501–510 of 560 posts
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Like I said, I never worked at Facebook. I only bought the stock!
So you've financially supported Facebook. I don't see how that's much different.
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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…
Maybe this is true when you consider not just the job itself, but acquiring the job. How many minimum wage jobs offer minimum entry requirements? How many offer secondary benefits that are worth a lot, but only to a very small percent of the population (such as internships offering access to important people).
Of courses, none of this means fair. Some people are unfairly born with advantages or disadvantages, many of which have no solution that I've ever seen.
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> It’s a bit like blaming the scientists of the Manhattan Project for dropping the atomic bomb. Consider Joseph Rotblat. He worked on the Manhattan Project because believed that it was needed as a deterrent against a German nuclear weapon. After he learned that Germany had given up on the bomb, he left the Manhattan Project - the only one to do so - and felt betrayed by its use in Japan. "Rotblat believed that scient…
This is profound because I would be surprised if the early employees at Facebook didn’t feel a bit betrayed at the direction they later went.
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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…
I don't apparently
> I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers
Well, I appreciate your honesty - when I tell most people about how I make ~$150k at one of those companies they usually claim they don't look down on me when I've always maintained they secretly do. Thanks for clearing it up.
I hope my life isn't forever ruined by my inability to get into FB/G/top startups out of undergrad. I prepared for years but never got past the onsites. Hopefully someday I'll be able to gain the respect of people like you.
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What do you think of Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple? Are they worthy of your talents as well?
They're good companies, but not as nice to work for as Google and Facebook.
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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…
"Break things" like democracy, I guess.
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The system that won the bidding is called DUBU. https://www.kombit.dk/dubu The system that does the same thing DUBU does today, and the next DUBU will, good enough is called sbsys. It’s not a secret, the 120 million might be 128 million though, but it’s not completely unreasonable for what it’s meant to do, the politics involved and so on. It’s just hilarious that communal co-ownership of software did it for 2 millio…
> I mean you could argue that it’s illustrating how silly enterprise software companies are in general, but it is what it is. Enterprise software companies know exactly what they're doing - fleecing the government for every single dime they can. You can't blame them - they're just acting on their natural capitalist instinct to maximize their return to shareholders. Blame the government for its ridiculously bloated pr…
Yeah don't blame the exploiter, blame the victim!
I am sickened by this philosophy. Why do we let people get away with doing horrible things because "they're just doing their job". This sort of thinking breeds more immoral actions that are easily excused.
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Came here to mention the Open Plan Hell that being a FB dev would mean, which is just a layer on top of the primary evil they create with product. Or do the kids just think that's how it is/has to be these days? The data against open plans is abundant and solid, but firms just won't abandon a clearly failed design experiment .
> Or do the kids just think that's how it is/has to be these days? I just don't think that's the defining feature of a job for most people, and most people don't care so much. All of my schooling happened in "open office" plans, like studying at the uni library. I also learned to cope with an eight hour workday. Why are more people not demanding four hour workdays? Open plans are less stifling/depressing to me than c…
I get that we don’t like Facebook, but isn’t this a bit much? Are they worse than google or amazon? What about people who work for Coca-Cola? What about the people who make mobile games and loot boxes for Blizzard? Where is it ethical to work? I mean, I’ve been in public service for decades, so I know a thing or two about choosing idealism over money, but that’s not for everyone and I frankly don’t think Facebook is…
> Where is it ethical to work? Working at Netflix, Apple, Salesforce, Oracle, or Microsoft seems to be a category more ethical than Facebook/Google, wouldn't you say? Isn't that a good place to start? At worst, those companies are mainly just screwing over other companies (though depends on if Netflix is up to something behind the scenes)
Or, you know, profiting from human rights abuses: https://www.newsweek.com/iphone-x-release-human-cost-apples-...
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For many jobs, the pay and working conditions really are a product of market forces. For other jobs, not so much. For software jobs, and for jobs with garbage pay and which also suck, it's mostly true. People who can competently write software aren't that common, and there's tons of jobs and demand for them, so the pay goes up, and companies compete with each other for them by offering better pay, better perks, etc.…
> IMO, what we really need is more automation, plus a Basic Income so that people forced out of work by the automation can still enjoy the fruits of society's success without having to toil in some pointless bullshit job, and perhaps use their free time and efforts to do something more productive (like start an innovative new business, write a best-selling book like Harry Potter's author, etc.). How do you decide wha…
Market forces: if you have a universal basic income in place (so people don't have to work to avoid starvation), coupled with ever-increasing automation, then there's going to be fewer and fewer pointless bullshit jobs. Businesses aren't going to be able to afford to employ people to do bullshit when they have to pay enough to make them want to come to work, and when they can get a computer/robot to do it instead for next to nothing.
Non-"pointless bullshit" jobs aren't necessarily exciting or fulfilling either. They're jobs that provide real value to the employer, and which they can't just automate away.