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Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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331–340 of 444 posts

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

#331
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. (EU citizen here): I would prefer corporations (especially ones with such depth of funds and breadth of influence) be kept entirely outside the electoral process. If that's not feasible, then the second best option is, indeed, that they provide the same serv…

> I would prefer corporations (especially ones with such depth of funds and breadth of influence) be kept entirely outside the electoral process. Do you mean corporations being banned from providing services to any electoral campaign? Probably not, because in that case election campaign would be impossible. If so, then Facebook would be free to provide promotion services to any political campaign too - they are servi…

> because in that case election campaign would be impossible

Would that be a bad thing?

I would love an election that was simply an announcement of the election date and a website to see the candidates and their politics. The only campaigning would then be the government campaigning to get people to vote.

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

#332
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…

> It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook.

Perhaps they were ashamed to admit it (?)

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

#333
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.

Plenty from FB here, to add another anecdote.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really any better? Google is so monolithic and all encompassing that data collected by their services can be shipped around internally instead of having to be sold to third parties.

> be shipped around internally How is that a problem? The issue at hand is the irresponsible handling of data (especially wrt 3rd parties), not the general handling of 1st-party data competently within an internal network. So yes, it's a LOT better.

In what way? If Google uses your search history to target you with ads is that somehow better than them leaking the data and a third party service targetting you the same way? The end result is the same.

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

#335
I will believe this story when the stock price actually goes down. Until then it is wishful schadenfreude.

As a point of reference Boeing's stock price hasn't really gone down, and Boeing's action killed people.

If the stock price doesn't go down Zuck will not care.

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

#336

An anecdotal piece of evidence. There’s this senior engineer, by name of Jafar Husain. Used to work at Microsoft, where he learned RxJS (from Matt Podwysocki, I shouldn’t wonder). Then he moved to Netflix and brought his RxJS know-how there. Worked there as a senior software engineer for about 7 years. Authored the Falcor library (a graphql competitor in the early days of graphql). Then, in October 2018, he joined Fa…

So he worked at MSFT till ~2011 (before they became open source friendly), and joined Netflix ~2011 (when they announced Qwikster [1]) and joined Facebook just a short while after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out? He may be talented, but boy does he have to work on his timing.

[1] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix

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

#337
If this is true, then it would be good for humankind!

My position on this has always been that people still working at Facebook and its other properties don't think much about what affects millions of other people negatively (they got their money and some interesting work though).

I wish that sometime in the next few years, a past job at Facebook is seen as a personal blemish and a question of character and conduct.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like your computer should consider remote workers. I live in Denver and have told Facebook recruiters that I’m specifically not interested in working at Facebook, but I would consider a remote position at a startup. I’m sure as hell not relocating to the Bay Area is all.

If we wanted remote workers then we'd hire people in Romania. Like the last place I worked at did.

Cool! I'm from Romania. What do you have on the menu on this fine evening? :)

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

#339

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…

Ironically working for a bank is probably often more moral / does more good than Google. Keeping people's money safe is a very real service. People complain about CC interchange fees, but it costs ~1-2% to process cash as well. (Safes, hiring armored trucks to pick it up, etc). Not all of finance is swapping debt like a commodity til the economy crashes and forclosing on people who had some bad luck. Allowing people…

"Keeping people's money safe is a very real service."

Banks primary objective is not to handle transactions but to invest others money in as risky and profitable ventures as legally allowed. As such you are not their customer, you are their product, just like when you use useful free Google or Facebook products such as messaging, document editing, friend connections, search, maps etc.

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

#340

I believe (strong personal assumption) that this is something not only for Facebook, but also for Google and Apple. Back 3 years ago, a lot of people from my network had dreams to work for Google or Facebook . Today it's no longer the case. They demand a company who is serious about things like privacy, environment. Things like career possibilities are still important, but so many companies these days offer similar w…

Isn't Apple serious about privacy and the environment?

I always had the impression that the incentive alignment between Apple and it's users was far better than any of the other big tech companies.
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