when I went to university in 1999 it was my dream to work at a company like microsoft, then google. then i realized that big tech is just a way for those in control of society to control us more efficiently. i feel for those who just want to put their head down and do the work. nobody thought they were going to CS school to enable the exploitation of less lucky others. but now we have facebook, amazon, palantir, google, microsoft et al doing whatever their doing, not with the benefit of society but for the benefit of society’s owners. as a tech person, that makes me extremely uncomfortable, and someone who hasn’t figured out even a personal route around the problem, much less a societal one. god bless us all.
Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think I've ever felt this strongly I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.
Exactly why we have interview problems in engineering. I respect engineers for having opinions and ethics and they should lean on them, but to bar one from employment because they were doing their job is wrong, immoral, and potentially illegal.
After all, they were just following orders.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#13I've taken a hard line with people who work at Facebook. If you're still there and unwilling to represent the failings your company has done to society, then I need to hear a justification before moving further in the conversation. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about a tech company. I know that's tough but it's a matter of ethics. And frankly, Facebook is an amazing technical institution, and I would lov…
> I don't think I've ever felt this strongly I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.
Yeah, heaven forbid anyone pay attention to integrity and ethics when hiring. It's worked out well for wall st!
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think I've ever felt this strongly I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.
Exactly why we have interview problems in engineering. I respect engineers for having opinions and ethics and they should lean on them, but to bar one from employment because they were doing their job is wrong, immoral, and potentially illegal.
Not to defend the op, since I think they're taking a particularly hard line, but qualifying candidates based on their previous work is just something that happens.
I've personally been disqualified because I've worked at a legal, but "vice" based company - I've seen others not hired because their previous company was too "legacy", even though they did very similar work.
It's not necessarily right, but companies use the signals available for them - even if they're not 100% agreeable to everyone.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#15I've taken a hard line with people who work at Facebook. If you're still there and unwilling to represent the failings your company has done to society, then I need to hear a justification before moving further in the conversation. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about a tech company. I know that's tough but it's a matter of ethics. And frankly, Facebook is an amazing technical institution, and I would lov…
> I don't think I've ever felt this strongly I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.
is it really off topic to ask about past employment and ethical opinions of the work they did?
companies don’t just hire for talent. they hire for character too.
i don’t think companies expect hiring managers to hire people based on skill alone and put aside any character concerns they have about the hire.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#16when I went to university in 1999 it was my dream to work at a company like microsoft, then google. then i realized that big tech is just a way for those in control of society to control us more efficiently. i feel for those who just want to put their head down and do the work. nobody thought they were going to CS school to enable the exploitation of less lucky others. but now we have facebook, amazon, palantir, goog…
I think the main problem is that exploitative business-models and platform economies have not been fully analyzed/modeled yet by economists, so we can hardly expect governments to do something about the problem with new competition laws etc.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#17I've taken a hard line with people who work at Facebook. If you're still there and unwilling to represent the failings your company has done to society, then I need to hear a justification before moving further in the conversation. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about a tech company. I know that's tough but it's a matter of ethics. And frankly, Facebook is an amazing technical institution, and I would lov…
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Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#18I've taken a hard line with people who work at Facebook. If you're still there and unwilling to represent the failings your company has done to society, then I need to hear a justification before moving further in the conversation. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about a tech company. I know that's tough but it's a matter of ethics. And frankly, Facebook is an amazing technical institution, and I would lov…
> I don't think I've ever felt this strongly I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.
Alternately they may own the business and calls the shots as they feel. I've personally found the most brilliant technologists often have very deeply held beliefs about ethical use of tech. If you want a cog to churn out code for your CRUD app, sure go for an amoral person who crank out 1k lines/hour. You want breakthroughs and brilliance, find somebody who thinks deeply enough about tech to have a moral perspective on the work.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#19I've taken a hard line with people who work at Facebook. If you're still there and unwilling to represent the failings your company has done to society, then I need to hear a justification before moving further in the conversation. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about a tech company. I know that's tough but it's a matter of ethics. And frankly, Facebook is an amazing technical institution, and I would lov…
I mean, I believe that there should be a Hippocratic Oath in software, but I'm not sure where your particular cutoff bar stands. My view of software is against the mainstream: most programmers should dedicate their time to build tools for scientists, to solve actual problems and advance our species. Current tech is mostly trash, useless and nobody needs it.
Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
#20when I went to university in 1999 it was my dream to work at a company like microsoft, then google. then i realized that big tech is just a way for those in control of society to control us more efficiently. i feel for those who just want to put their head down and do the work. nobody thought they were going to CS school to enable the exploitation of less lucky others. but now we have facebook, amazon, palantir, goog…
Yeah. And to have a good living, it helps to work at big tech. But if youre passionate about software, you are giving something up. sometimes I treat code like art, its my medium that I build things through. But im selling that, and losing out on that art, whilst building massive data collection and manipulation systems