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Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

cnbc.com

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Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#21

Post by JumpCrisscross »

esoterica wrote: post #19
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their compensation packages may no longer be competitive They're competitive cash-wise. But the career hit is unmistakable. (My friends who had other options eventually got tired of carrying around reputation that comes with that place. If you have no other options, that's one thing. But not everyone loves broadcasting that fact.)

There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume.

> There is no career hit associated with Facebook

Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there in a way it isn't for e.g. Apple or Google or Amazon.

> People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume

Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not universally respected within tech.

(Neither Goldman nor Facebook care about public opinion, outside of managing political risk, since neither sells its product to the mass market [1].)

[1] Goldman recently started doing this, though

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#22

Post by JohnFen »

skybrian wrote: post #11

If there will be fewer people who go to work at Facebook who care about privacy, that seems like bad news?

I don't think that people who care about privacy could possibly affect what Facebook does by working there.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#23

Post by JohnFen »

natrik wrote: post #13

Facebook has began scaling back on hiring since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Alternative possible headline working just as well. People are still applying en masse to work at Facebook. Among top schools, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December. A fall in acceptance rates may me…

> A fall in acceptance rates may mean saturation in needed roles at Facebook.

No. If Facebook didn't need those people, they wouldn't have extended an offer to them in the first place, so it wouldn't have affected acceptance rates.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#24

Post by nostrademons »

allthecybers wrote: post #9

This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency, civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also, if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany o…

> I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise

I feel like Google started that way, and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012.

Projects like Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Summer of Code, Google Reader, Google Open Source, Google.org, and pulling out of China didn't really have much of a business justification, but were simply something good that they could do. Unfortunately they're a public company, and when you start struggling to meet analysts' (perpetually inflating) estimates, being good - or at least not evil - is usually the first thing on the chopping block.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#25

Post by JohnFen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21
esoterica wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume.

> There is no career hit associated with Facebook Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there in a way it isn't for e.g. Apple or Google or Amazon. > People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not univ…

Yes, I've seen it too. As you say, it's not evenly distributed, and it also depends on other factors such as when you started working for them and what your role was.

But there's definitely some amount of stigma associated with having Facebook on your resume. The interesting question is whether that's temporary, or whether it will become even more pronounced over time.

I could see it going either way.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#27

Post by 5trokerac3 »

Facebook's brand is tainted enough now that smart engineers don't want any of the bleedover into their personal brand that would come from working there.

How many engineers, in hiring positions, do you know that have a positive opinion of FB?

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#28

Post by merpnderp »

allthecybers wrote: post #9

This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency, civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also, if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany o…

Forget the election, just what social networking is doing to young people's minds. They're making money by making a lot of people miserable - just not how I'd want to make a living.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#30

Post by silversconfused »

lallysingh wrote: post #15
bognition wrote: post #5

Honestly I think its more than just that, Facebook is no longer the cool start up building the world's favorite website. They're a multi-national advertising mega corp, and TBH most people just don't want to work there.

Is anyone?

Yes, but you haven't heard of them yet.
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