14 ms·
Article doesn't disagree with your take: "The firm risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco. If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks
by mchanson 5y ago
Article doesn't disagree with your take:
"The firm risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco. If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Even if its ageing customers stick with the social network, Facebook has bigger ambitions that could be foiled if public opinion continues to curdle."
- geodel 5y agoWhere will that young liberal staff go work for? I suspect once too much of good life perks are not available at FB maybe their outlook itself change a bit.
- dogman144 5y agoThey'll go work for the AANG in FAANG. If they're good enough to get into FB, they've good enough for the other 4+. FB transferred from a "change the world" to a "change my finances and make my resume" place several yers ago. Several other companies fill in the latter qualification. Also, and ya I know how this sounds, but if Coinbase keeps it up they and similar companies will and are grabbing some of the same talent.
- geodel 5y agoAh right. All moral quandaries get resolved while working for AANG.
- SamBam 5y agoWell, perhaps just the N, then. But Netflix has always been the odd-duck in FAANG. (And yes, you can point out reasons not to work at Netflix, but it seems like a whole nother level than the rest of FAANG.)
- goatlover 5y agoThere's been a couple Netflix public outrage instances. Like when they split up their pricing plan for streaming and DVDs, or the backlash over Cuties. But Netflix is still going strong.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago> But Netflix has always been the odd-duck in FAANG. Yeah, mostly cos they make no money ;)
- WJW 5y ago1.7 billion in profit on ~7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2021 counts as "no money" these days?
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoYeah, because it essentially happened because they stopped producing content in 2020, due to the pandemic. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/netflix-says-cash-flow-positive-after-2021-no-more-external-financing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/netflix-says-cash-flow-posit... Netflix have needed external financing to stay in business up till this year. This is very unlike the rest of FAANG (Amazon is similar, but do throw off a lot of free cash).
- asdfman123 5y agoLet's break this apart: everyone knows big tech has its share of problems. Most liberals can stomach it. What liberals can't stomach is a company allowing the spread of nasty election lies.
- kazinator 5y ago"Company allowing the spread of nasty election lies" quite literally describes what any media company is doing when they give air time to pretty much any running candidate.
- asdfman123 5y agoFalse equivalence
- kazinator 5y agoSort of. It's how you spread the lies. How they are delimited. One halfway responsible way: "here is a paid announcement from someone that doesn't necessarily reflect our views: ${LIES}". On the other end of the spectrum are sneaky, dark patterns and whatnot.
- goatlover 5y agoSome other tech giant with similar issues that are not getting as bad a press at the moment.
- dogman144 5y ago> Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Spot on, and not just young, liberal. Old-ish and privacy minded. Mid-aged and right. Two crowds are critical though: - this is the talent pool: college campuses. FB's changing tone (sponsoring scholarships, sponsoring scholarships for non tech -> tech transfers, etc) is evident. - this is the management pool: mid-30's to 40's, married, coastal EMs or PMs, that have to explain at dinner parties where they work and why they do it. See: the whistleblower.
- qwerpy 5y agoThat management pool isn’t going anywhere. Have a bunch of friends who work at FB, mostly immigrants. They don’t care about the reputation, or don’t have the luxury to. No one confronts them about why they work there at dinner parties. It pays the bills very well and allows them to buy nice houses and send their kids to private school. It’s the lack of work/life balance that gets to them, not the reputation of the employer.
- el_ravager 5y agoIf they came to capitalist America knowing of its history, they're probably A-OK with being politically abhorrent.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoExactly. Giving a lot of shits about the reputation of your employer is something people who take high pay and the lifestyle that comes with it for granted do.
- jcadam 5y agoHey mid-30's to 40's is young..ish.
- deltree7 5y agoHN delusion about their own self-importance is strong on this one. There are millions of talented Engineers who'd die to work for Facebook, Google, Netflix. Top 0.1%ile of 8,000,000,000 is 8 Million. Most woke, liberal graduates were protected from competition from other countries due to their location advantage. Ironically these woke employees are demanding remote work, displaying their usual cluelessness about unintended consequences. Like Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, its time for CEOs of tech companies to voluntarily kick out these entitled SJWs and hire true Capitalists, Libertarians, Indians, & Chinese. There are millions of them in this world and they are extremely talented and hard-working.
- kongin 5y agoFacebook has gotten worse with its young liberal staff. And I don't mean in the dark patterns for more clicks sense, I mean in the cpu cycles to do a basic operation. Maybe it's time for the old crusty developers making $60k on embedded systems to take a shot at it.
- teg4n_ 5y agoIt's not like the web has a high entry barrier, how come these embedded systems developers turn web developers that are so great haven't made anything? Am I missing something? Are there secret web apps that are oh so good but just not darn popular enough?
- dasil003 5y agoI’d say inertia and unawareness of the FAANG salary market on the supply-side, and ageism and preference for demographic diversity over experiential diversity on the demand-side.
- teg4n_ 5y agoFor some reason I think places like Microsoft have plenty of old white highly experienced embedded engineers that could work on a web app if they wanted to, I just don't think they could do any better.
- TeaDrunk 5y agoTBH A range of ages is demographic diversity. No idea why it's forgotten about sometimes.
- NineStarPoint 5y agoI suspect there isn't an even subconscious effort to exclude people of age, but that it's a side effect of the FAANG interview process. People who have been in the industry for decades don't care to learn to do leetcode interviews when they can get paid perfectly well somewhere either based on connections, or by going through interviews more centered around job experience. That said, I doubt a person making 60k somewhere would have made it in to a FAANG at any point. Making that little in the modern tech market shows either a lack of skill, a lack of desire to improve one's salary, or a need to live and work in a location where there aren't many opportunities for employment. There are plenty of non-faang places that are desperately hiring for 6 figure salaries at this point.
- yanderekko 5y ago>The firm risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco. If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. So any institution that's considered repugnant by young liberals can now breezily be compared to big tobacco? Should the Republican party restructure its platform so that it can have snazzier candidate webpages? Big tobacco is big tobacco because the product is widely seen as addictive and harmful, even by its biggest users. The nuance needed to argue that Facebook is bad but Twitter and Reddit are fine will never have this sort of broad appeal. Social media for me but not for thee?
- Omnitaus 5y agoAnd if we, on pain of consistency, include YouTube, Reddit, Twitter? They suffer from the same algorithmic abuse
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoThey ain't losing their young, liberal staff as long as working there for 10 years means being able to retire at 50. The opportunity is too great and the money is too good.