7 ms·

At what point does: - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or pr

At what point does: - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it hurts your brand and perceived to be immoral Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation? The harmful effects of smoking were covered up for almost a century, much as the impact of mass remote dopamine manipulation is not as prolific.

spiderfarmer 5y ago
It already does. I spoke to several trainees that don't want companies like Facebook or Shell on their resume. Problem is those companies start to attract people that thrive in toxic cultures, worsening the problem.
- sgt 5y ago
  Why is Shell so bad? I spoke to a Shell employee the other day and the guy couldn't stop talking about all the great things they are doing for the environment and with new green technologies. /s
- woliveirajr 5y ago
  There's a good book about it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476637.Political_Ponerology https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476637.Political_Ponero...
0des 5y ago
I look at it less like smoking and more like obesity because people know its bad, but will foam at the mouth if someone dares address it.
- jka 5y ago
  There were vocal complaints about the introduction of indoor smoking bans in the UK and Ireland before they were enacted; in practice the vast majority of people seemed happier afterwards. Part of the playbook of any addiction-based industry is to encourage outrage at the prospect of the product being restricted; it builds their moat and delays the resolution of the problem (allowing their revenue streams to continue for longer).
throwuxiytayq 5y ago
I, for one, won't touch anything with Zuck's fingerprints on it. Oculus is dead to me and many other game developers.
- sgt 5y ago
  But that is balanced out by having Carmack's prints on it. He has status as a God on HN.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Carmack lost a lot of his shine working at Facebook. He was a champion of an industry when he was young, but now he's just some guy helping further entrench Facebook.
    - galangalalgol 5y ago
      Didn't he leave Facebook years ago shortly after basically being aquired along with oculus?
      - coldpie 5y ago
        He still consults for Facebook and is still a big Meta booster, see this from just a few months ago: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-sounds-a-skeptical-note-over-metas-metaverse-plans/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-sounds-a...
        galangalalgol 5y ago
        That is disappointing. I very much admired his thoughts on coding.
  - Garlef 5y ago
    No it's not. If someone walks through your living room with dirty shoes you don't get the floor cleaned up by having someone over who takes their shoes off.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Good luck getting anyone to do anything about it though, tobacco was an easy target because it causes cancer... Americans are much better at solving medical problems than mental health problems.
crate_barre 5y ago
At no point. You’ll only hear the opposite from a small cohort that can hop around faangs. There’s plenty of people working in all kinds of industries that overall suck for humanity.
dvtrn 5y ago
We’re here I think. I’ve seen a few hiring threads on other communities where the topic came up and there was a healthy sample of “will never a former Fbook/Meta” prognosticators in the room
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bko 5y ago
> - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Why would it hurt you? They're at the forefront of technical challenges of scaling an immensely popular product and developing internal tooling. These aren't necessarily applicable everywhere, but they're incredibly valuable. If anything, I think the fact that they're working at a place where a very vocal minority of their peers jeers at is a positive signal. They can withstand a snarky comment from some hipster at a party to potentially work on interesting technical challenges (money is good too). > - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it hurts your brand and perceived to be immoral I think you're in a bubble. Facebook is a very popular brand name outside of a very vocal minority of internet commenters and tech journalists. They have a few of the most popular consumer apps in the world with 3 billion total users across the products. When you consider their products in open source like GraphQL and React, it's even more. I get it, you don't like Facebook. But don't gaslight yourself into thinking they're some toxic entity that everyone hates and is on the verge of irrelevance
- fartcannon 5y ago
  I sure would think twice about hiring from Facebook. It's like hiring someone from a weapons company that targets teenagers. Edit: I've had a chance to think about it after a cup of coffee and I take back my comment. Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone gets the same ethical review.
  - krageon 5y ago
    If you were a weapons company (and really, most successful big IT corps are in this metaphor) and you need specific targeting (you do) then you absolutely would. Perhaps you have trouble with their moral fiber, but you would then basically be alone in the business world. Corporations hate integrity in their workers (except when it comes to keeping corporate secrets).
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      They're making new talent every day. No need to hire the tainted.
rvz 5y ago
> Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation? Yes. It is a digital pharmaceuticals drugs company and it was 'addictive' for the previous generation back then. Not so for this generation as it has no effect on them. Facebook™ and Instagram™ do not work on them anymore. The new digital crack / cocaine is TikTok™, manufactured by ByteDance. Another generation will find another 'hit' to be addicted to once they get bored off on this one. Rinse and repeat.
jdrc 5y ago
It seems the whole industry considers underhanded tactics a good thing. Facebook has been exploiting users' phonebooks from Day 1, it's not new. It's just that the industry bent towards facebook-like rather than the reverse
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
Are we writing off most of FAANG then? Maybe just reduce it down to "AN", assuming we aren't yet too annoyed with Apple and Netflix? Amazon and Google as well are both certainly full of dark patterns and badness. I'm certain that they have both tried to crush their competition as well. Can we assume that anyone who has worked at any of those companies has at best dubious morals, or are they instead small players in a big machine?
