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Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

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Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#11

Post by abakker »

untog wrote: post #6
taytus wrote: post #2

I don't see the complexity here. They pay competitive salaries and people don't give a fuck about what FB does and accept the gig. Simple. Being able to say: "No, I don't work here because of principles" is something really nice but not everyone can afford to do.

> Being able to say: "No, I don't work here because of principles" is something really nice but not everyone can afford to do. I'd question that. FB undoubtedly pays very well and probably better than almost all competitors, but at the same time most FB engineers could almost certainly take work somewhere else with a slightly lower (but objectively still fantastic) salary and still continue to live a very comfortable…

Getting paid is a pretty powerful motivator. Maybe you can afford not to, maybe others don’t want to afford not to. Salaries are good, the experience is good, job hunting sucks.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#12

Post by warp_factor »

You want to know the other side of Silicon Valley?

Download the app called "Blind", where people talk openly while being anonymous.

What you see there is that everyone is trying to maximize their TC (Total Comp). For most people, that's the only goal. The whole "Let's make the world a better place" is something that was sold by PR people.

To talk more specifically about facebook, I have seen two attitudes in their employees:

1)They use Whataboutism when confronted: Basically they will show you that Google and Apple are also evil, so it is ok for them to work at FB.

2) They openly say that they know it is a bad company, but they treat employee very well and they are overly well paid so are ok with it.

For me, It makes me lose faith in engineering

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#13

Post by PhoenixReborn »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #4
taytus wrote: post #2

I don't see the complexity here. They pay competitive salaries and people don't give a fuck about what FB does and accept the gig. Simple. Being able to say: "No, I don't work here because of principles" is something really nice but not everyone can afford to do.

99% of their engineers could afford to do the right thing. They have plenty of alternatives that pay very well, but they'd rather sell their soul for a few more luxuries. They are choosing to be bad people.

This view seems somewhat reductionist, no? I don't work at FB and never have, but I could easily see a case for working on projects that contribute back to the developer community (e.g. React). These wouldn't be directly related to user tracking/privacy violations and they might be selling their souls, but are contributing something useful to the world. In this case, what do you think would step up to fill the void in OSS, and what do you think is the best move for one of those developers?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#14

Post by JKCalhoun »

weej wrote: post #7
JeremyBanks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of their engineers could afford to do the right thing. They have plenty of alternatives that pay very well, but they'd rather sell their soul for a few more luxuries. They are choosing to be bad people.

"Bad people" feels a little trite. What about individuals who feel they are truly joining to try to make a difference for the better in improving the culture, security, data privacy, or overall business? Too altruistic or is that part of the story?

I like your optimism, but, again with all the bad PR, how could someone join FB and believe they are improving the culture? Unless they want to join to try to change it from the inside?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#15

Post by throwaway-1283 »

The other side is 90th percentile market pay...?

At a certain point in a company's lifecycle, most employees shift from being intrinsically motivated (by the mission, the team, the leadership) to extrinsically motivated (by the money, benefits, and resume stamp). FB is no different, and that shift happened way before 2017. I would guess most people who happily work at FB did not care before Cambridge Analytica and do not post Cambridge Analytica.

If anything, I would guess FB employees are feeling relatively better now given the broad criticism on many tech giants (Amazon with cities/labor issues; Google with gov't censorship; Amazon/Google/MSFT with DoD controversies). The main thing I think going for FB is that they don't (yet) compete for any military business, so no one's accusing them of helping kill people at least.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#16

Post by msftie »

taytus wrote: post #2

I don't see the complexity here. They pay competitive salaries and people don't give a fuck about what FB does and accept the gig. Simple. Being able to say: "No, I don't work here because of principles" is something really nice but not everyone can afford to do.

I have personally told them this, and my rationalization for "closing the door" so to speak is that there is (hopefully) no future reality in which Facebook is the only place that I am getting an employment offer that I'd accept. If I can get an offer from Facebook, I can almost certainly get an offer somewhere else.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#17

Post by untog »

sxp wrote: post #10

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor of FB. Opinions are my own, etc. There is an aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect when hearing stories about FB. I've heard similar stories about various tech companies from major press outlets and the facts & opinions in the stories directly contradict my own first hand knowledge. Given this data, why should I trust press articles about FB when they're…

> they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies?

That's a pretty huge accusation to casually throw out. Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of Facebook is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company, and this feels like a way to shut down absolutely any critical article without further analysis.

Further to that, the two articles you cite have nothing to do with Facebook. I'd be interested to know what technical knowledge disproves the stories about Cambridge Analytica or genocide in Myanmar:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/f...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

I find the genocide case particularly interesting to talk about because it doesn't really require much technical knowledge to understand at all - the military set up fake FB profiles in order to push propaganda and promote ethnic cleansing. It's a question of Facebook's role in society and how proactive they should or should not be about moderating the content transmitted through their platform. I don't think there's a simple right or wrong answer, and it feels like a shame to dismiss the idea entirely because the article was written by a newspaper that technically competes with Facebook for ad impressions, or to dismiss it because of an assumption that the story is false because other false stories exist in the world.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#19

Post by taytus »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #5
JeremyBanks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of their engineers could afford to do the right thing. They have plenty of alternatives that pay very well, but they'd rather sell their soul for a few more luxuries. They are choosing to be bad people.

this is right. to think you have no choice means you are part of the problem

You are showing your privilege.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#20

Post by badfrog »

warp_factor wrote: post #12

You want to know the other side of Silicon Valley? Download the app called "Blind", where people talk openly while being anonymous. What you see there is that everyone is trying to maximize their TC (Total Comp). For most people, that's the only goal. The whole "Let's make the world a better place" is something that was sold by PR people. To talk more specifically about facebook, I have seen two attitudes in their em…

FWIW, I found very little overlap between the opinions that were popular on blind and the opinions of my colleagues who opened up to me. The people who become active Blind users are the ones who are already frustrated and want to complain loudly.
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