4 ms·

I really don't like the conflation of all meta staff with the strategy of the massive multinational corpo-monster that is meta itself. Its very easy to suggest

I really don't like the conflation of all meta staff with the strategy of the massive multinational corpo-monster that is meta itself. Its very easy to suggest that someone should leave their job on ideological grounds when its someone else you've never met. I don't work at meta, I work at a large non-tech company. I've been seeing it more and more these days. People do it for programmers as a whole too, or scientists. Concerns about job market layoffs due to ai dismissed with "Programmers surprised as leopards eat their own face" as though dave who does the database at your local high school is responsible in even some small sense for the effects of AI in society. There are actual people responsible for these problems. People who are not programmers. Who have far less in common with you or me than we both do with some random backend engineer at meta.

dgellow 6mo ago
Dave working at meta is indeed in part responsible for meta doings. Yes leaving has a cost. That’s the whole point. Meta actions also have associated costs, it is just externalized and doesn’t impact Dave directly
- RugnirViking 6mo ago
  As I said before. Its very easy to suggest that someone should leave their job on ideological grounds when its someone else you've never met. You have to understand, this hypothetical guy has never met zuck. He's quite possibly never met anyone who has never met zuck. He may well not live in america. The job market for programmers is not good right now. Estimates put average time in unemployment at 12+ months. Would you inflict this on your family? Because a different part of the giant company you work at did bad stuff? people you've never met, working on a product you've never worked on, did bad stuff? as opposed to all the other extremely moral giant companies you could be working for? This is, of course, oversimplified. Dave was probably laid off months ago anyway. Was he in some sense responsible for his own redundancy? I understand the feeling that we have to be able to pin some portion of blame or responsibility on companies. They are often able to launder responsibility through their sheer size, and their byzantine processes. But there are real people responsible for setting strategy! the people at the bottom do sometimes resign out of protest at immoral actions! but it has to be pretty naked to come to that. There are literally management strategy books about how to build departments to avoid workers realizing the purpose of their work so you can get them to do things they disagree with.
  - bigfatkitten 6mo ago
    Meta hasn’t suddenly gone bad in the last 12 months. Anyone who has joined in the last 15 years has done so knowing full well what sort of company it is, and what sort of evil it does.
  - SecretDreams 6mo ago
    Do you see how this topic might mirror something like some dudes just working on the Death Star, never having actually met a sith? There's been whole genocidal campaigns waged where people were just treating it as a day job.
    - RugnirViking 6mo ago
      yes? this isn't a "just following orders isnt a defence" case. Almost everyone at meta did nothing of the sort of bad stuff. There are nearly a hundred thousand people working at meta. This is a "being a part of an extremely large group of people, some entirely separate members of the group are doing bad stuff" Are there no groups you are a part of where members have done bad things? are you sure? Do you seriously blame the death star technicians? The cooks at the death star canteen? I find that extremely hard to understand. Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too?
      - tacker2000 6mo ago
        You are equating countries with corporations now? How does that even remotely make sense?
      - iamacyborg 6mo ago
        > Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too? You can’t choose where you’re born, you can choose who you work for.
      - ohyoutravel 6mo ago
        I’m open to the concept of there being some scale of culpability where the janitors at Meta contracted from some third party company are less culpable than the c suite. But as a software engineer who has chosen to work there, you’re the one building the planet destroying death laser, so not only are you in a very privileged, specialized position, you’re directly contributing to the effects. Also Meta isn’t a nation state.
- csoups14 6mo ago
  We should focus on effective means for change. Focusing external influence on low-level individuals with no decision making power might feel good but it has accomplished a sum total of nothing in the past. Why would we think it will make the situation better this time? They swap people in and out of projects all the time and it's really not disruptive at all. The only ways these tech behemoths have made any meaningful positive changes is through sustained governmental pressure either through oversight or regulation.
  - lapcat 6mo ago
    > We should focus on effective means for change. Labor unions. Techies believed they didn't need unions because their compensation is high, and "meritocracy" yadda yadda. But unions were never just about compensation. Crucially, they also collectively negotiate working conditions. You quitting your job is not necessarily much of a threat to your employer. But a union going on strike, effectively everyone quitting simlultaneously, is a major threat.
  - dgellow 6mo ago
    Not working for a company known for doing bad things at a global scale is an extremely low bar
iso1631 6mo ago
> Who have far less in common with you or me than we both do with some random backend engineer at meta Half the people on HN want to be the billionaires who are chummy with Zuck, Musk, etc Temporarily embarrassed millionaires are one thing, but the last 15 years has shown that many American tech workers can get a small slice of the enourmous wealth. When you've got $10m in assets, even if they return just 1% you are still getting more money than the average worker, at $100k a year. However someone with $10b in assets is so far beyond you it's crazy. At 1% they are growing at $270k a day. Actual growth is more like 10% than 1%. The wealthy make millions a day, and still want more. You can't spend that much no matter how much your gluttonous lifestyle is, not without significantly trampling on others. Millionaires aren't like that, they're just free from financial concerns.
tacker2000 6mo ago
If you work there, you are part of the problem, there is no excuse for that. Nobody is forcing you to work there.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  If they were a cleaner or some other position that people typically take up because they have no alternatives, then I'd understand and sympathize a bit, you usually don't have any choice and can't really help it, you need to survive somehow, that's OK. But most of the people working in technology positions at Meta and Facebook are not in that sort of position, they're usually well paid already, and could easily change jobs if they had a tiny bit of spine and could sacrifice getting paid less. Internally they'll reason and justify why they can't just leave, but from the outside it's embarrassingly obvious they don't really care in the end.
ori_b 6mo ago
> I really don't like the conflation of all meta staff with the strategy of the massive multinational corpo-monster that is meta itself. We can separate it out. The things at Meta that had no staff working on them can be blamed on the corporation, and the rest can be blamed on the people working to enable it.

