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Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

businessinsider.com

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Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#111

Post by jsgo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

> Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway Depends on what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want a former Facebook employee near anything remotely customer data related, or anything with political or PR sensitivity.

Not sure, personally. The scandal is that the company is exposing user data, not that employees are siphoning data and selling it on the side.

I can understand it if you're in a situation where the bottom can kind of dictate the company direction in a "hey, with this data, we could make the company a killing, our shareholders happy, etc." sort of way. Perhaps avoid the upper level employees, but engineering talent is probably safe.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#112

Post by spinlock »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

> Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway Depends on what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want a former Facebook employee near anything remotely customer data related, or anything with political or PR sensitivity.

This is just ....

The people working on the political and PR areas at Facebook are badass. They come from places like the Obama administration. They now have a front-row seat in the negotiations for how governments around the world are negotiating with Facebook.

After the dust settles, these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#113

Post by stepanhruda »

collingreene wrote: post #90

I work at Facebook and have personally seen no evidence of this. The article cites one designer who left (out of ~25,000+ total Facebook employees).

Yeah, as far as anecdata goes, I have not heard of this sentiment from anyone.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#114

Post by spinlock »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #57
saagarjha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense t…

>Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? The great thing about writing resumes is that you can leave things off. >Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. Give us legal protections and resources to stand up and to and report unethical behavior by companies then. You're arguing correctly on a moral ground, but you don…

This is exactly right. In fact, Engineers can't blow the whistle on a company that's violating privacy law without harming our careers.

I think Engineers who carry water for unethical companies probably get paid more. Your next employer would much rather hire you if you kept your head down during the PR Nightmare than if you made noise and created a problem for management.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#115

Post by lainga »

tajen wrote: post #103
notjtrig wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We saw the same thing after Snowden, people were leaving the NSA in mass after the average person became aware of the situation. Data collection is what enabled the Nazis to find Jews and homosexuals, the next mass percution can be more specific than race. Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV. As the world becomes more aware of the dangers of algorithms and AI, Facebook engineers are rethinking…

> Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV. Let’s be honest: What we’re after is Trump voters, Alex Jones/Milo fans, supporters of James Damore, non-feminists, non-supporters of Emmy Awards stances and generally all people who don’t laugh enough at Steven Colbert jokes. It was made very clear, for example at Google, that managers are building blacklists, and that HR supports them.

Trump voters

The other groups maybe, but I doubt even Stalin thought the Great Purges would have gone better if he purged 49% of the Soviet Union's population.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#116

Post by mrec »

sametmax wrote: post #39
leggomylibro wrote: post #7

This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…

Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…

> And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities.

Do you think "very positive personalities" were a plus in this case? Obviously you don't want homicidal sociopaths on the team, but someone whose first thought was "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" might have come in handy.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#117

Post by alasdair_ »

sametmax wrote: post #39
leggomylibro wrote: post #7

This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…

Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…

>While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ.

Feynman is semi-famous for testing at a much lower IQ than most people assume. (He scored 125 on his test at school).

See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-ein...

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#118

Post by [deleted] »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #89
eric_b wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great that you've got a set of principles that you live by, and are able to stick to them. However, your principles are not everyone's principles, and what you consider moral and ethical is not universal. Grellas had a great comment on working for the military industrial complex a few days ago, that I think is worth a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759324

Lots of words in the linked comment, but it still amounts to making machines that mechanise the process of killing people.

[deleted]
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