The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do • Hacker News Board

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#71

Post by socrates1998 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

Working at this type of company will eat at your soul. Really, you only have about 40 years of work in you.

It sounds like a lot, but when you consider is takes a few years (sometimes more) to figure out what you like. A few more to get good at it. And then you have maybe 20 peak years of productivity, you sure as hell don't want to spend any of it at something you can't respect.

When you are done with your career at 60 or 65, you want to be able to look back and say "I did this" or "I created that" or "I helped this many people", not "I worked at that shitty adware company for 2 years because they have me free food and beer"

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#72

Post by switz » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

I interviewed at 50onRed a few years ago soon after I left college. I went through the interview process, received an offer, and was on the verge of accepting.

It was at this point I realized that I barely understood what the company actually did. I set up another in-person interview, except this time with the roles reversed. I asked them to walk me through their products and platforms so I could better understand what I would be working on. Ten minutes in, I realized what I was looking at. I treaded water until the end of the interview and called them a few days later to decline the offer.

The [engineering] team was solid, the tech was intriguing (a lot of expressjs microservices and interesting design patterns), and the offices were great. But given the wealth of compelling opportunities for javascript engineers, I couldn't come up with a good reason to work on something so insipid and manipulative. This article is strangely validating, perhaps in a schadenfreude kind of way.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#73

Post by stephengillie » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

randlet wrote: post #6

tonyarkles wrote: post #2

Maybe I just forget what it's like to be a beginner, but how on earth do you work on Ad Injection software and not realize that you're working on Ad Injection?!

I find it difficult to understand how you would even interview & accept a job without understanding what the company did.

I used to work for a residential Real Estate platform, as a network/server OS/hardware worker. I didn't realize I had been hired by email spammers until we got Spamhaus emails, and my job became getting us off the RBLs.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#74

Post by e12e » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

danenania wrote: post #27

notacoward wrote: post #15

Reminds me a bit of an experience I had at an event around 2000 or so. Most of the folks there were heavily academic, but at lunch I found myself sitting with one of the organizers who was clearly cut from different cloth, so I asked what he did the rest of the year. After a couple of rounds of vague responses about how he helped companies use email to get in touch with potential customers, it finally dawned on me th…

You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.

Well, Total Information Awareness won't build itself, you know. Not yet, anyway.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#75

Post by pseudobry » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

batbomb wrote: post #32

donretag wrote: post #11

I used to work for a company that was purchased by a Multi Level Marketing cough pyramidscheme cough company similar to Herbalife. They purchased us for our technology to power their platform. There was supposed to be very little overlap with their business, so I did not feel too worried about it. As time went on, our focus was more on how to sell more of the parent company's products. I also learned more on how the…

In Utah County, by chance?

> Multi Level Marketing coughpyramidschemecough company similar to Herbalife

Definitely could be Utah county, but

> one of the better tech opportunities in an area with very few

Probably not Utah county. The greater than 4000 tech companies[1] in and around Utah County cannot hire software engineers fast enough.

[1]: http://siliconslopes.com/about/utah-economy/

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#76

Post by Phlarp » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

jrowley wrote: post #63

ryanlol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. However tax evasion and avoidance are often confused, for a public company not avoiding taxes would most certainly be an ethical violation.

While a public company answers to it's shareholders, it also has a responsibility to support the community it lives within, because often success can be directly attributed to where the company started. Aggressively avoiding taxes could very well be considered unethical by some parties.

Some may consider avoiding taxes to be unethical, others might say not avoiding them would violate a fiduciary duty.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#77

Post by bitwize » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

donretag wrote: post #11

I used to work for a company that was purchased by a Multi Level Marketing cough pyramidscheme cough company similar to Herbalife. They purchased us for our technology to power their platform. There was supposed to be very little overlap with their business, so I did not feel too worried about it. As time went on, our focus was more on how to sell more of the parent company's products. I also learned more on how the…

Does it have a name like a rejected Asterix character by any chance?

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#78

Post by kbenson » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #68

kbenson wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Ticketmaster? That's odd, I deal with them quite a bit, and while they've definitely got a racket going on, usually they aren't opting you in for extra stuff (because you'll juts call to complain to their support and get it changed). I have seen them accidentally auto-select certain additions before, but that was a non-standard option on that event, and it was definitely a mistake.

They like to do things where they offer you something with a yes/no option but don't explain that it's an offer (no call to action or question) and put the price of the service in the smallest text possible.

Oh, I would believe that. They'll make it easy for you to add charges on, and make it confusing as to whether it charges you (if you aren't familiar with the page), they just don't generally have them defaulted to on in my experience (and I buy a lot of tickets from them). They're very good at being just annoying enough to use that you don't like them, but generally not so annoying that you'll refuse to use them, which combined with their existing market dominance keeps them on top.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#79

Post by unsavory » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #28

pdkl95 wrote: post #25

> you’d see ads on sites like Wikipedia or Target.com Normally we call that vandalism. They should be facing criminal charges, not civil lawsuits and pressure from Google.

There's no case afaik, because they disclose everything in the original agreement when you install their software. Unethical, sure, but there's little the law can do to prevent people from agreeing to such things. Maybe a requirement for certain disclosures to be made more prominent (like for cigarettes)?

It would be an interesting case if someone tried this with the venerable TV industry: rent/borrow/buy our special HDMI cable/tuner, let us replace your ads, and we'll pay half your cable bill if you let us put our ads up instead.

Methinks the broadcasters would pounce down like a ton of bricks and their lawyers would use every loose corner of the law to bury you perpetually `a la Aereo.`

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#80

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

jobigoud wrote: post #40

I also always wonder how the people working on engineering land mines do.

I once had a conversation with someone who had worked on surface-to-surface missile guidance.

He did it because he didn't make the connection between the circuits and the software in front of him and the deaths they caused.

Then there was a war and he saw the missiles on the news with pictures of casualties, and suddenly it was "Holy fuck - this stuff actually kills people!"

Some people think small picture, and he just couldn't get from the work on his desk to dead bodies without the help of front-line footage.

Of course there are also people who are just fine with that kind of work. I don't understand that ethical space at all - but from what I've seen they simply don't understand why anyone would have a problem with what they do.