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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

#311

Post by sizzle »

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…

In my experience, Facebook used to be a cool thing to be on when you were documenting college party shenanigans and sharing pictures with friends, before it reached mass adoption to the point that your parents/grandparents were trying to add you as a friend. This was a time when organizing/sharing pictures with friends digitally was not a straightforward process.

I've come to terms with a simple fact of life that after graduating, it gets harder to make friends as you get older and start to settle down away from your college towns. Most of the acquaintances I've added on Facebook might as well not exist as we don't talk offline and my core circle of friends communicate over imessage/sms or various chat apps and we try to make time to see each other, further cementing our friendships offline.

Another thing that bothers me about Facebook since I first joined around the time a .edu ending email address was required (I think?), is that everytime I visit the site the new interface and feature bloat makes it feel less and less like what made it dead simple to connect with people back in earlier times. The current experience for me consists of a noisy ad infested newsfeed, ultra-optimized to inject itself straight into your brain's reward center with statistically significant A/B tested precision and autoplaying clickbait media nonsense, all while functioning as an echo-chamber for long-lost acquaintance's political outrage spam.

I wonder if people from my age cohort feel similar cognitive dissonance and that's why Facebook isn't even on their mind career wise, cause it's like an ancient digital museum that houses dusty pictures from their younger years and has long been replaced by Instagram.

Anyone out there relate?

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

#312

Post by asynchrony »

I interviewed at Facebook with the intention of getting an offer letter I could use as a bargaining chip with my first choices. I was rejected, but fortunately got into my first choice anyway. Despite all the perks and compensation, I would never want to work for Facebook.

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

#313

Post by username90 »

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…

> If you don't use Facebook you're pretty much outside of the Facebook tracking network

Not if any of your friends use Facebook.

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

#314

Post by adjkant »

tobtoh wrote: post #204
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.

In terms of cool tech, Apple/Google absolutely are a cut above Facebook now in my experience. Microsoft used to be below, now they rose as they embraced more open source and modern tech, I'd probably put Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon even in the cool category these days while Facebook was stereotypically above Microsoft before. Amazon, depends who you ask for a definition of "cool" from more so.

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

#315

Post by username90 »

bwasti wrote: post #259

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...

Those numbers are almost perfectly inline with the growth of Facebook, 17k employees in 2016 to 36k in 2018.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...

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

#316

Post by username90 »

pertymcpert wrote: post #305
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…

How did FB find out about her post?

Privacy in any unencrypted cloud service is an illusion.

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

#317

Post by swivelmaster »

bradlys wrote: post #282
swivelmaster wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you offering a competitive salary?

I mean... does any startup when compared to FAANG? Salaries are basically the same but the total compensation is, obviously, wildly different since expected value for startup stock is horrible.

Facebook is offering new CS grads from top schools $180k+ a year plus $30k+ signing bonus. That's cash. Most startups can't afford that unless they are very well funded.

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

#319

Post by scrape_it »

sizzle wrote: post #311
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…

In my experience, Facebook used to be a cool thing to be on when you were documenting college party shenanigans and sharing pictures with friends, before it reached mass adoption to the point that your parents/grandparents were trying to add you as a friend. This was a time when organizing/sharing pictures with friends digitally was not a straightforward process. I've come to terms with a simple fact of life that aft…

[dead]

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

#320

Post by sidlls »

subparwheat wrote: post #188
warp_factor wrote: post #41

The general feel I get from most of my engineer friends is that Facebook's product is definitely not inspiring and doesn't "make the world a better place" (whatever that means). But the consensus is that given the right amount of money, they would all accept an offer from them. And Facebook is known to pay very well.

It's pretty true that the pay trumps them all. But Google is generally pretty good at matching Facebook's offer. So when choosing between FB and Google, or any of FAANG, the pay is usually less of a concern. So being considered "not inspiring" and "evil" is definitively not helping FB to close on the candidates.

FAANG's hiring processes are so arbitrary and non-repeatable that it's entirely possible (even likely, I suspect) for a person to have offers from just one of these. Other than Amazon, an offer from these companies is practically a lottery ticket.
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