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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

#221

Post by dilyevsky »

_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…

It’s not just ethics - they have shit wlb and cut-throat culture. If you top it off with mountains of tech debt due to above and brain-dead hiring practices it’s not that surprising they have trouble hiring despite huge compensation.

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

#222

Post by code_duck »

rongenre wrote: post #60
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.

I wonder how much of it is that Facebook isn't all that much fun anymore, and working there would provoke all sorts of "I don't use it anymore" comments from one's peers.

Instagram and WhatsApp are more popular than ever, though.

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

#223

Post by code_duck »

malvosenior wrote: post #90
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?

Google has far greater potential for invading an individual's privacy than Facebook does. Google has Android, Chrome, search, maps and gmail (and now photos). Those are all very critical pieces to a person's real world life. Facebook has FB, Instagram and WhatsApp. Yes, some private communication but it's limited to "social networking". Your taxes and utility bills don't get mailed to FB Messenger. You don't search f…

I’ve been getting ads on Instagram for health issues I discussed on reddit.

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

#224

Post by icxa »

dmix wrote: post #164
paxys wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Yes, but it wasn't at the "oh crap elections were manipulated, democracies toppled, dissidents tracked down, and genocides enabled" level.

The fact that Apple, the world's richest company in the world, now has a mainstream marketing campaign around privacy tells you it is now officially mainstream mainstream, not just programmer mainstream.

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

#225

Post by killjoywashere »

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-…

Far better than an itemized list, you can download all your data from Google

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

> The default should be zero/as little as possible collection of data.

Really? What about telemetry for self-driving cars? Is it immoral to develop a system that leads to less blunt trauma and death on roads? We (HN users, I don't work for any of these companies) can define your term "as little as possible" about like you seem to define parent's term "seriously". The point being that such adjectives are difficult to pin down but also difficult to avoid. Define "difficult" however you see fit.

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

#226

Post by saagarjha »

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…

Facebook makes products that many people find genuinely useful, it just makes fewer of them.

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

#227

Post by jboles »

hinkley wrote: post #139
zjaffee wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you've said until the last part. Google is only marginally better than fb when it comes to some of these issues of privacy. The issue people have with facebook is that it has a reputation for being a pressure cooker.

In other words, Facebook now has no redeeming qualities. I've gotten a bunch of pings from them over the last few months, and I just chuckle, say "hahahano", delete it and move on. I don't know if it's a coincidence that the pings happened after the scandal or if they have gotten into 'look under every rock' mode.

I think it is the latter. All the pings I see now are so mundane and banal (most of mine are friend suggestions for people I’ve never met). They really must be scraping the metaphorical bottom of the barrel.

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

#228

Post by michaelgrosner2 »

_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…

I work in finance (a trading firm, not a bank). In a way it's freeing to admit to yourself and to your coworkers that all you really care about is making money. No one's deluded thinking they're changing the world by selling options like FAANGs think they are by harvesting personal data.

It's not like we're making the world better but we're not actively harming it.

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

#229

Post by killjoywashere »

icxa wrote: post #224
dmix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers? Yes, but it wasn't at the "oh crap elections were manipulated, democracies toppled, dissidents tracked down, and genocides enabled" level. The fact that Apple, the world's richest company in the world, now has a mainstream marketing campaign around privacy tells you it is now officially mainstream mainstream, not just programmer mainstream.

Yes, I think we're finally getting to the state of engineering and medicine in the 1800s, where bridges and buildings were collapsing, snake oil salesmen and physicians were indistinguishable to the layman, etc. Enough catastrophe will eventually motivate society to regulate the upstarts.

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

#230

Post by solidasparagus »

Balgair wrote: post #63
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Unfortu…

> and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012. Tahrir Square was the high water mark of the old school techies. The failure of tech to effect real and lasting change really hasn't been understood by the techies, even still. That optimism about the future and tech's role in it, is gone.

When you spend enough time in the future, you forget all the shitty things about the past that tech has changed and only notice the problems that stand out today. Not sure if you're specifically referencing Tahrir Square with your second sentence, but tech has definitely led to real, lasting and immensely positive change worldwide.
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