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Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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

#161

Post by halflings »

la_barba wrote: post #157
mrtksn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…

Has Google ever disclosed exactly what data they collect, what they do with it, who can look at it, etc? We "know" that Google takes privacy "seriously", but that is a faith based position.

It's all here, and you can delete it (including batch delete by period or source): https://myactivity.google.com/

This page includes other types of data (e.g videos you upload to youtube or mails in Gmail): https://policies.google.com/privacy

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

#162

Post by sushisushisushi »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #131
sushisushisushi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got good news for you. You can contribute to these projects (and put your contributions on your résumé) without having the Facebook taint. e.g.: * https://github.com/facebook/react/pulls

It’s a lot easier when you’re getting paid for your time and are surrounded by other people working on the project.

Of course it's easier. It's also easier to make money when you're working for Facebook. The question is whether or not it's worth the ethical and professional stain. Different people will make different calculations.

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

#163

Post by idlewords »

mrtksn wrote: post #64
clairity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.

>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…

It's getting a little wearying to have to rehearse the ways in which Google is a threat to privacy. But let's get the band together one more time:

Google runs search and email for essentially the entire web, controls the market dominant browser and mobile OS, has tracking scripts on >75% of the top million websites and runs a fair amount of the internet's infrastructure. It is the senior partner in the online advertising duopoly (together with Facebook) and runs one of the three major cloud computing services. It has also become the de facto standards authority for the internet and runs a massive continuous operation to collect photos of every street on the planet, which it is now expanding into interior spaces. It sells always-on microphones for the home, as well as a line of internet-connected home appliances. It does so much invasive stuff that I've probably forgotten half of it here.

So it's neither a big or controversial claim in 2019 to point out that Google has unique breadth of visibility into both the physical world, and anything that touches a connected device.

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

#164

Post by dmix »

paxys wrote: post #150
redwards510 wrote: post #55

As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.

Sure, but one of the biggest reasons it isn't considered cool or exiting anymore is all the negative press.

Really? Obvious data privacy issues finally becoming mainstream is what is finally convincing programmers to not want to work there?

Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers?

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

#165

Post by fromthestart »

clairity wrote: post #51
jfasi wrote: post #38

I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook…

> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.

Has there been any evidence of abuse and misdirection on the part of Google at the same level as Facebook?

This is more than just negative press, this is a question of how data collection has been misused, and what lies executives have told about current and future plans surrounding privacy and data abuse.

But, personally, I'm staying away from FB, Google, Amazon, Snapchat, et al for the reasons you've mentioned; negative press or no, I cannot ethically work for companies that are haphazardly building the foundations of a potential technocratic dystopia in their chase for profitability.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] »

jfasi wrote: post #38

I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook…

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by underwater »

jdormit wrote: post #127
elorant wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the amount of personal information Google knows/records about you. Your search history, web stats through Chrome, location history through Android, with whom you exchange emails if you're using GMail, which sites you visit and how long you stay on them through Google Analytics, probably online purchases with a combination of AdSense/AdWords & Analytics, everything you watch on YouTube etc. They definitel…

> The only reason they haven't faced the same shitstorm is because they don't seem to share all that data with 3rd parties. This is the whole point though, is it not? As far as we know, Google treats the data they collect more thoughtfully and responsibly than Facebook. And so they are (rightly or not) viewed as less of a threat to the public good. Of course, they could just be better at hiding their abuse of our dat…

Is that really any better? Google is so monolithic and all encompassing that data collected by their services can be shipped around internally instead of having to be sold to third parties.

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

#169

Post by TallGuyShort »

dylan604 wrote: post #99
bhtru wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have time, can you elaborate why you believe Google is a larger threat to personal liberty and privacy?

I too was curious of this balance weighting. FB slurps in all of the data that users voluntarily post. Google just learns things through inference about users whereas FB is getting data posted directly by the user. Seems to me that FB is able to be way more invasive.

On the other hand, FB is inherently social. I assume everything I give to FB has a chance of being public one day. I have some private conversations, but in the back of my head is that time the UI was deceiving and made seemingly direct messages public. FB is for sharing things. Google runs my phone, my work and personal email, my calendar, and more. I think they have a better attitude toward it, hence my willingness to trust them so far, but from a standpoint of ability to be invasive, Google blows everyone else out of the water on my devices.

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

#170

Post by _hardwaregeek »

As a current student, I'm actually surprised by this. Maybe I just hang out with evil people, but I don't get the impression most young programmers care that much about ethics. Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. Perhaps there's other reasons?

I do joke with my friend who works at Bloomberg that the "evil" finance view has now flipped completely. Bloomberg is a pretty ethical company compared to Facebook, Google, etc.

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