This looks like a "the Onion" headline.
‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
261–270 of 560 posts
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#262> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…
My theory is that pay and working conditions at Facebook are as good as they are precisely because of people feeling like this. They are having to pay a premium to attract engineers as a result of the moral opposition.
Adam Smith:
The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
My theory is that pay and working conditions at Facebook are as good as they are precisely because of people feeling like this. They are having to pay a premium to attract engineers as a result of the moral opposition.
It's very similar to when you hear people say "I love my job but they don't pay a living wage!" It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that.
Another way you could put it is that employers offer a premium for unpleasant jobs.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it "wokeness" or just ambition? When I was 19 I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I'm pretty sure being yet another cog in a 30,000-employee machine was not high on the list.
My intended point with regard to wokeness was that college is a place where there is limited downside to screaming your carefully considered, morally pure opinions from the rooftops. People accultured to that kind of environment often don't understand how people outside the college bubble will interpret their comments.
Just because there are no downsides to screaming you carefully considered, morally pure opinions doesn’t make them any less valid. Actually, I’d think the opposite: someone who’s dependent on getting a job at Facebook is far more likely to be be disingenuous in their criticism of the company than someone who has no reason to filter their views.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very similar to when you hear people say "I love my job but they don't pay a living wage!" It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that.
This kind of post-facto justification for poor working conditions or wages needs a name, so it can be dismissed out of hand. It seems to assume that the market is “fair” and getting poor pay must be justified by some other factor about the job. In reality, there are plenty of jobs that have garbage pay and suck. As well as jobs that are both lucrative and “easy”. Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionar…
>The free market is not fair, and it is not a meritocracy.
It's fair, but not based on effort like people mistakenly think it should be. It's silly to think "I should be paid X because it was really hard work" or to try to interfere with the market to force that price.
A big part of the issue is ignorance of economics among most of the population. People don't realize they are always participating in markets, even when it's a regulated market.
>Consider the average CEO: not the exceptional visionaries but the type that loses the shareholders money for years and then exits on a golden parachute.
I don't think you know what the word "average" means, because that's very far from the truth. There are hundreds of thousands of people with the title "CEO". Only a tiny fraction are of companies with publicly traded shares and only a fraction of those get large golden parachute deals (There are more professional football players becoming millionaires for playing a game than there are CEOs who lose companies tons of money and get a golden parachute.
>On the other side of the ledger, you have immigrants with medical degrees, who are driving cabs for minimum wage (or now, Uber, for below minimum wage).
So what? Their medical degree obvious isn't qualifying them to be a doctor in the new country.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I graduated six years ago, have worked at Microsoft and Dropbox, and anecdotally around a quarter of my friends at either of them wouldn't work at Facebook now. Parent comment is not obviously wrong, and you shouldn't assume bad faith. Your last submission was titled "We're lucky Mark Zuckerberg is in charge" and around half your comment history is devoted to defending Facebook. At least if you're going to question s…
Did you actually do a poll of your coworkers on this topic? :) I think it's pretty reasonable to assume an investment banker isn't going to be much help to FB employees in finding a new job. Claiming that "Facebook will be known for having hired mediocre sell-outs a few years from now." is at best a baseless slander. How in the world is that not in bad faith? Spreading misinformation to aid one's short position is a…
Why wouldn’t an investment banker be able to help? I work at a large investment bank, and we hire from the same pool of top engineers as the FAANGs.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#267It seems the NY Times have been going pretty hard after FB, recently. Does anyone know why this might be?
Not just them, though yes, I've noticed.
Mostly in an "about time" kind of a way.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#268Allowing 19-year-old kids to have their name and photo published in the newspaper of record in an article that quotes their snarky comments about how they're not sure if they'd deign to work for any given company is journalistic malpractice. I don't blame the kids. They're young and naturally earnest, and are marinating in an environment where performative wokeness results in positive social reinforcement. They don't…
I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer. I imagine hiring managers are Googling candidates, news sites tend to show up pretty high in search results. I can't imagine that would come off well.
> I think it's short cited to come out in a public forum against any employer.
I mean, if you are saying you don’t want to work there, why does it matter if their hiring managers see that? Also, just from personal experience: I’m pretty vocal about my criticisms for Facebook, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting recruiting material from them ;)
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved this quote: > “Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company creates new products or makes decisions, the correlation between the two is not so tightly aligned,” said David Chie, the head of Palo Alto Staffing, a tech job placement service in Silicon Valley. “Everyone’s having this conversation.” I call these anodyne missi…
My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec and I wouldn't expect them to have much relation to reality. Was I in the minority?
Ironically I think Facebook is one example that (at least in the early days) had values that actually had teeth.
"Move fast and break things" isn't just a feel-good truism like most values that companies come up with are. It's something that at least some people are going to disagree with, and it's something that can actually be instructive when making a decision at that company.
I don't personally agree with it, but I respect that at least in the past Facebook was willing to take a stance on how they developed products that wasn't some saccharine feel-good BS that values usually are.
Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any chance you know the pieces where he most focuses on this?
Here's a summary post: https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/the-political-nature-of-indus... I guess I would read some of his books: Profit over People and the one on Media. He has a 1997 talk at northeastern on youtube where he addresses it a bit during question time.
There are some good thoughts and complaints in there about propaganda and nepotism, but isn't this old news? Isn't it also pervasive throughout society? I mean, there are even blatant industry-wide propaganda agendas such as Harvard scientsts lying about sugar, MIT scientists lying about climate change, and scientists lying before courts about leaded gasoline... Of course always after payments from profit-seeking industry.
There are countless examples. Of course Walmart is known for both nepotism, and brainwashing their employees about union membership. And of course they are also close with the top-echelon of politicians at state and federal levels.
Like the article mentions, companies say they are progressive, and for an example， promote gender equality, but their engineering divisions tell a completely different story. And then if you really take a moment to stop and look around the world we live in, we are in a society full of propaganda. Of course the War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Poverty all increased poverty, poor outcomes related to drugs, and removal of liberties and prosperity that terrorists sought for.
Over the last year, MSNBC covered Stormy Daniels on average >1/day. War in Yemen? 0 times. Or, here is Wolf Blitzer saying that arms sales to Saudis is a "moral issue" because defense contractors will "lose jobs."
Propaganda is part of our daily lives. My favorite Einstein quote is: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."