Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

naildrivin5.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 173 posts

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

#161

Post by rbarooah »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #153
rbarooah wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plausible case for what? What case do you think I'm making that you are somehow contradicting? Nothing I've said is in conflict with the idea of preferences being subjective.

why do you continue to deny your parent post? QUOTE: "the sellers have to be meeting genuine needs, or the buyers have to have the information necessary to make good determinations." both of your assertions are false. markets tend toward equilibria you disagree with. that you disagree with them doesn't make the needs "non-genuine", nor does it mean information asymmetry is a barrier to efficient markets. correcting i…

I haven't denied my parent post. You are quoting me out of context - it doesn't make sense if you don't include the full sentence, and you aren't explaining why you think I'm claiming needs are not subjective.

Where have I said anything about me agreeing or disagreeing with people's needs? Certainly not in that quote. My position is simply that Google's advertising doesn't necessarily serve the function of matching people with suppliers of what they want or need because it's an attention auction which is agnostic to the idea of need or want.

You also haven't addressed what part of what I've said is 'pontificating' or why I don't have the right to express my views.

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

#162

Post by Okvivi »

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.

The ads are the means to an end, not the other way around. You do what you can to change the world and make a difference, you work on something amazing that you care about, the ads are (often times) your way to fund your ideas while helping other businesses thrive (by bringing in users through buying advertising).

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

#163

Post by twilsndfdf »

First, this guy has a right to his opinion, and that's OK (I work at Google). But Google does not exist to serve ads. It exists to control the internet, to suck money out of it, and to keep other companies from encroaching on its territory. This is why it is attracting attention from Washington.

Back to the matter at hand---finding work...hard work...that is fulfilling is not easy, but I think it is worth it. Many people find this outside of what they do for a living, so the only criticism of this piece I have is that it suggests that it is ONLY possible to find fulfillment through the thing you do to pay the rent and put food on the table.

I've seen OPower's website. I like it. This is a great idea, and I'm happy to see it take off, so I can see this being very fulfilling work - perhaps the most important work of a lifetime, way more unique and special than one of Google's foot soldiers. But not everyone has that chance, that opportunity, a role like that, and yet everyone has the chance, the opportunity to orient themselves to seek out what is fulfilling to them, to lead a meaningful life, which often involves changing jobs! And I don't think the author understands that this is a universal drive, something which transcends the place of employment.

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

#164

Post by rbarooah »

saurik wrote: post #160
rbarooah wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say everyone's needs are the same.

Ok: I think one easily gets the other impression from your want/need distinction. Regardless: the first two paragraphs do not even touch on that: that person might 'need' an Xbox, but not one that has a working blue video composite. The point is that there is an elasticity to the demand curve for everything that the person might 'want', but there is no obvious breaking point where you suddenly end up with a 'need': a…

That's fair enough. I think this explains the reactions of others in this thread. The distinction between want and need isn't important to my original point, and I certainly wasn't intending to claim them as objective. It was a careless choice of words.

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

#165

Post by megablast »

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,…

It is strange to have some moral objection to being shot because being shot is, ultimately, a chemical reaction, and isn't our existence based on all sorts of chemical reactions.

How exactly is one chemical reaction bad, but so many other reactions good? It makes no sense.

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

#166

Post by temphn »

akronim wrote: post #132
temphn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is choice. The same people who'd scream if Murdoch had the power to force everyone to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal don't think it's a big deal that everyone is forced to subscribe to the BBC.

Assuming the government is still going to fund a TV station, not having a license for BBC would just mean it was funded out of general taxation revenue. Having a license system or not is irrelevant, it's still being funded by taxation either ay.

Why should there necessarily be state-run media?

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

#167

Post by baq »

sbierwagen wrote: post #128
cletus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except all those projects are about serving ads. Android is about serving ads on cellphones. Chrome about making browsers better, so consumers will use more Google products, and see more ads. G+ is about harvesting social graph data to serve ads. Self driving cars is so people will check their mail on the way into work, and see more ads.

I'd be extremely happy to watch ads instead of waste time getting angry on people. Self-driving car would be a dream come true for many, many people.

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

#168

Post by yeahsure »

tpatke wrote: post #27
aristus wrote: post #8

I happen to work for Facebook, and a large fraction of my friends and family are expatriates. A place to easily keep in touch, share photos of kids, chat with abuelita, all that boring stuff, directly improves our quality of life. When I recommend Linux for my friends, the top two "programs" they care about are Skype and Facebook. After that, maybe Youtube. As for the ads, yes, that's a source of revenue. If that is…

I was going to comment that Google, Facebook and Twitter are platforms for search, connections and communicating respectively. Ads are simply a revenue model. If Facebook charged $20 per month, would you work for them then? However, after seeing comments like: I work for facebook - "advertising is itself a worthwhile problem." and... I work for google - "People in non-advertising teams hardly ever ask 'how will this…

If Facebook charged $20 per month, would anyone use it?

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

#169

Post by surrealize »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #148
rbarooah wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how I've equated a conversion to a genuine need being met. That would imply that nobody ever buys anything that isn't suited to their needs. I guess I'm falling for trolls here.

preferences are subjective. If someone is buying something you claim they don't need you need to, at the very least, get them to agree with you before you have a plausible case. you aren't being trolled, get an introductory microecon text.

If the way that Google shows ads was entirely driven by the needs/wants of the ad viewers, then it's easy to make a case that the ad viewers are being served. But Google doesn't only have the ad viewers in mind; the interests of advertisers are also being served.

And where the interests of advertisers and those of the ad viewers conflict, who wins? To the extent that advertisers ever win in those conflicts, then the interests of the ad viewers are not being served. And in that case, it's perfectly reasonable to question the social utility of Google's ad-serving.

But it's hard to define exactly how and when the interests of the ad viewers aren't being served. And that's where this thread gets bogged down a bit, on the question of what the ad viewers' "genuine" wants/needs are.

But I don't think we need to nail that down before we can question the social utility of the ads, because the system accommodates a set of interests (those of the advertisers) that often conflict with the interests of the ad viewers. Now, if you can reduce those conflicts, that's great, but is it really controversial that they exist?

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

#170

Post by meow »

One might argue all our activities are geared for one thing: existence. But then it is not mere existence that counts, but what the existence results in, that makes any one useful to the world. Same goes with Google. They have to exist to do cool things (like android, remote controlled cars, street view etc).. and their existence depends on serving ads.
Post reply on HN