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

Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 444 posts

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

#201

Post by oska »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #175
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.

Totally agree. There are dozens of companies that aggregate user information (Google amongst them). Like @bognition said, FB lost its cool a while ago.

A long while ago. In Australia I'd say that 2009 was probably the end of FB being perceived as (at least somewhat) cool. 2008/2009 was when I remember being encouraged to join up by peers. My joke way of deflecting that (because I've never wanted to join) was to say that I'd applied but been rejected for not being cool enough. This reply would often leave people non-plussed - I was ironically mocking the idea of FB being cool (at the time) but I don't think most people got the joke.

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

#202

Post by seppin »

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.

Since 2014 yes

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

la_barba wrote: post #185
romwell wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Google has. [0] And I can't vouch for all of Google, but regarding location data, Google has been pretty transparent regarding which data is collected and stored; papers like NYT covered it extensively - see [1]. And Google also gives you clear ways to delete this data, as referenced in that NYT article [2]. And moreover, Google has been consistently on track to store less private data . Example: location d…

Pre-Disclaimer: I don't mean to only pick on Google here, it applies to any company that collects such a vast amount of personal data on users. Also.. nothing personal :) >Actually, Google has. In extremely vague terms, yes. I want to see an itemized list. For e.g. At company X, this is what we collect: 1) Your Name, age, location, DOB. 2) Your location is sent to COmpany X every 10 minutes 3) Your IP is tracked per-…

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by tobtoh »

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.

But Apple, Google, Microsoft aren't the cool start-ups either and they are mega-corps, yet people still want to work there. So I don't believe that line of reasoning holds up.

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

#205

Post by fred_is_fred »

drugme wrote: post #180
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.

And the root cause of its suddenly "not being considering cool or exciting anymore" would be?

Limited upside for the stock?

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

#206

Post by taurath »

Balgair wrote: post #71
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…

There is also an issue with the 'evaporative' effect. If no one who works there is seen as 'ethical', then you'd expect the people that do work there to be unethical/dubious. So, trying to get a promotion is then more cut-throat, the lunch crew has a few more 'jerks', the HR is a bit more biting, etc. Your hackels get raised and you are more suspicious of the motivations (however begnin) of others. Better to just not…

Sheryl hired the swiftboat campaigners to stop Congress. Finding out about that made me assume that over time most of their employees would trend in the opposite direction of optimistic.

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

#207

Post by colllectorof »

romwell wrote: post #171
la_barba wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, Google has. [0] And I can't vouch for all of Google, but regarding location data, Google has been pretty transparent regarding which data is collected and stored; papers like NYT covered it extensively - see [1]. And Google also gives you clear ways to delete this data, as referenced in that NYT article [2]. And moreover, Google has been consistently on track to store less private data . Example: location d…

Facebook has their privacy policy too. So what? Even if all the listed policies are followed, even if they don't have loopholes (and they almost certainly do), Google still collects and retains metric fuckton of information that isn't necessary to provide the actual services it provides. The NYT article is great demonstration. And there is very little oversight around this.

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

#208

Post by pryce »

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…

> 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.

I have become more and more convinced that this is Facebook's real business model; that enabling instances of archetype CambridgeAnalytica is the purpose the company actually exists for.

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

#209

Post by root_axis »

drugme wrote: post #178
idlewords wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adverti…

No one disputes that Google has its tentacles in many pots -- and definitely needs to be kept on a leash. But the claim was that Google was not just a matter of concern -- somehow a clearly bigger threat than FB. Can anyone provide substantiation for that claim?

That seems obvious. If you don't use Facebook you're pretty much outside of the Facebook tracking network with a few exceptions wrt Facebook cookie tracking which you can kill with a browser plugin like Facebook Disconnect. With Google, the tracking surface area is orders of magnitude more ubiquitous - everything from Search to YouTube to Chrome to Email to Android and on and on. Facebook is almost (but not quite) negligible in comparison.

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

#210

Post by filoleg »

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…

Anecdotal, but in the past year, I had tons of recruiters from Google/Amazon/etc. knocking on my LinkedIn box. However, not a single one from Facebook. Maybe they just simply didn’t fund recruiting efforts as much as the other tech companies or weren’t hiring as aggressively.
Post reply on HN