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‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#391

Post by oculusthrift »

Barrin92 wrote: post #94
gpm wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

Facebook also has a comparatively small number of employees compared to the other big players and as a result significantly more net income / per employee. https://www.recode.net/2017/8/4/16090758/facebook-google-pro... Income per employee (as of 2017 according to the article) is about three times as high as it is for Microsoft.

that isn't really a fair comparison considering microsoft makes a significant chunk of money from enterprise and that requires a lot of salesmen instead of engineers.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#392

Post by cthulha »

p1necone wrote: post #246
nemild wrote: post #169

Earlier 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?

That's a cynical position, and tends to be correct!

A real one does have a _huge_ effect on the culture of the organisation, above and beyond what is achievable otherwise. I've seen one be transformative at a former workplace. I hope you have the opportunity as part of your career.

That outlier quality is why they are seen as important, even if they get cargo-culted in most instances.

Maybe it's the flip side of the hustle mentality that the mission statement is used to manipulate rather than a genuine expression of shared values and goals?

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#393

Post by ilovecaching »

This is just character assassination. Where are the metrics that say new grads don't want to work for Facebook? Cherry picking quotes is journalism as its worst, and the fact that this crap keeps popping up in HN disturbing. What's worse is that they're preying on young adults.

If we really wanted to fix the problem instead of virtue signal and mud-sling, we'd be encouraging bright minds to join and make things better, and offer better solutions like real engineers.

I've really lost a lot of faith in HN lately, when I keep seeing these posts pop up and the comments are just dog piles of negativity and confirmation of views with no data.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#394

Post by deanmoriarty »

techelitism wrote: post #389
deanmoriarty wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is known to pay less and have a brutal work life balance. Microsoft is known for paying less and being too big and too political to the point where making an impact is really difficult. Mind you, this is on average: there are stellar teams at both of those companies that work on incredible stuff, and I would consider an honor and privilege to be in that situation, if the opportunity was given to me. Likewise,…

Weird. Are you saying the average Amazon or MS engineer has less prestige and that they are worse, if the companies are worse on average? I personally couldn't get into Facebook or Google. What does that make me?

According to my experience, the average Amazon/Microsoft engineer would jump in a heartbeat to Google/Facebook, given the opportunity and assuming the logistics are feasible. The opposite is much less common. If you download the Blind app and start reading threads, you’ll quickly realize this trend yourself, and it matches what I’ve heard from acquaintances. Based on these observations, yes, I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers (relative obviously, they are still at a top tech company, so probably in the very top percentiles of the market).

Once again, this is on average, it depends on the specific team. There are insanely talented people at both MS and Amazon!

As far as you not getting accepted, not passing an interview there doesn’t mean you are not talented, but passing the interview very likely means you are talented, and for them this high false negative rate is good enough at this time.

I’ve been lucky enough to get offers at Google, Netflix and Facebook and the interviews were definitely hard, I can’t imagine a weak candidate passing those interviews by mistake, but I can very well imagine a smart candidate not passing them. Preparation is key: I played the game for a few months and prepared according to their interview style. It’s tedious and time consuming work.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#395

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

The NYT keeps peddling this idea that what Facebook and Google are doing is somehow dirty. These companies are disseminating information in exchange for ad revenue. This is exactly the NYT's business model. Which arguably is why the NYT is so upset.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#396

Post by [deleted] »

maxxxxx wrote: post #172
ocschwar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not mutually exclusive, but they are negatively correlated. The more enjoyable a job is, the lower the salary the boss can offer before people balk at taking it. It isn't something you can suss out in individual cases, but statistically speaking it holds up. When I sysadminned in the turn of the millenium, I could definitely see the pay gap between running systems for corporate America and doing it for scient…

"The more enjoyable a job is, the lower the salary the boss can offer before people balk at taking it. " This is not in line what I saw when I worked as a contractor. The higher the pay was, the better people got treated. The worst places were non-profits where people took really low salaries. They not only didn't make money but were also treated like sh.t.

[deleted]

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#397

Post by smaddox »

cortesoft wrote: post #388
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mission statements are always bullshit. The reason being that I have never seen a case where, when push comes to shove, that a company would forgo needed revenue if it contradicted their mission statement. Instead what happens is that leaders go through mental gymnastics trying to show "No, it still aligns with our mission statement, you just have to twist the meaning of the words in the mission statement beyond any…

I am not going to argue that mission statements are not bullshit, but I don't think your argument is persuasive. Just because you will compromise some values when push comes to shove doesn't mean those values were completely meaningless... it just means they were not as important as another value that they came into conflict with. For example, I value pacifism. I think non-violence is almost always the right choice,…

If the mission statement is superceded by other implicit values, like creating shareholder value, it's not much of a mission statement. The whole point of a mission statement is to make your primary values explicit.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#398

Post by [deleted] »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #394
techelitism wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Are you saying the average Amazon or MS engineer has less prestige and that they are worse, if the companies are worse on average? I personally couldn't get into Facebook or Google. What does that make me?

According to my experience, the average Amazon/Microsoft engineer would jump in a heartbeat to Google/Facebook, given the opportunity and assuming the logistics are feasible. The opposite is much less common. If you download the Blind app and start reading threads, you’ll quickly realize this trend yourself, and it matches what I’ve heard from acquaintances. Based on these observations, yes, I conclude those engineer…

[deleted]

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#399

Post by joesb »

glibgil wrote: post #74
bradenb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's because you love your job, you have to pay for that. I don't buy that. I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive. I think it's in an employer's best interest that their employees enjoy their job. Part of that is that an employee has to not feel the stress of being underpaid or overworked.

> I don't think enjoying your job and being paid well need to be mutually exclusive If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0. Museum docents are usually volunteers, but the chance for an art history major to practice their craft is valuable to the worker even at $0

> If there is a job, say museum docent, that the majority of qualified people would love to do then the salary of that job will approach $0.

Sure. But then you are assuming that what I love is what other people love.

If there's only very few people who want to do those job, and I'm one of them. Should the pay be less only because I happen to love the job?

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#400

Post by jrmg »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #372
nojvek wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show the ads to the most users with the highest bid price ? What is Google's mission nowadays? I don't see them following a lot of "Organize the world's information and make it open". There's a ton of closed walls, they even acquired companies like freebase and then their stuff went behind closed doors.

If I remember right from when I worked there (years ago), the wording is "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." I can definitely see interpretations of that which require direct and open access to the raw data and others which just require universal and useful access to an assistive/suggestive product or service that leverages the data. To be clear, I prefer the first interp…

If I’m interpreting you correctly, both those approaches involve Google housing (owning?) the data.

In the early days of Google, I assumed that to organize and make accessible meant to index and link to information presented by others - and not to ‘own’ the data.

It saddens me that that interpretation is no longer correct - and perhaps never was?

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