- hnaccount141 5y ago
  > Can we assume that anyone who has worked at any of those companies has at best dubious morals, or are they instead small players in a big machine? Why not both? They certainly are small players in a big machine, but the reality is that any engineer capable of getting a job in FAANG has plenty of other options that are less morally dubious. If they chose FAANG in spite of this they either don't believe it's immoral or are willing to look the other way for money/prestige. I certainly wouldn't advocate for writing people off entirely based on their work history (after all, it could be that they went in not realizing the extent of the harm and that's why they're leaving), but I do think it's a factor worth considering.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  I would be very hesitant to hire anyone with Google on their resume for the same reason. Maybe they're good, but maybe they're one of those engineers willing to trade in ethics for bucks. (I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that write the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient recourse).
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    > I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that write the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient recourse Do people typically put that specific information on their resume? Alphabet employs over a hundred thousand people, 99% of them won't have looked at that at all. I personally don't work at a FAANG but I'd take the chance if I got it - the bucks are so monstrous compared to my current compensation it would be borderline unethical to not accept a position when I know how much it could help my family.
kodah 5y ago
I pretty well despise Meta, but not hiring people from there because you disagree with the product is not okay. If I did that I'd never hire another former Googler in my life. I'd never hire someone from Microsoft, and I'd certainly never hire someone from Amazon. This kind of thinking, first and foremost, will only result in a culture of fear (eg: what company will be next to be unsafe on my resume?) It also is a quiet signal that certain people have given up on the long fight to change things. Changing things is hard, but it is just that - a long exhausting process. It requires patience and changing people's minds and perspectives, not by strong arming, but by aligning incentives in a direction that's better for the majority.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Would you penalize a mechanical engineer for having Volkswagen on their resume because you read about the VW emissions scandal? Should we refuse to hire anyone who interned for politicians who were later involved in scandals? Of course not, because it’s dumb to punish former engineers for something a previous employer did over which they had no control. Good engineers are good engineers. Period. Trying to get revenge on a company you don’t like by forcing former employees in unrelated departments to suffer the consequences of your anger is ridiculous.
- moritonal 5y ago
  I think if a candidate said they worked at Volkswagen between 2009 to 2015, followed by a 3-year gap in their resume I'd likely not hire them. Regardless of your position in a company, your existence there does endorse it, and some responsibility (to varying extents obviously) must be acknowledged. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41053740 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41053740
- coldpie 5y ago
  VW emissions scandal is small potatoes compared to what Facebook is doing to the world. Working for a war machine company (Lockheed, GD, etc) would be a much better analogy, and I think the question is a valid one for employees of those companies, too.
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    Today, people from Ukraine are glad of products of such war machine companies.
  - pwython 5y ago
    The VW emissions violations are 100% proven deceit among customers and governments, as nefarious programming in their vehicles is much harder to detect than say, an editorial funded by FB spreading rumors about a competitor where the reader can form their own opinion. Unethical, yea, but 'small potatoes' compared to VW.
pjmlp 5y ago
> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Depends if one is a React, Folly, BOLT, OCaml, GHC, clang contributor or not.
mkdirp 5y ago
> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't It already does. Meta is reportedly paying more to hire talent because of their reputation.[0] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire-talent-fears-career-black-mark-2021-12?op=1&r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire...
shmatt 5y ago
When you see a Meta candidate you know * They went through one of the hardest interview loops in the industry * They went through one of the hardest promotion ladders in the industry * They solve all problems at huge scale out of the box * If you aren't paying top of market and they're still interested, they're most likely financially comfortable from their years at Meta and won't be jumping ship every 18 months for a 20% raise I'd say that's pretty attractive as a hiring manager
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  I think all of this assumes the candidate is for a highly technical position, which is not all Meta jobs. Even then, why do we assume they were promoted, or solved "all problems", or have some altruistic reason to make less? The only thing we know is that they were hired by Meta sometime in the past.
curtisblaine 5y ago
> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't I'd say never. There will always be some company more than glad to hire high-merit developers without paying a premium. As a result, you know that all these Meta developers you're rejecting are going straight in the arms of your competitor. This tends to balance the market.

spiderfarmer 5y ago

It already does. I spoke to several trainees that don't want companies like Facebook or Shell on their resume. Problem is those companies start to attract people that thrive in toxic cultures, worsening the problem.

sgt 5y ago
Why is Shell so bad? I spoke to a Shell employee the other day and the guy couldn't stop talking about all the great things they are doing for the environment and with new green technologies. /s
woliveirajr 5y ago
There's a good book about it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476637.Political_Ponerology https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476637.Political_Ponero...