dgellow 6mo ago

Dave working at meta is indeed in part responsible for meta doings. Yes leaving has a cost. That’s the whole point. Meta actions also have associated costs, it is just externalized and doesn’t impact Dave directly

RugnirViking 6mo ago
As I said before. Its very easy to suggest that someone should leave their job on ideological grounds when its someone else you've never met. You have to understand, this hypothetical guy has never met zuck. He's quite possibly never met anyone who has never met zuck. He may well not live in america. The job market for programmers is not good right now. Estimates put average time in unemployment at 12+ months. Would you inflict this on your family? Because a different part of the giant company you work at did bad stuff? people you've never met, working on a product you've never worked on, did bad stuff? as opposed to all the other extremely moral giant companies you could be working for? This is, of course, oversimplified. Dave was probably laid off months ago anyway. Was he in some sense responsible for his own redundancy? I understand the feeling that we have to be able to pin some portion of blame or responsibility on companies. They are often able to launder responsibility through their sheer size, and their byzantine processes. But there are real people responsible for setting strategy! the people at the bottom do sometimes resign out of protest at immoral actions! but it has to be pretty naked to come to that. There are literally management strategy books about how to build departments to avoid workers realizing the purpose of their work so you can get them to do things they disagree with.
- bigfatkitten 6mo ago
  Meta hasn’t suddenly gone bad in the last 12 months. Anyone who has joined in the last 15 years has done so knowing full well what sort of company it is, and what sort of evil it does.
- SecretDreams 6mo ago
  Do you see how this topic might mirror something like some dudes just working on the Death Star, never having actually met a sith? There's been whole genocidal campaigns waged where people were just treating it as a day job.
  - RugnirViking 6mo ago
    yes? this isn't a "just following orders isnt a defence" case. Almost everyone at meta did nothing of the sort of bad stuff. There are nearly a hundred thousand people working at meta. This is a "being a part of an extremely large group of people, some entirely separate members of the group are doing bad stuff" Are there no groups you are a part of where members have done bad things? are you sure? Do you seriously blame the death star technicians? The cooks at the death star canteen? I find that extremely hard to understand. Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too?
    - tacker2000 6mo ago
      You are equating countries with corporations now? How does that even remotely make sense?
    - iamacyborg 6mo ago
      > Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too? You can’t choose where you’re born, you can choose who you work for.
    - ohyoutravel 6mo ago
      I’m open to the concept of there being some scale of culpability where the janitors at Meta contracted from some third party company are less culpable than the c suite. But as a software engineer who has chosen to work there, you’re the one building the planet destroying death laser, so not only are you in a very privileged, specialized position, you’re directly contributing to the effects. Also Meta isn’t a nation state.
csoups14 6mo ago
We should focus on effective means for change. Focusing external influence on low-level individuals with no decision making power might feel good but it has accomplished a sum total of nothing in the past. Why would we think it will make the situation better this time? They swap people in and out of projects all the time and it's really not disruptive at all. The only ways these tech behemoths have made any meaningful positive changes is through sustained governmental pressure either through oversight or regulation.
- lapcat 6mo ago
  > We should focus on effective means for change. Labor unions. Techies believed they didn't need unions because their compensation is high, and "meritocracy" yadda yadda. But unions were never just about compensation. Crucially, they also collectively negotiate working conditions. You quitting your job is not necessarily much of a threat to your employer. But a union going on strike, effectively everyone quitting simlultaneously, is a major threat.
- dgellow 6mo ago
  Not working for a company known for doing bad things at a global scale is an extremely low bar

iso1631 6mo ago

> Who have far less in common with you or me than we both do with some random backend engineer at meta Half the people on HN want to be the billionaires who are chummy with Zuck, Musk, etc Temporarily embarrassed millionaires are one thing, but the last 15 years has shown that many American tech workers can get a small slice of the enourmous wealth. When you've got $10m in assets, even if they return just 1% you are still getting more money than the average worker, at $100k a year. However someone with $10b in assets is so far beyond you it's crazy. At 1% they are growing at $270k a day. Actual growth is more like 10% than 1%. The wealthy make millions a day, and still want more. You can't spend that much no matter how much your gluttonous lifestyle is, not without significantly trampling on others. Millionaires aren't like that, they're just free from financial concerns.

tacker2000 6mo ago

If you work there, you are part of the problem, there is no excuse for that. Nobody is forcing you to work there.

embedding-shape 6mo ago
If they were a cleaner or some other position that people typically take up because they have no alternatives, then I'd understand and sympathize a bit, you usually don't have any choice and can't really help it, you need to survive somehow, that's OK. But most of the people working in technology positions at Meta and Facebook are not in that sort of position, they're usually well paid already, and could easily change jobs if they had a tiny bit of spine and could sacrifice getting paid less. Internally they'll reason and justify why they can't just leave, but from the outside it's embarrassingly obvious they don't really care in the end.

ori_b 6mo ago

> I really don't like the conflation of all meta staff with the strategy of the massive multinational corpo-monster that is meta itself. We can separate it out. The things at Meta that had no staff working on them can be blamed on the corporation, and the rest can be blamed on the people working to enable it.