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What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

quora.com

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Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#81

Post by kelukelugames »

metaphorm wrote: post #78
kelukelugames wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest understanding Geller Mann amnesia effect. It's very true of Internet comments, especially about tech companies. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often,…

are you meaning to imply that the author of the Quora post did not understand the reasons behind his/her own termination? I hope you realize that the Quora post linked here is NOT the second hand account of a journalist, but was instead a primary source from an involved party. I don't think the Geller-Mann effect applies to this kind of situation and I find it more than a little strange that you're suggesting it woul…

I mean don't blindly believe everything you read on the internet, especially if it triggers your emotions or is about a popular company. HNers are susceptible to sensationalism too.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#82

Post by awakeasleep »

kelukelugames wrote: post #72
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home sales is open data in US. You can look it up at Zillow. All you need is an address.

I certainly didn't tell him my address. Right now I can't tell if people are excited to tell me there are way to uncover my home address or they think those methods are socially appropriate and not an invasion of my privacy.

spokeo.com intellius.com +infinite copy cats

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#83

Post by potatolicious »

JonnieCache wrote: post #66
brohee wrote: post #50

"Every morning, I'd get up, hop in the shuttle, and that's when my day began. Getting breakfast, seeing all my friends" Confusing friends and colleagues, possibly having no life outside of work. "She's never at her desk, and she routinely cancelled our regular 1:1 meetings because she has no other choice" Stockholm syndrome "My boss's voice was devoid of emotion, even though we had gone through a lot together (at lea…

Nah, this post made working at facebook sound super weird, even without the disciplinary aspect. The "omnipresent alcohol" bit is really odd too. Now weed is legal in california, are you also allowed to roll a spliff at your desk and go and smoke it on your lunchbreak? 420 deploy code every day? I mean, we have beer o clock on friday afternoon, but generally programming is pretty hard, and while it may be fun to do a…

I started a new job a few months ago after floating around startups for a few years. One thing I'm surprisingly happiest about is that the company doesn't stock alcohol in the kitchens.

We have beer o'clock sometimes, and occasionally the team gets drinks together, but alcohol is not an omnipresent part of everyday office life. The constant drinking (a lot of which was high-stress-commiseration drinking) I saw at startups was so normalized that this was honestly a cultural shock to me.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#84

Post by adanto6840 »

kelukelugames wrote: post #59
finnyspade wrote: post #33

So having interned at Facebook, I find this post confusing. They made it very clear to us during HR onboarding that the only zero tolerance policy was on unauthorized access to user data. The harassment stuff isn't a zero tolerance thing. They even told us to go ahead and ask out other employees if you're interested, but just don't press if you get a no. It's pretty clear he accessed data he shouldn't have, and for t…

It sounds like he violated a privacy issue. Probably looked up a friend or celebrity. At my last job, a company that sells houses, people looked up each other's data for fun. I was kind of annoyed that one of the college hires found how much I paid for my house but that was the norm. Okay, I should probably specify that I didn't tell anyone my address. People don't even know my legal name. I worked at and bought my h…

Home sales, including home ownership data, is public in most (all?) of the US.

Even without providing your address, many US county government websites (the Recorder's office, Clerk's office, etc) allow for online lookups by name.

This is precisely how RedFin, Zillow, Trulia, and the like are able to obtain that same data...

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#85

Post by kough »

slowernet wrote: post #56
brohee wrote: post #50

"Every morning, I'd get up, hop in the shuttle, and that's when my day began. Getting breakfast, seeing all my friends" Confusing friends and colleagues, possibly having no life outside of work. "She's never at her desk, and she routinely cancelled our regular 1:1 meetings because she has no other choice" Stockholm syndrome "My boss's voice was devoid of emotion, even though we had gone through a lot together (at lea…

Definite elements of cultishness. In my experience it's best to remember that employers need people like you more than you need any one of them.

Yeah, the whole part about missing all the notificaions once they were no longer an employee, and about spending all day on facebook, had my skin crawling.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#86

Post by propellerhat »

propellerhat wrote: post #62

My opinion: This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. This person did not have the proper level of access on their own account to perform this action, so they used someone else's (likely the "VP" who they were working with on that project). This would/should get you fired at many places.

Not sure what the down voting is about. Things that lead me to this conclusion: "...and remind you that this is the hacker company. Of course this is all a lie: that's how you get fired." And "It was clear that the person who talked to me had no idea what she was talking about. She quickly confessed as much to me." The author is referring to the HR member who was conducting the investigation. It was probably a technical task that the author of the article performed with someone else's creds or by bypassing some security system (checking in code, deploying code to prod., etc.) which is why the HR member "had no idea what she was talking about [and] quickly confessed to [the author] as much." The HR team was highly interested in finding out "...whether somebody had asked me to do it" and "...if you were not sure of what you were doing, why didn't you ask your manager?" HR wanted to know if the anonymous author had permission to perform the task since the anonymous author's account did not have the appropriate permissions to do so. "If a week prior, I had typed a few different keystrokes, I would never have been in that room."

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#87

Post by pkaye »

forgetsusername wrote: post #8

> For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.

Zero tolerance policies come into place when the fault for one person's action is placed on another entity. You see the same thing with the education system in the US. Something is done to one kid by another kid at school and the school district is sued. So the school district implement draconian policies to mitigate the risks. Same thing happened to places of employment.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#88

Post by daodedickinson »

I'm glad to see that unauthorized access to user data has a zero tolerance policy. I've met a lot of extremely skilled, hauntingly sociopathic programmers who will hack themselves free purchases and then cold call the companies they've stolen from expecting a bounty. One guy who did this also hacked the university ID / meal plan card to add fake money to his card and considered it a public service. There was a major extended power outage here and many emergency service generators were stolen and this guy opined loudly and unabashedly that this was "beautiful". He was by far the most talented programmer in my class year and it makes me afraid to connect to the internet.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#89

Post by propellerhat »

forgottenpass wrote: post #75
propellerhat wrote: post #62

My opinion: This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. This person did not have the proper level of access on their own account to perform this action, so they used someone else's (likely the "VP" who they were working with on that project). This would/should get you fired at many places.

This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. [...] This would/should get you fired at many places. You mean that thing that happens all the time at every office? I have a post-it note on which my boss wrote his password for me, specifically because he was sick of my asking whenever I needed to be granted access to new things. I can't think of a single job I'v…

Which company do you work for?

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#90

Post by daodedickinson »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #60
daemin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well one certain way to have security on a computer is to have an air gap, i.e. do not connect it to any other network. (And yes air gap made more sense when all networking was with cabled, not with wifi.)

His concern made sense but I thought he overreacted.

I can definitely think of many labs, for example at universities, where connecting them to the internet should result in termination.
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