0des 5y ago

I look at it less like smoking and more like obesity because people know its bad, but will foam at the mouth if someone dares address it.

jka 5y ago
There were vocal complaints about the introduction of indoor smoking bans in the UK and Ireland before they were enacted; in practice the vast majority of people seemed happier afterwards. Part of the playbook of any addiction-based industry is to encourage outrage at the prospect of the product being restricted; it builds their moat and delays the resolution of the problem (allowing their revenue streams to continue for longer).

throwuxiytayq 5y ago

I, for one, won't touch anything with Zuck's fingerprints on it. Oculus is dead to me and many other game developers.

sgt 5y ago
But that is balanced out by having Carmack's prints on it. He has status as a God on HN.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Carmack lost a lot of his shine working at Facebook. He was a champion of an industry when he was young, but now he's just some guy helping further entrench Facebook.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    Didn't he leave Facebook years ago shortly after basically being aquired along with oculus?
    - coldpie 5y ago
      He still consults for Facebook and is still a big Meta booster, see this from just a few months ago: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-sounds-a-skeptical-note-over-metas-metaverse-plans/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-sounds-a...
      - galangalalgol 5y ago
        That is disappointing. I very much admired his thoughts on coding.
- Garlef 5y ago
  No it's not. If someone walks through your living room with dirty shoes you don't get the floor cleaned up by having someone over who takes their shoes off.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

Good luck getting anyone to do anything about it though, tobacco was an easy target because it causes cancer... Americans are much better at solving medical problems than mental health problems.

crate_barre 5y ago

At no point. You’ll only hear the opposite from a small cohort that can hop around faangs. There’s plenty of people working in all kinds of industries that overall suck for humanity.

dvtrn 5y ago

We’re here I think. I’ve seen a few hiring threads on other communities where the topic came up and there was a healthy sample of “will never a former Fbook/Meta” prognosticators in the room

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bko 5y ago

> - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Why would it hurt you? They're at the forefront of technical challenges of scaling an immensely popular product and developing internal tooling. These aren't necessarily applicable everywhere, but they're incredibly valuable. If anything, I think the fact that they're working at a place where a very vocal minority of their peers jeers at is a positive signal. They can withstand a snarky comment from some hipster at a party to potentially work on interesting technical challenges (money is good too). > - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it hurts your brand and perceived to be immoral I think you're in a bubble. Facebook is a very popular brand name outside of a very vocal minority of internet commenters and tech journalists. They have a few of the most popular consumer apps in the world with 3 billion total users across the products. When you consider their products in open source like GraphQL and React, it's even more. I get it, you don't like Facebook. But don't gaslight yourself into thinking they're some toxic entity that everyone hates and is on the verge of irrelevance

fartcannon 5y ago
I sure would think twice about hiring from Facebook. It's like hiring someone from a weapons company that targets teenagers. Edit: I've had a chance to think about it after a cup of coffee and I take back my comment. Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone gets the same ethical review.
- krageon 5y ago
  If you were a weapons company (and really, most successful big IT corps are in this metaphor) and you need specific targeting (you do) then you absolutely would. Perhaps you have trouble with their moral fiber, but you would then basically be alone in the business world. Corporations hate integrity in their workers (except when it comes to keeping corporate secrets).
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    They're making new talent every day. No need to hire the tainted.

rvz 5y ago

> Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation? Yes. It is a digital pharmaceuticals drugs company and it was 'addictive' for the previous generation back then. Not so for this generation as it has no effect on them. Facebook™ and Instagram™ do not work on them anymore. The new digital crack / cocaine is TikTok™, manufactured by ByteDance. Another generation will find another 'hit' to be addicted to once they get bored off on this one. Rinse and repeat.

jdrc 5y ago

It seems the whole industry considers underhanded tactics a good thing. Facebook has been exploiting users' phonebooks from Day 1, it's not new. It's just that the industry bent towards facebook-like rather than the reverse

