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Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

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Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#81

Post by justincormack »

webwright wrote: post #9
jrockway wrote: post #4

Also why he'll never be a journalist, magazine columnist, or work on a TV show. Advertising is just a "bug" in the system that a lot of companies are exploiting: it turns out you can make a lot of money by doing nearly nothing. Eventually the advertising revenue will dry up because people will become immune to it (or just smarter), and everyone will figure out some new way to monetize their services, perhaps by charg…

"The more ads people see, the less they'll click. And then the whole system blows up." Do you really think so? Read up on priming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) ) and tell me if you still think so. Advertising works. Even if NO ONE CLICKS, it still works (brand advertising is still the lion's share of advertising spending in the world).

I think a lot of geeky people have the same issue as me with internet advertising. I dont click on ads. I do not buy any advertised products. The entire market is targetted at some average consumer, like tv ads, not at the niche markets like me. Google has apparently worked out that I might be interested in buying cameras, but I do not buy them based on adverts.

The brands that I respect have characteristics that advertising does not convey as well as informational marketing. I dont believe that wearing your prouct makes girls sexy, but I might believe that your German engineering is very good based on data.

I also like some adverts as cultural items, but the web has not been good at those yet.

So advertising annoys me because it is dumbed down and a waste for me, and I think that is a common geek view.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#82

Post by gfaremil »

I think the problem for engineers working for certain companies such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook is not that your customer are advertising companies.

The real challenge (and problem) for some engineers is that your user is not your customer.

The joy of interacting with customers which are actually paying for things you made for them is sometimes priceless.

Also when working for Google, Twitter, or Facebook you might never learn how to envision and build the product (and company from it) which is sold directly to the customer.

So don't expect the next Oracle, Informatica, or Apple coming from ex-Googlers (even they have a lot of engineering knowledge in that space).

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#83

Post by rbarooah »

cletus wrote: post #40

It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it. Ad revenue on the Internet, almost by definition, means someone found something they wanted. How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? The problem with advertising is when it gets too obtrusive,…

This is effectively a straw-man.

Treating advertising a way to connect suppliers with those with a need is a common, benign interpretation of what it is, but that view rests on assumptions of trust or informational parity between buyers and sellers. i.e. the sellers have to be meeting genuine needs, or the buyers have to have the information necessary to make good determinations. I don't see why we should assume that's generally true. There are plenty of counterexamples (e.g. Drug companies advertising drugs for conditions for which there is not good evidence of efficacy, and consumers being unable to evaluate the statements for themselves).

Google makes its revenue by auctioning qualified snippets of human attention. By qualified, I mean that it makes algorithmic inferences about the users demographics and intentions and uses these to bucket these snippets of attention so that they can be priced differentially. This is why Google's advertising is so much more profitable than most other forms.

At best, I think you can say that Google's advertising is neutral. The value it provides to society is determined by the qualities of the buyers and sellers.

A more skeptical view would be to point out that buyers are better informed than sellers when they enter these transactions. For example, google's search users don't get to see the price that google is charging for their attention, nor are the mechanisms by which google intends to use, say the Google+ network to improve classification transparent to us.

You can reasonably claim that it would be preposterous (or uncompetitive) for Google to reveal these mechanisms, or that Google couldn't survive such a climate of openness. Certainly their competitors are probably worse. That doesn't mean we should be any less critical.

I think that the more informed we are about how we use our attention, the better, and it's not clear that Google, or any other advertising company is automatically aligned with society in this regard.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#84

Post by brandnewlow »

I find that most anti-ads people change their tune when they try selling something on the internet.

You get your service/product built. You make a page for it. You wait for people to come check it out. Your friends drop by. Maybe you sell a few subscriptions. Then nothing.

