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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#411

Post by RangerScience »

chillee wrote: post #387
RangerScience wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free snacks, and their quality, is a complex signal. They're some of the first things to go as cash tightens up, and they're a decent rubric as to how much leadership actively gives a fuck about employees. Or they're a garnish on a pile of shit. It does definitely depend on the goals regarding company/employee relations: is this a job for which I'm paid money, or is it supposed to be more than that? If the former, ho…

If you read the article, they're complaining about the lack of free snacks because they're WORKING FROM HOME. To be honest, I suspect it's a joke question.

Ehh. I could see it either way. "I joke but also I'm serious".

Food is my second biggest expense (after ofc rent) - decent lunch is $15-$20 (more with delivery) in my area. For the summer I worked in MV, it was that for a mediocre lunch (nothing good nearby).

15 * 5 * 52 = $3,900. If the company covers it, it's pre-tax to me; if I cover it that's more like $7k out of my salary.

(Plus the time to wrangle colleagues and figure out where, transit time, etc)

Having food supplied? Actually of pretty substantial value, even if it's not on the level of, say, American health insurance.

(Plus, you know, I can buy a house if I don't spend $5 on coffee everyday!)

Re: Mark in the Middle

#412

Post by scottlamb »

_qulr wrote: post #234
scottlamb wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Free food , including meals. If Facebook is anything like Google, some single people were literally using that for every meal and snack 5/7 days per week. It's tasty, nutritious food, and you don't have to prepare it or do dishes. Sure, an adult should be able to take care of this on their own, but this is a major perk, not just a box of granola bars on a shelf. It might c…

From what I've seen, I don't think $5K per year is a big chunk of a Facebook engineer's compensation. In any case, the bigger issue is that this situation exposes how utterly dependent these engineers are on their employer, not just for money but for basic life functionality. Only a tiny number of companies in the world offer this level of "service" to employees. What happens if and when they no longer work at Facebo…

They haven't been in the office since March iirc. If they were utterly dependent on this perk, they would literally be dead by now.

If you think they're spoiled for ever having this perk, using it, missing it, and/or complaining about its absence, I won't try to convince you otherwise. I agree it's something the vast majority of people never had, much less get to enjoy during the pandemic. I'm just adding some context which I thought you might be missing when describing it as "snacks".

Anyway, I'm going to shut up on the topic now, as it's not as important to me as content moderation. I don't work for Facebook and don't plan to (sorry, recruiter who emailed me yesterday), so their employee perks affect me only very loosely as they shape industry trends. In contrast, I think the content moderation has a surprisingly huge effect on everyone. Facebook is where a lot of people find the content that shapes their opinions. It may sway the US presidential election.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#413

Post by dang »

justanotheranon wrote: post #295
charlesu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil. The left is childish? President of the United States literally tweets gifs of himself beating up CNN on Twitter. We live in differently realities. I see one side that shows some semblance of decorum and another that is basically the political equivalent of the Joker but without the charisma and philosophical consistency.

this shows how dangerous the Left Wing filter bubble has become. undecided voters dont care about a 2 year old funny meme gag video. they care about 100+ days of nightly riots in dozens of cities. they care about police officers being shot by assassins and ordinary home owners being assaulted by mobs with impunity. they care about sky rocketing homeless, murders, burglaries and robberies. they care about millions of…

We've banned this account for using HN for political and ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, regardless of which politics you favor or oppose.

More explanation here, and links to plenty more, if anyone wants it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582668.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Mark in the Middle

#414

Post by dragonwriter »

crazygringo wrote: post #407
samatman wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…

I think you're mischaracterizing the classical liberal consensus. That was best represented by John Stuart Mill, and his main point was not that censorshop will be used as a weapon -- it's simply that censorship infringes on liberty, and that the best cure for bad speech is more speech. And the idea that the "general consensus" is against all forms of censorship is quite false. In America it is, but in Europe and oth…

> And even in the US, "yelling fire in a crowded movie theater" isn't protected either.

Well, if you believe tangential dicta that was grounded in no preexisting law offered in a since-overturned case allowing the repression of core political speech, sure...

But best not use that example.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#415

Post by will4274 »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #357
jamiequint wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people in the GOP/ICE/etc do you actually think believe "particular race X is not worthy of life"?

The entire party's leadership has publiclly stated this. Their chief leader, Trump, is the most obviously outspoken racist. From calling Back athletes exercising their 1st amendment thugs, accepting endorsements from the KKK, to pardoning a white solider who committed war crimes murdering brown people, Trump and the Republican party's unconditional support make their views clear as day.

Do you really believe that the entire Republican party leadership publicly stated that black people are not worthy of life?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#417

Post by dang »

umvi wrote: post #180

If I had to guess it's because facebook has a larger portion of older conservative folks than other social media platforms? If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources) which is probably because older conservatives don't use reddit? It can't be healthy for entire social media platforms to be completely dominated by one party or the other.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581099.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#418

Post by yuin278 »

sequoia wrote: post #278

To be honest I wish Zuckerberg would say "We're not censoring political posts, and if you don't like it, --> there's the door. Who's leaving first?" Facebook engineers may love to beat their chests about social justice, but when push comes to shove, they are not about to walk away from those gold plated salaries & stock grants. Most of them could leave FB and get another job paying somewhere in the ballpark of $200k…

I would love to work at a company these days that cares more about building interesting products instead of being constantly bombarded by social justice and political activism issues.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#419

Post by ant6n »

jdminhbg wrote: post #361
maxsilver wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources) Is this actually true? I get that there's usually one or two left-leaning sources on there, but more than half of the stories on /r/politics (the top 30 stories, as of 9/24 in my browser) are from centrist / conservative-leaning news sources. The real problem seems to be that the overton wind…

Trying to redefine the political landscape according to your niche views is really pointless. Obviously the conversation is being conducted with the understanding that the US left/right/center are the reference points. There's no more point to this comment than there would be to a libertarian saying that Facebook shares are all from "statist" news sources.

Facebook is a global platform. Within the global comparison the us Overton window is positioned very much to the right. Merkels Conservative party is left of many Democrats.

Id say the Overton window has also moved to the right in the us over the last 20 years or so, openly racist and (not so) crypto-fascist attitudes weren’t so mainstream then - Facebook is probably not helping this development.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#420

Post by dang »

pjc50 wrote: post #68

> "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]" The set of people for whom this is true is shrinking by the day; remaining Republican requires an increasingly bizarre set of intellectual contortions. For example, you'd have to believe that appointing a Supreme Court justice right at the end of your te…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24577397.
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