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

Are we writing off most of FAANG then? Maybe just reduce it down to "AN", assuming we aren't yet too annoyed with Apple and Netflix? Amazon and Google as well are both certainly full of dark patterns and badness. I'm certain that they have both tried to crush their competition as well. Can we assume that anyone who has worked at any of those companies has at best dubious morals, or are they instead small players in a big machine?

hnaccount141 5y ago
> Can we assume that anyone who has worked at any of those companies has at best dubious morals, or are they instead small players in a big machine? Why not both? They certainly are small players in a big machine, but the reality is that any engineer capable of getting a job in FAANG has plenty of other options that are less morally dubious. If they chose FAANG in spite of this they either don't believe it's immoral or are willing to look the other way for money/prestige. I certainly wouldn't advocate for writing people off entirely based on their work history (after all, it could be that they went in not realizing the extent of the harm and that's why they're leaving), but I do think it's a factor worth considering.
notreallyserio 5y ago
I would be very hesitant to hire anyone with Google on their resume for the same reason. Maybe they're good, but maybe they're one of those engineers willing to trade in ethics for bucks. (I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that write the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient recourse).
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  > I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that write the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient recourse Do people typically put that specific information on their resume? Alphabet employs over a hundred thousand people, 99% of them won't have looked at that at all. I personally don't work at a FAANG but I'd take the chance if I got it - the bucks are so monstrous compared to my current compensation it would be borderline unethical to not accept a position when I know how much it could help my family.

kodah 5y ago

I pretty well despise Meta, but not hiring people from there because you disagree with the product is not okay. If I did that I'd never hire another former Googler in my life. I'd never hire someone from Microsoft, and I'd certainly never hire someone from Amazon. This kind of thinking, first and foremost, will only result in a culture of fear (eg: what company will be next to be unsafe on my resume?) It also is a quiet signal that certain people have given up on the long fight to change things. Changing things is hard, but it is just that - a long exhausting process. It requires patience and changing people's minds and perspectives, not by strong arming, but by aligning incentives in a direction that's better for the majority.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Would you penalize a mechanical engineer for having Volkswagen on their resume because you read about the VW emissions scandal? Should we refuse to hire anyone who interned for politicians who were later involved in scandals? Of course not, because it’s dumb to punish former engineers for something a previous employer did over which they had no control. Good engineers are good engineers. Period. Trying to get revenge on a company you don’t like by forcing former employees in unrelated departments to suffer the consequences of your anger is ridiculous.

moritonal 5y ago
I think if a candidate said they worked at Volkswagen between 2009 to 2015, followed by a 3-year gap in their resume I'd likely not hire them. Regardless of your position in a company, your existence there does endorse it, and some responsibility (to varying extents obviously) must be acknowledged. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41053740 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41053740
coldpie 5y ago
VW emissions scandal is small potatoes compared to what Facebook is doing to the world. Working for a war machine company (Lockheed, GD, etc) would be a much better analogy, and I think the question is a valid one for employees of those companies, too.
- zajio1am 5y ago
  Today, people from Ukraine are glad of products of such war machine companies.
- pwython 5y ago
  The VW emissions violations are 100% proven deceit among customers and governments, as nefarious programming in their vehicles is much harder to detect than say, an editorial funded by FB spreading rumors about a competitor where the reader can form their own opinion. Unethical, yea, but 'small potatoes' compared to VW.

pjmlp 5y ago

> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Depends if one is a React, Folly, BOLT, OCaml, GHC, clang contributor or not.

mkdirp 5y ago

> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't It already does. Meta is reportedly paying more to hire talent because of their reputation.[0] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire-talent-fears-career-black-mark-2021-12?op=1&r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire...

shmatt 5y ago

When you see a Meta candidate you know * They went through one of the hardest interview loops in the industry * They went through one of the hardest promotion ladders in the industry * They solve all problems at huge scale out of the box * If you aren't paying top of market and they're still interested, they're most likely financially comfortable from their years at Meta and won't be jumping ship every 18 months for a 20% raise I'd say that's pretty attractive as a hiring manager

long_time_gone 5y ago
I think all of this assumes the candidate is for a highly technical position, which is not all Meta jobs. Even then, why do we assume they were promoted, or solved "all problems", or have some altruistic reason to make less? The only thing we know is that they were hired by Meta sometime in the past.

curtisblaine 5y ago

> having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't I'd say never. There will always be some company more than glad to hire high-merit developers without paying a premium. As a result, you know that all these Meta developers you're rejecting are going straight in the arms of your competitor. This tends to balance the market.