with whom people are ethically compromised simply by employment. Also, your original claim was that they are morally corrupt. How do you distinguish between these two? > they are making the world worse for me, the people I associate with As a gentle reminder, a single person isn't the world, and your life being assessed by you as worse (without mention of baseline) is not a huge price to pay for free connections, central marketplace, and not to mention the groups that have been extraordinarily helpful for the marginalized. I've been in that place (marginalized), and finding support through groups facilitated by FB's platform was essential to my well-being. So again, counterexample to the totalizing claim. Am I a fan of FB? No. But it's a really hard stretch to assume that everyone is compromised for being involved with them. Such claims aren't novel, but seem to be histrionics in most cases.
- errantmind 5y ago
  The people who work at companies that seem 'immoral' are able to justify it because they work on such a small part as to avoid any feeling of responsibility. The same could be said of soldiers in an army used for oppression. They don't feel responsible for the outcomes because they aren't the ones making the decisions, or they work 'behind the scenes'. I personally don't judge any of them but I can see how you could argue that simply by working for such a company or institution you are partly to blame for their immorality.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    Ah, the Nuremberg defence: "I was just following orders".[1] Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
  - snuser 5y ago
    It feels off, before working at facebook I was unable to buy a house and wouldn't have been able to retire at 67 I've worked a for a lot of 'nicer' small companies and they pretty much threw me in the trash
    - errantmind 5y ago
      I'm not sure I understand. The companies were nice and threw you in the trash? Perhaps you mean they were 'moral' in mission but bad employers? Ultimately Google and Facebook are ad agencies (by profit). They need to pay a premium to attract workers because their mission is less attractive, although they dress it up by publicizing ancillary projects. If you go several steps farther, porn companies do the same.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Ultimately Google and Facebook are ad agencies. T Now. They are a combination of advertising venues and ad placement agency. “Ad agencies” are the companies you hire to make ads. Though Google branching out into using AI to generate ads probably isn't too far off.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
quotemstr 5y ago
> I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there > Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway Those grapes sure are sour.
- rozap 5y ago
  I'm doing really well, thanks!
kodah 5y ago
Applying morality to jobs is a pretty piss poor strategy. I'm a big fan of privacy, how many companies have employees that I cannot morally hire with your perspective? How can a Libertarian ever hire anyone who has served in a war? How can a religious person sell goods to all people in the community they serve? The thing about morals is that they're written by the individual, and meant to guide the individual. They're fine to have until you try to apply them to other people.
- rozap 5y ago
  Yeah I agree. Though I don't mean morality in a general sense. All I'm saying is, it's important to figure out if someone will contribute to a product that is shown to be harmful. It has nothing to do with an individual's beliefs or feelings, only actions people take in the workplace.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  > The thing about morals is that they're written by the individual, and meant to guide the individual. And in doing so, guide the individual's decisions, which then affect society.
tourist2d 5y ago
I really hate this recent virtue signalling circlejerk topic on Hacker News lately. Would you also not hire from Microsoft because they have military contracts? Not hire from the American government because the lack of free healthcare killing millions? Someone working on content moderation or video streaming at Facebook isn't making these evil decisions. Governments (your clients) should be creating new laws and issuing larger fines to combat behaviour such as Facebooks.

lostlogin 5y ago

> Such a shame Facebook is considered a prestigious place to work. Is it? It’s not my industry but I haven’t got that impression from reading threads here.

