Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 414 posts

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#301

Post by matchbok »

adjkant wrote: post #294
matchbok wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like smoking. People like drinking. Humans will be humans.

Some people like shooting themselves with guns sometimes. It doesn't mean I should manufacture guns and advertise their effectiveness for that task, or worse, use psychological tricks to sell guns to these people while hiding my motivations.

Dear lord, they are cigarettes. Everyone understands the risks.

Guns are legal, so people will manufacture them and people will buy them. What people "should" do is not murder.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#302

Post by matchbok »

adjkant wrote: post #293
matchbok wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shaming people who work for tobacco companies is childish and myopic.

Why? If they have alternate employment options, they are actively choosing to support their company's work. The "someone else will do it" excuse doesn't mean you throw your hands up in the air and give up on ever caring about ethics, it means you acknowledge that it won't change the world on its own and still try. I don't think you go attacking individuals publicly but yes, people should absolutely be forced to have…

Ah, "morality" about one's job. The luxury of hacker news commenters. Very, very, very few people have that luxury. Everyone else has mouths to feed and a roof to replace.

Everyone is aware of the risks of smoking. People still want to do it. So people can, and should, produce cigarettes. If you don't like it, don't buy them.

But to suggest minimum wage earners working at Marlboro should quit because of some vague "morality" is insane and extremely elitist.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#303

Post by emtel »

shosko wrote: post #145

Why would anyone want to work for Facebook these days? When you are maintaining the largest advertising stream since TV while actively destroying society's discourse, I'm not sure what redeeming qualities it has. I think the most important thing any of us can do is get away from Facebook and move towards pursuits that fix problems, including the ones Facebook helped create.

The people who believe facebook is the most evil company in the world are a fairly small minority. Most people who work at facebook believe the company is positive or neutral, and are happy to be able to work with smart people at a place that is really nice to work at, and get paid a lot for doing it. Some people have qualms about what facebook is doing - I think they move on for the most part. (Source: used to work there, left for personal reasons).

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#304

Post by chillacy »

malvosenior wrote: post #114
arunv wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Personally, I do. I think Jobs was a magician, but he was famously not the most personable guy. 2. Even if he wasn't, the fact that we're making the comparison reflects how important he was to FB.

Well Jobs was the first that came to mind, but Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify (I know, not Valley)... all have this identical cult like culture where the employees are fully indoctrinated and feel their execs are the best in the world. Not to be rude, but this has been my universal experience in the tech industry for the past 20+ years.

Ask some of your friends who work at these companies to see their internal Blind posts. It ranges from pretty upbeat to exceedingly negative, and it also seems to correlate with how the company performs financially. Which makes sense since these people have half a million dollars of RSUs on the line.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#305

Post by a-dub »

mindgam3 wrote: post #61

I've known Chris Cox since freshman year of college and he was an informal advisor to my first startup. The NYT article referenced in hashberry's earlier comment includes a key quote: “For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in a note to employees on Thursday. “As its builders…

I don't think it was a lie. A mistake, a delusion, quite possibly... but lbh nobody quite expected where this thing ultimately ended up going and tbh^2, a lot of the problems aren't facebook in particular, but rather what happens when humanity collides with one of, if not the, single biggest singularity in human communication (beyond speech and language itself) since the beginning of humanity. (ie. the internet)

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#306

Post by adjkant »

matchbok wrote: post #302
adjkant wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If they have alternate employment options, they are actively choosing to support their company's work. The "someone else will do it" excuse doesn't mean you throw your hands up in the air and give up on ever caring about ethics, it means you acknowledge that it won't change the world on its own and still try. I don't think you go attacking individuals publicly but yes, people should absolutely be forced to have…

Ah, "morality" about one's job. The luxury of hacker news commenters. Very, very, very few people have that luxury. Everyone else has mouths to feed and a roof to replace. Everyone is aware of the risks of smoking. People still want to do it. So people can, and should, produce cigarettes. If you don't like it, don't buy them. But to suggest minimum wage earners working at Marlboro should quit because of some vague "m…

I specifically included, very deliberately, phrasing specifying that this applies only to those that have alternatives. The reality is that many of those working at Facebook have such a luxury. I absolutely do not blame people that are working to survive.

> But to suggest minimum wage earners working at Marlboro should quit because of some vague "morality" is insane and extremely elitist.

Not once did I say this anywhere. There are still high ups at Marbolo that did have the ability though, and plenty of people between minimum wage survival and top level execs. It's a spectrum of both power and responsibility.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#307

Post by adjkant »

matchbok wrote: post #301
adjkant wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people like shooting themselves with guns sometimes. It doesn't mean I should manufacture guns and advertise their effectiveness for that task, or worse, use psychological tricks to sell guns to these people while hiding my motivations.

Dear lord, they are cigarettes. Everyone understands the risks. Guns are legal, so people will manufacture them and people will buy them. What people "should" do is not murder.

First, let us not forget it took an entire public health initiative and excessive public regulation for "everyone" to understand the risks. This is not always the case generally and was certainly not when Marbolo employees, some high up with power and freedom of work, were working to lobby against that information regarding their risks coming to light.

As far as guns, again you did not read my full example regarding the marketing. The conditions are to show that making something and selling something happens in a context, not a vacuum. Not all cases are moral or should be encouraged.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#308

Post by solidasparagus »

bobdole12345 wrote: post #269
arunv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other company in their shoes would have had a mass exodus. Chris was a big part of making employees feel like they shared a piece of the dream. Whatever your thoughts about Facebook, the fact that some of the smartest people have worked, and continue to work at a company "beset by scandal" should give you pause.

Smartest people? Their tech stack is a dated cargo-culting of Google, hell, their newest thing is just using kubernetes with a thin wrapper. Their AI platform is a also ran in pretty much every aspect. Where exactly are the smart people?

FAIR is one of the most advanced AI research labs in the world. PyTorch has massively growing adoption because it is substantially better than the competitors and FAIR work consistently pushes the state of the art forward. Calling their AI work 'also ran' is ridiculous.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#309

Post by matchbok »

adjkant wrote: post #306
matchbok wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, "morality" about one's job. The luxury of hacker news commenters. Very, very, very few people have that luxury. Everyone else has mouths to feed and a roof to replace. Everyone is aware of the risks of smoking. People still want to do it. So people can, and should, produce cigarettes. If you don't like it, don't buy them. But to suggest minimum wage earners working at Marlboro should quit because of some vague "m…

I specifically included, very deliberately, phrasing specifying that this applies only to those that have alternatives. The reality is that many of those working at Facebook have such a luxury. I absolutely do not blame people that are working to survive. > But to suggest minimum wage earners working at Marlboro should quit because of some vague "morality" is insane and extremely elitist. Not once did I say this anyw…

Many work at FB have that luxury? How can you prove that? You can't. That's a judgement call on your part, and a bad one at that. You have absolutely no insight into the work/life issues those workers need to consider.

Someone's salary is not a measure to use when attacking them for not resigning.

There is no valid argument to support the claim that Marlboro executives should resign because cigarettes are unhealthy. People resigning does exactly nothing to the market demand for cigarettes.

Post reply on HN