So you start looking at ways you can spend money to get people to check out your service. You're buying ads now. And you're grateful that there are platforms like Google, Facebook, and eventually Twitter out there to help you sell your stuff and build your business.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#85

Post by wzdd »

cletus wrote: post #40

It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it. Ad revenue on the Internet, almost by definition, means someone found something they wanted. How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? The problem with advertising is when it gets too obtrusive,…

Normally I think your posts are very thoughful, but this time you are attacking a straw man. The OP clearly indicates near the bottom of the post that it's not about working for the betterment of humanity, but about work he personally finds fulfilling. Serving ads is not fulfilling work for him. Morals don't come into it.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#86

Post by majmun »

jasonlotito wrote: post #19
jrockway wrote: post #4

Also why he'll never be a journalist, magazine columnist, or work on a TV show. Advertising is just a "bug" in the system that a lot of companies are exploiting: it turns out you can make a lot of money by doing nearly nothing. Eventually the advertising revenue will dry up because people will become immune to it (or just smarter), and everyone will figure out some new way to monetize their services, perhaps by charg…

Advertising works. It works amazingly well. And I guarantee that you are successfully advertised to all the time. Advertising doesn't just occur within little pre-defined boxes on the internet. Hell, even here on HN, advertising happens all the time. Every "Show HN" post is targeted advertising. Every blog post about some interesting set of figures a start up discovered is advertising. Those interviews start ups do?…

Yea but on Facebook I'm being blindly targeted with ads where system thinks it knows what i want. but it doesn't know.

If this is the same thing than facebook and goolge have very crapy advertising that don't work for me if i am targeted (I know because I'm not being "connected" to what I want), maybe only if i try to advertise something to someone But in that case it is very hard to use.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#87

Post by gfaremil »

From engineering point of view, the sad thing (and danger) about Google, Twitter, or Facebook is they will get in trouble as soon as some other company figure outs more efficient advertising model (and starts eating their revenue).

In other words, regardless of all these great things Google is doing and great technology, if somebody invents better ad market than AdSense, all this great technology will not help them at all. That is the problem.

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#88

Post by mrkurt »

justincormack wrote: post #81
webwright wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The more ads people see, the less they'll click. And then the whole system blows up." Do you really think so? Read up on priming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) ) and tell me if you still think so. Advertising works. Even if NO ONE CLICKS, it still works (brand advertising is still the lion's share of advertising spending in the world).

I think a lot of geeky people have the same issue as me with internet advertising. I dont click on ads. I do not buy any advertised products. The entire market is targetted at some average consumer, like tv ads, not at the niche markets like me. Google has apparently worked out that I might be interested in buying cameras, but I do not buy them based on adverts. The brands that I respect have characteristics that adv…

You buy advertised products, and you likely "remember" advertised products that you've seen alongside content, on TV, etc. Advertising doesn't require conscious recognition to be effective, and it's very, very difficult to avoid exposure to things that might qualify as advertisement.

There's actually a great deal of advertising related research out there, which might make sense when you consider just how much money is floating around. Here are a few random articles from my notes, they're interesting reads (one of them might even explain why you even consider using the phrase "german engineering"):

http://businesspsych.org/articles/225.html

http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=8342

http://tippie.uiowa.edu/marketing/research_papers/packaging....

Re: Why I'd never work for Google, Twitter, or Facebook

#89

Post by cletus »

wzdd wrote: post #85
cletus wrote: post #40

It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it. Ad revenue on the Internet, almost by definition, means someone found something they wanted. How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? The problem with advertising is when it gets too obtrusive,…

Normally I think your posts are very thoughful, but this time you are attacking a straw man. The OP clearly indicates near the bottom of the post that it's not about working for the betterment of humanity, but about work he personally finds fulfilling. Serving ads is not fulfilling work for him. Morals don't come into it.

If your interpretation is correct--which it may well be--then the OP fundamentally doesn't understand the business of any of these companies. Relatively few engineers work directly on serving ads. The vast majority work on other things. At Google this includes, but is not limited to, Android, Chrome, search, Google+, Maps and self-driving cars.
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