zffr 5y ago
Look up the FAANG acronym. It’s a collection of companies that are supposedly the “best” to work for. Facebook is the F Edit: Here’s an example Reddit thread of what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_everyone_want_to_work_for_faang/ https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_e...
- munk-a 5y ago
  FAANG is composed of large companies - not great companies. Those employers rarely make it onto genuine lists of best employers and if you want real pedigree on your resume you'll want to come out of a small but successful company. You can be asleep at the wheel for two years and leave a FAANG with neutral or positive reviews because you were sociable - if you helped grow a tiny company into a small company recruiters will take immediate notice.
  - polyomino 5y ago
    lets be real, recruiters will take notice no matter what
    - VRay 5y ago
      I think your average "asleep at the wheel" Facebook employee could easily do the work of 10 or 20 ethical guys from your average Midwestern consulting firm. (Unless the work involves having some sort of strong moral compass anyway)
  - Vadoff 5y ago
    Facebook is one the highest paying companies, the highest among FAANG. High paying companies = high demand = selective = high prestige. I would say Google and Facebook are probably the two most in demand companies (out of all companies) to work for among software engineers. (I frequent career fairs, blind and cscareerquestions)

voidfunc 5y ago

I like money. Not at Facebook but would join if I was looking again. Someone’s gonna get the money, it might as well be me.

na85 5y ago
>Someone’s gonna get the money, it might as well be me. Ethics are disappointingly rare in Software. Such a shame.
- ghuin 5y ago
  Or people don't share your views on ethics.
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing which set of ethical values helps someone reconcile the two notions of "I'm not a bad person" and "I directly enable human rights abuses on a scale never-before-seen in human history;" or, otherwise, which perspective a person can take that doesn't commit them to the second notion (precluding fundamentally self-deceptive perspectives, such as willful ignorance).
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      Well for one a stance based upon human agency. "Enabling" is also a massive weasel word of propaganda to attribute all indirect actions and consequences to the target while ignoring the actual actors. The ones committing human rights violations. Limiting everyone to only non-toxic crayons short, dull, plastic knives that cannot even cut bread would reduce ability to inflict harm. To call blaming the tool childish is an insult to children. Is Sony now responsible for production and distribution of child pornography for making camcorders, screens, and computer memory? I don't even like Facebook but I can see the prevailing arguments are utterly deranged.
      - cybernautique 5y ago

discobot 5y ago

Some believe that facebook is a positive force in the world, despite being hated.

modriano 5y ago
If someone wanted to make the case that Facebook is a net-good force in the world, I'd read that. But I haven't seen anyone even try to lay out evidence of Facebook doing any good things. I like pytorch, prophet, and their decent job policing the pedophiles on the FB platform, but what else do they do that's good and responsible?
- discobot 5y ago
  they enable communication for 3 billion people on the scale not previously seen in the history of mankind?
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    WHy is that good? Seems like it just leads to 13% of teenagers just wanting to kill themselves.
    - discobot 5y ago
      Why is anything good objectively? It is good for me because I can stay connected with my mom despite living in different country. Also facebook group for my town is nice and useful, and my wife enjoys posting in instagram from our trips. Now multiply this by several billions.
      - williamtrask 5y ago
        All these things existed before facebook
        strulovich 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vmception 5y ago

I mean in like 2 years, half of which is in matchmaking after a six figure signing bonus. Not really a moral sacrifice. By the time you think it's a good idea to voice a contrarian opinion in a company group chat, you've already graduated.

sjg007 5y ago

The FB app has become bloated.. I don't want the shop, I don't want the TikTok or Youtube stuff. I just want my friends.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago
You're not the customer, you're the product. What you want doesn't matter. They keep you happy enough to keep from uninstalling the app, and that's it.

redditmigrant 5y ago

Its such a shame US is considered a great place to live. Sure you can have a good life, but at what cost? Your government props up dictators, goes and blows up a country over imaginary WMDs etc. etc. Is this what you imagined as being an enabler of through your taxes and votes?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BeetleB 5y ago

> Is this what you imagined you would do as a kid interested in math/computers/science? I work a job that I imagined I'd like as a kid. Work is interesting, but it's a crappy job. Of the jobs I've had, all the ones that aligned with my passion sucked. It's no longer a criterion when I look for jobs. If you can find a job that aligns with your passion, and it's not a crappy job, by all means go for it! For many, they tire of hopping from job to job in search of satisfaction. Optimizing for money (or time) tends to be the next logical step.