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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

#181

Post by tzakrajs »

dsacco wrote: post #172
paulie_a wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will pass on a resume that includes Facebook.

You'll pass on a potentially excellent hire simply because of the name on their resume? You won't even expend a modicum of effort to interview the candidate or see if they're at all involved in the specific work you despise? Are over 20,000 employees guilty in your view? If this isn't irrational behavior, what would it take for you to be acting irrationally?

If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.

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

#182

Post by spinlock »

Rafuino wrote: post #121
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 a…

Thanks! This is a really helpful list of resources.

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

#183

Post by cierra »

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).

I used to work at facebook and I disagree. Even prior to the recent scandals, there are plenty of employees who have decided to leave facebook due to ethical concerns (myself included). However, most keep this to themselves as Facebook fosters an environment where dissent is not tolerated.

Of course, it's unclear from this article whether negative sentiments have increased substantially this year compared to previous years.

And to clarify, I'm not saying that I am innocent or that I have taken some sort of ethical high-road. I gladly spent many years cashing out my pre-IPO stock grants while turning a blind eye to numerous immoral business practices. But soon after going public, there wasn't much benefit working at Facebook compared to any other large silicon valley tech companies. Without the financial motivation, the ethical concerns made it hard to be excited about remaining.

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

#184

Post by sumeno »

mFixman wrote: post #131

Original nytimes article: "Facebook’s rank-and-file employees, who have begun to question the company’s leadership". Business Insider derivative: "Facebook employees are quitting". This article is just shitty clickbait.

Typical Business Insider

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

#185

Post by raverbashing »

username223 wrote: post #93
raverbashing wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bomb was initially built against the Nazis, and with the understanding that they would be building something similar. Japan came later. Also the group was sequestered to a remote lab (Los Alamos?) and working under strong secrecy. You either try to keep a good atmosphere or you go crazy.

Yep -- Los Alamos. You should read "Surely You're Joking," by the way. It's worth it just for the story about finding a hole in the fence, then walking in the guard gate and out the hole again and again until someone noticed.

I have the book, but I don't think I got to the Los Alamos part ;)

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

#186

Post by jacobush »

sametmax wrote: post #101
alxlaz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feynman's own country, though, was at war; when he was recruited into the team that would eventually work on the Manhattan project, the Pearl Harbour attack had already taken place and irrevocably wounded and scarred the American public consciousness. Many other members of the Manhattan project were from countries or communities that had suffered tremendously at the hands of the Axis' power. War in Europe had been ra…

You can replace facebook with google, apple, ms or amazon and you have the same picture though. And they got the best projects and the most money. Yet when I said to my relatives, 5 years ago, that I refused an interview from google and facebook, they questioned my sanity. I don't pretend to have the moral high ground here, as i made enought bad things in my life, but this kind of pondering work opportunities doesn't…

I don't remember when I felt that, oh man I wish I had a shot at working at google, to where I am now. There was a bit of "meh" in between.

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

#187

Post by justin66 »

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 "…

> They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it

Feynman was only speaking for himself there. It's been 25 years since I read that book but I thought he described some of the efforts by Einstein, et al. to prevent the bomb from being used.

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

#188

Post by CNJ7654 »

galieos_ghost wrote: post #96
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to summarize FB employees, from @numair from 8 months ago: > Having known so many people involved with Facebook for so long, I have come up with a phrase to describe the cultural phenomenon I’ve witnessed among them – ladder kicking. Basically, people who get a leg up from others, and then do everything in their power to ensure nobody else manages to get there. No, it’s not “human nature” or “how it work…

The issue is people who in the past would have went to wall street are now going to Silicon Valley solely for the money and it has poisoned the culture. Tech companies shouldn't have pushed the coolness factor so much and instead let people continue to think tech was for nerds

"Tech companies shouldn't have pushed the coolness factor so much and instead let people continue to think tech was for nerds"

This. Right here. I'm convinced this is why we typically don't see this kind of culture pollution in areas of tech where the barrier to entry is still fairly high, requiring an amount of skill and dedication that these people are not willing to invest.

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

#189

Post by cierra »

cierra wrote: post #183
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).

I used to work at facebook and I disagree. Even prior to the recent scandals, there are plenty of employees who have decided to leave facebook due to ethical concerns (myself included). However, most keep this to themselves as Facebook fosters an environment where dissent is not tolerated. Of course, it's unclear from this article whether negative sentiments have increased substantially this year compared to previous…

Also, I definitely can relate to today's onion video:

https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-st...

I think this (parody) video does a better job of capturing employee sentiment than any Business Insider article.

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

#190

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

The real way to tell if there is a substantial number of employees and potential employees who feel this way is looking at Facebook compensation vs similar companies. If they have to offer more money for similar work then that means that there are a substantial number of people who don't want to work for them. If they are offering similar money, then that means that the people who don't want to work for Facebook are not a significant number of people.

The compensation will tell the real story apart from all the publicity and attempts at spin.

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