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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?

#21

Post by JKCalhoun »

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…

> For me, It makes me lose faith in engineering

I joined a certain tech company in the 90's when everyone said they were going out of business (if I don't call out the company it might be because I still work there). If money were what motivated me I would have learned to program Windows and headed instead to Redmond.

In fact I found that nearly everyone I met at said company were also there simply because they loved the company and its computers.

Times change? (AKA: Money ruins everything?)

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

#22

Post by p1esk »

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…

There's also a third attitude where people don't think FB is bad. In fact I bet a lot of people think it made/makes the world a better place.

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

#23

Post by drngdds »

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…

This seems like really flimsy reasoning. Sometimes news stories are wrong, therefore 90% of what you hear about Facebook is false?

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

#24

Post by peruvian »

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.

Teams like the React team get paid well, are "separated" from the actual product, and work on something that means a lot to them.

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

#25

Post by throwaway-1283 »

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…

The dot com boom/bust was all about money, so not sure why anyone thought this time around was any different. People are in it for the money...it just wasn't until maybe 2010-2012 that it was confirmed that the money was really there.

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

#26

Post by portal_narlish »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #9
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.

You're discovering the dirty secret that a lot of people generally don't care about doing the right thing when doing the wrong thing is so lucrative. People will talk a big game but shove a pile of cash in their face and things get complicated fast.

Capitalism 101

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

#27

Post by ForHackernews »

docker_up wrote: post #8

Most of what the press reports is a distortion of the truth, or making something sound worse than it really is. Sure there are issues but all companies have them, just like Google, Amazon, etc. There are a lot of good people doing good work here, and connecting the world for the better. You don't hear about the 99.99% of the good things because that won't encourage clicks for the news rags. If the press took an inter…

> There are a lot of good people doing good work here, and connecting the world for the better.

What does that actually mean? This sounds like a stock phrase from a press release.

At its best, I guess you could say Facebook helps you kinda-sorta keep in touch with old friends you don't see that often. But I somehow suspect that's not what the majority of FB engineers are actually working on.

Your point about the press focusing on the negative is valid, but I have to say the lowlights for FB are a lot worse than anything I've worked on in my career.

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

#28

Post by wccrawford »

"I'm really curious what the other side is here, especially given FB hasn't slowed down at all despite all the press."

Shouldn't this whole question be directed at the users of FB instead? If they don't care enough about this to stop using FB, why would you expect the developers to care enough to give up part of their fat paycheck?

I personally refuse to work for companies that I think are likely to do business in a way that I think is unethical. But my ethics aren't the same as everyone else's, and I can perfectly well understand not caring about most of the "privacy" scandals that Facebook has if the users don't care.

Everyone is entitled to give up their privacy whenever they want, and everyone should be aware at this point that Facebook plays fast and loose with that privacy. If they continue to post on FB after this, I can't really feel sorry for them.

And for the record, I still use Facebook as much as usual. That isn't a lot, but it's some. I post only to my friends, and I only post things that I'd be willing to post on a public forum anyhow. Like any other tool, you have to be careful while using it.

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

#30

Post by badfrog »

I worked at FB for three years as a software engineer. The people I worked with basically believed:

1) The core product is good and useful to people/society

2) Most of the negative articles about Facebook are based on some piece of truth but go out of their way to make things seem worse and more sinister than they really are

3) Zuck generally wants to do the right thing, but of course makes mistakes

4) Yes the company does bad things sometimes, but not significantly worse than Google or Amazon (which are the main places many FB employees would consider working if they left)

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