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

211–220 of 444 posts

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

#211

Post by dylan604 »

duskwuff wrote: post #195
dylan604 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> FB slurps in all of the data that users voluntarily post. That seems likely to be a grand understatement. FB has the opportunity to collect a great deal of data about their users beyond what they explicitly post -- for example, data about when and how they use Facebook mobile apps, how they interact with the Facebook web site, and what external web sites they visit which contain Facebook Like widgets.

But Google does all of this as well with its api/fonts/analytics/etc being used.

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

#212

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #170

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. Bloom…

> Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over.

But the issue is that top recruits can get a 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and a signing bonus from Netflix or Google or Amazon or AirBnB etc. etc. It's still easy to at least to pretend to be moral of you can shun Facebook as an employer but don't need to give anything up to do so.

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

#213

Post by _hardwaregeek »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #212
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #170

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. Bloom…

> Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. But the issue is that top recruits can get a 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and a signing bonus from Netflix or Google or Amazon or AirBnB etc. etc. It's still easy to at least to pretend to be moral of you can shun Facebook as an employer but don't need to give anything up to do so.

Yeah, but you're assuming they have a counteroffer that's Netflix, Google or Amazon. Sure, some people get 2-3 offers, but I'd bet it's more common to get 1-2. Not out of skill or anything, just because the FAANG hiring process is random and arbitrary.

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

#214

Post by stebann »

decebalus1 wrote: post #160
mtgx wrote: post #47

Forget Cambridge Analytica. There have been several reports about how badly they've been treating their executives. Why would anyone else trust them after those reports?

do you think the rank-and-file employees give a damn about how they're treating the executives?

Haha So true!

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

#215

Post by astazangasta »

heurist wrote: post #36
astazangasta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Come on. According to FB the IRA had 80000 posts over a two year period. In the same period there were 33 trillion FB posts. What moron still believes this garbage? FB…

I don't think you can discount that a concerted effort to create viral content will spread much farther than arbitrary wall posts by individuals. There are statistical methods Facebook could use to figure out how much of an impact that they had and I have not seen any such analysis yet.

That's only one reason this whole thing is bullshit. The other is that the alleged content is just random gibberish with no obvious intent or means to subvert anything. It's only by assuming that every post had its maximum theoretical pernicious effect (and that a pernicious effect was the intent in the first place, which is just supposition) that this whole thing becomes meaningful.

It is the desire to make this assumption (that Russia subverted the campaign) that drives the conclusion more than anything else. None of which is to say FB is innocent of blame. But their crime is hooking up an ad network to the social network, not colluding with Russians.

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

#216

Post by _hardwaregeek »

bendoernberg wrote: post #182
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #170

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. Bloom…

Why do you hang out with people who don't care about ethics?

Fair question. I'd like to think my close friends are ethical people, although it's not like I've seen them do the trolley problem. I'd categorize the people who would accept a Facebook (or even Palantir) offer in a second as casual acquaintances. As for why I'd be casual acquaintances with people who don't care about ethics, well, sometimes you can hang out with people who you don't trust completely.

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

#217

Post by citrablue »

root_axis wrote: post #209
drugme wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ne…

Google also sees pretty much every website visit for every website in the world, through Google Analytics.

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

#218

Post by imsofuture »

bogomipz wrote: post #106

I can't help but think of Zuckerberg's famous quote "young people are just smarter."[1] I guess they are Mark. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-sili...

The older I get, the funnier that quote gets.

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

#219

Post by elgenie »

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…

IIRC, Google places a much higher emphasis on making counteroffers in the first place, as well as making those counteroffers hard to refuse.

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

#220

Post by citrablue »

GCA10 wrote: post #174
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 makes a lot of genuinely useful products and services. We've all got to wrestle with the privacy tradeoffs of "free" maps, "free" email, "free" Android, etc. But at least the satisfaction of using well-built tools to accomplish more is enough of an offset to many people. Facebook is much more likely to be seen as a guilty pleasure, or a marvelous time-waster, or something else that's a bit farther down the uti…

Perhaps in some countries/demos. I'd bet Instagram and WhatsApp for free, basic communication are seen as much higher utility in a significant amount of the global population.
Post reply on HN