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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

#251

Post by freedomben »

gonehome wrote: post #245
freedomben wrote: post #235

I've known several people that would no longer work for Facebook, but the Cambridge Analytica isn't the biggest concern. It's the fact that they are censoring people, even within private groups. I have a friend that jokingly said (in a private group) that men are vile pigs. We knew she was joking - it was good natured. Yet, Facebook issued her a warning and removed her post and threatened her with a ban. First they c…

For a detailed nuanced piece about how FB handles some of this complexity check this out: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-... FB has its problems, but I generally find the negative press overstated and wonder if Zuck's approach to interact with the press and congress actually backfires (compare to the other companies which largely ignore them). I appreciate how often he talks to the press…

Wow that article was incredibly relevant and super interesting. Thanks so much for the link!

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

#252

Post by 55555 »

walls wrote: post #94
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 has your data and uses it for themselves. Facebook has your data and gives it (or leaks it) to anyone with money.

They both sell ads and offer advanced targeting options. Very similar businesses.

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

#253

Post by clairity »

bhtru wrote: post #69
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.

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

well, it's the nature of the advertising business to defy privacy and liberty. competition occurs around how well you know consumers and how well you can manipulate those consumers into actions favorable to you (i.e., exerting power over you). further, online advertising is basically a duopoly of google and facebook, with google being twice as big as facebook and much more invasive.

google's, or more broadly, alphabet's, only competitive advantage is a thin lead on what might be called data intelligence (or surveillance, for the more cynical). they collect data across all internet ingresses/egresses, on not just those who opt-in, but even those who actively avoid google (through android, gmail, google apps, analytics, dns, internet access, etc.). and that data is super-valuable--alphabet had $30B in profits on $137B in revenue (an extraordinary margin).

to be clear, i'm not attempting to judge or disparage individual engineers at google. i'm sure most are mighty fine folks.

but for the foreseeable future, google really has no choice in the matter, not until it finds a different massive market from which to derive revenues. it's the nature of the business. and in the meantime, it's also under assault from intelligence, paramilitary, corporate, and governmental organizations from across the globe.

at least for americans, privacy and liberty are fundamental and inalienable rights. even though the consitution explicitly forbids only governmental interference in those rights, they apply more broadly to any entity, and particularly global corporations, attempting to exert power on individuals. and while inalienable, citizens still have a duty to be vigilant against such infringements.

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

#254

Post by justinclift »

la_barba wrote: post #176
halflings wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks for linking to the policy document. They have this convenient line that allows them to do anything. "We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures." >It's all here, and you can delete it (including batch delete by p…

Sounds like they just needed to spin up one "affiliate" and provide the data to that for data mining / etc purposes.

Anyone deleting the data "Google" holds would have zero effect on the affiliate, while giving some people the feeling Google was doing the right thing.

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

#255

Post by _jal »

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.

Don't forget offline credit card transactions, FB and Google both.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45368040

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

#256

Post by tomrod »

Despegar wrote: post #243
taurath wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if the exec team realizes that the ad-tech industry had their Great Financial Crisis. Nobody is in love with them anymore. They'll get as much reception from politicians as Wall Street did when Congress passed Dodd-Frank. Banks don't earn much more than their cost of capital anymore.

> Banks don't earn much more than their cost of capital anymore.

This doesn't sound right. Can you add some citation or detail?

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

#257

Post by swivelmaster »

bradlys wrote: post #148
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…

And, yet, here in the bay - my company (a startup) sent out two offers to candidates quite recently and they both went to FB instead. There is no shortage of people joining FB because there's no shortage of people wanting to join a big company. Maybe if they're all comparing offers between big companies then they'll join some other big co but if the difference is startup vs Facebook... FB wins.

Are you offering a competitive salary?

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

#258

Post by wnmurphy »

They pay well, it's a good brand name to have on your resume, but on principle, I ignore any recruiter from Facebook.

It's glorified MySpace that exists to build de facto detailed psychological profiles on unsuspecting participants, and it's specifically engineered to manipulate their behavior. No thanks.

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

#259

Post by bwasti »

I'm not sure how the journalist fact checked this, but in 2016 CMU sent 12 people to Facebook[1]. In 2018 CMU sent 27 people to Facebook[2].

[1] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs... [2] https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-P...

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

#260

Post by justinclift »

bradlys wrote: post #148
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…

And, yet, here in the bay - my company (a startup) sent out two offers to candidates quite recently and they both went to FB instead. There is no shortage of people joining FB because there's no shortage of people wanting to join a big company. Maybe if they're all comparing offers between big companies then they'll join some other big co but if the difference is startup vs Facebook... FB wins.

> my company (a startup)

ad-tech startup?

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