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Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

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Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#101

Post by Diederich »

jentist_retol wrote: post #97
triceratops wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i got downvoted. I'd like to know what I can improve on, I didn't downvote you but I suspect it's because you compared working in the military favorably to working for FB.

Well, frankly, there's a need on HN for "correctness" only. And I'm not sure what's correct. And I haven't faced some of the "hypothetical" scenarios posed here. And if a resume came on my desk with something like what was posed, I would have to pause, and think. And think. And think. Some of the posts in here actually worry me though. There's a real failing of ethical concerns and more importantly, ethical mentorshi…

Yes, I appreciate your position, candor and transparency here. Also, that you're apparently rather uncertain as to what's "right" and "wrong". As a civilization, we're sailing in very new seas.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#102

Post by filoleg »

_t0du wrote: post #39
gabereiser wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if the job they were "just" doing exists in a legal grey area? Or, more realistically, is flatout illegal?

Whether what they were doing was "legal grey area" or "flatout illegal" is for the courts to decide, not for a random hiring manager/engineer interviewing that person. If you have a feeling that something could've been "flatout illegal", consider reporting them to the appropriate legal channels.

I, personally, would have done the latter in that scenario, but only if that entry was on their resume and they were proud of it. So no, I wouldn't report someone who personally confessed that many years ago they were dealing or doing sex work of the illegal kind. Though I heavily doubt that someone would be dumb enough to put it on their resume and advertise.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#103

Post by secondcoming »

justinzollars wrote: post #88

I've been involved in politics and software a long time. I was an elected Hillary Clinton DNC Delegate in 2008. I'm a senior software engineer today. And I'm not sure Democracy will survive contact with social media. I have a solution. 1. Ancient History - Historically politics was a hobby of the elite. You had to go out of your way, sometimes into the cold to attend party meetings. The discussions were academic and…

I wonder if the same concerns were raised when wireless was invented and news could spread across the globe instantly.

Wasn't that a new 'social media' of the time?

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#104

Post by troebr »

rStar wrote: post #11

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, goog…

Many engineers I used to work with now work for Facebook. I wonder how they feel about it. Do they think Facebook does no harm? Do they think that their job itself isn't doing harm? ("I'm just writing spark jobs"). Do they try to ignore it because the salary conditions are so cushy? What amount of money is enough to ignore your conscience if you know that Facebook is part of the problem? Would I work for Facebook for 500k a year? 1M a year? I've heard as a reason "They have two kids, that's why they took the job, you'd do the same if you had kids".

I don't know. It's not black and white. Social media apps aren't creating poisonous ideas like the flat earth, antimask, or anti-vax movements, but they're certainly essential to their spread. They have also had a positive impact such as during the Arab spring a couple years back. Would measles have made a comeback in the US without Facebook? Probably not? Does that mean that Facebook is responsible for the resurgence of it? At least partially yes in my view. Did Facebook sway the elections in 2016? Probably. But so do journalists. What if Facebook swayed elections in a direction that aligns more with my views? Would I be as uncomfortable? I certainly don't have enough information to say "facebook good, facebook bad", but with the limited information I'm comfortable saying that Facebook is dangerous. My perception is that the negative impact of Facebook outweighs the positive; I can't prove it, but it's spooking me enough that I won't work for them. Maybe it's because I don't have kids.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#105

Post by jentist_retol »

ghiculescu wrote: post #87
ksenzee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely fair. When I ask people coming from Amazon why they left, I am very carefully listening to whether they like how Amazon treats its people or not. If I were interviewing an ex-Facebook employee, I'd want to hear some discomfort with Facebook's ethics.

In 2021, studying for the interview will not be memorising algorithms, it will be memorising which past jobs to pretend to regret.

In my opinion, that's an unreasonable interpretation of: "asking a candidate how they feel about working on a product that made international news (in a bad way)"

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#106

Post by secondcoming »

kyran_adept wrote: post #95

I find it repulsive that no one is discussing that the original author was doxed by a news organization and this was done after a "whistle-blower" leaked their memo to the news org. One person discussing something internally with their peers, and maybe trying to make things better, has their life ruined now because everyone on the internet knows their name.

It is Buzzfeed after all. The lowest of the low.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#107

Post by e9 »

Answerawake wrote: post #57
rStar wrote: post #11

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, goog…

>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. Work for a boring company that provides a core service and does not ruffle feathers or cause trouble to society. I write Angular/Python apps for a company that sells payroll products. Its not the sexiest job in the world but the company need…

Fair, but nothing is disconnected in this world. Your company could be serving some unethical company that does really bad things and at this moment you would invoke same reasoning people who work at FB about like "someone would be doing it anyways" or "there is no way to do this kind of due diligence" or "we just do X and not responsible for Y". It's not at the same scale but you get what I mean, no one is pure.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#108

Post by input_sh »

crumbshot wrote: post #44
input_sh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still pretty young in my career, but I feel like I've figured out my own route around the problem. 3/4 organisations I've worked for have been NGOs, and I felt like I was doing meaningful work in all of them. The one that wasn't an NGO has been by far the worst one. Worse salary, worse perks, worse problems I've solved, and while I didn't do any work I considered to be unethical, I'd definitely refuse some of the…

That is interesting, what sort of NGOs did you find to have the most socially meaningful and ethical work available?

Personally, I'll always feel exceptionally proud of working on Panama Papers. My work was in no way particularly important to the project (just implementing some frontend), but it set such a high bar on meaningfulness so early in the career that it's going to be very difficult to top it.

Over all, I feel like EDRi (https://edri.org/) is doing exceptional work over here in Europe. Think of EFF, but instead of being one organisation on a federal level, it's made of a bunch of smaller organisations that work in different nations on intertwining issues, be it net neutrality, reverse engineering Big Tech's algorithms, or helping the citizens exercise their GDPR rights. It's a small front against the Big Tech, and they need as much help as they can get in order to put up a fight.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#109

Post by troebr »

justinzollars wrote: post #88

I've been involved in politics and software a long time. I was an elected Hillary Clinton DNC Delegate in 2008. I'm a senior software engineer today. And I'm not sure Democracy will survive contact with social media. I have a solution. 1. Ancient History - Historically politics was a hobby of the elite. You had to go out of your way, sometimes into the cold to attend party meetings. The discussions were academic and…

> Solutions. I have a number of ideas. I think we should move away from ideas such as ballot initiatives and direct democracy and embrace the fact we are a Republic. We need professionals to determine policy not the twitter mob.

Congress people and senators are professional policy makers. The problem is that if they acted solely in the best interest of the nation then they wouldn't get reelected. So what, is not having elections a better solution? Should there be no parties so that actual conversations happen and require a consensus? Should terms be limited? No clue. I'm not sure we as a society can fix ourselves without a major kick in the butt.

Re: Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo

#110

Post by alexbanks »

pb7 wrote: post #63
alexbanks wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, without knowing anything about you or your company other than what you posted above, it's hard to say. But in my experience the industry could use more morality based hiring standards, as well as morality-based repercussions for bad behavior. Kudos to you.

A little odd patting someone on the back for claims with no substance. It’s easy to make up a story with all sorts of feel-good ingredients to virtue signal in a thread about a bad guy. If it was all unicorns and butterflies, why not name the company so the morally-aligned folk can find safe haven?

As I said in the other post of mine that you commented on, you're welcome to not agree with me (or anyone, I don't care), that's totally fine with me.
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