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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

#121

Post by Rafuino »

spinlock wrote: post #106

Is there any kind of organization for engineers that supports these types of ethical issues? I recently resigned from a job because because of similar privacy concerns and I found it really hard to talk to anyone. My situation was a very clear violation of California law but everyone I talked to said the same thing, "if you blow the whistle, you'll never work again."

There are some professors/researchers at Stanford and other CS-heavy schools building curricula around ethical CS/engineering. Perhaps it could be worth reaching out to some of these professors since you're in California. I'm not aware of any sort of organization for this topic, but I imagine you could talk with researchers in a private capacity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science...

These are the Stanford profs mentioned in the article:

https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/rob-reich

https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jeremy_m_weinstein

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

#122

Post by karlkatzke »

dbt00 wrote: post #55
paulie_a wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will pass on a resume that includes Facebook.

Bias: I've refused to work on any adtech revenue business, and I've passed on opportunities at Uber multiple times due to ... moral and ethical concerns. I wouldn't hold experience at Uber or FB against any applicant.

Yep. I once worked at a place that leveraged PII for profit. I won't work at a place like that again.

But I wouldn't hold working at Facebook against anyone, unless they knew and worked directly on monetizing PII and didn't see problems with it. That's for other reasons -- there are certain things you can't engineer without having a really good idea how, where, and why it'll be used. I don't want an engineer that is blindly solving technical problems.

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

#123

Post by yuhong »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #54

I have a lot of respect for someone who chooses to not work at a place because that place is doing bad things. There are so many things that go into that decision, how "important" is it to be employed, how "bad" is the business behavior, how "costly" to a reputation is it to leave or to stay. It is the kind of question that puts a persons character and self image on trial, and in my experience few people emerge on th…

My favorite is DoubleClick and the tracking ad bubble though, where the flaws are more fundamental.

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

#124

Post by luckydude »

alasdair_ wrote: post #117
sametmax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago.

There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO.

RIP IQ tests :)

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

#125

Post by jiveturkey »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #17
ryanSrich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.

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

related: does having uber on your resume tarnish it?

At $JOB-1, my boss (only good boss in the whole company, TBH) got fired soon after I left. As a knee-jerk reaction by upper mgmt. (poorly run company.) His replacement knows 1/10 of what he knows, and hails from Uber.

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

#127

Post by Alex3917 »

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.…

> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions

Employees rarely flip until the organization stops making them money, then they flip en masse. As long as Facebook's stock remains stagnant, the insider leaks will likely continue.

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

#128

Post by chiefalchemist »

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.…

> "The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, " Or just giving politically correct reasons that conveniently fit the current broader narrative.

Might this be the last straw for some that were already close to leaving? Sure. But it's not the only reason, just the one that's simple to explain and/or easy to spot.

That said, I have to wonder how often unintended consequences are discussed at FB, or at any of the other (tech) powerhouses. I mean, targeting ads based on personal info hardly sounds like a big moral / ethical problem, until someone finds a loop hole and attempts to exploit it (in what should have been foreseeable ways?).

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

#129

Post by [deleted] »

saagarjha wrote: post #3

> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".

[deleted]

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

#130

Post by JumpCrisscross »

spinlock wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas

I frequently see people try this when their employers start burning in political and criminal crosshairs. It’s a tough and treacherous strategy. It is likely just an easier thing to tell oneself than “I need this job for the pay cheque, the next 10 years be damned.”

Unless you leverage the crisis into deep relationships with regulators and politicos who remain relevant afterwards, you walk away weaker. Low-touch Facebook PR folks saw their best days when they worked in the last administration.

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