501–510 of 577 posts
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What are you going on about? He gave perfectly reasonable advice that many consider a best practice. Hacker News is not the place to act personally attacked and offended over such simple shit.
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A bank teller is not involved in the implementation of the process and systems that define how banks operate. A software engineer is instrumental to how a company operates. > It would be great if every single person had the luxury of making employment decisions primarily based on moral code. We don't need to have "every" person in condition to make such choices, but there are plenty of people that can , and these peo…
>A software engineer is instrumental to how a company operates. >If you are smart, educated, and have enough work ethic to get a job at Facebook as a software developer, you certainly have what it takes to work anywhere else. There is a lot to Facebook, and a lot of various internal and external software that requires SWEs. You lament that people in OP's position "are failing us" because they're not doing more to spe…
"Actions speak louder than words".
I care very little about what they are they "speaking out" about. My point is that Facebook's reputation is not new. Its privacy abuses, the practices for exploiting user data for their own benefit, their "move fast and break things" mentality that applies even to things that affect the social fabric of the whole world... everything has been out there in the open for at least 2010, when the first "delete Facebook" campaign came up.
So, it's not like people went to work there without knowing what they signed up for. The were not being offered generous compensation packages to work on ways to make the company less abusive. Their UX designers were not being hired to find ways to make users less dependent on the app. No developer was rewarded for finding a clever ways to determine if the user was a teenager and therefore unable to have access to the website. No data analyst got any bonus because they implemented a system that reduced data collection and increased user privacy. Quite the opposite, actually.
> You have no idea if they contributed to fucked up shit
Anyone working on Facebook at a position that contributes to how the company operates and makes business is by definition working on "fucked up shit". Even the "cool open source projects". Even John Carmack while working at Oculus. Even the people working at WhatsApp who were from the beginning hoping to keep it clear from Facebook influence.
Anyone receiving a paycheck from Facebook should be aware that their money comes at the expense of a lot of societal harm. They might be even okay with it (it is a good paycheck after all) but anyone with a modicum of ethical conscience would simply reject to work there.
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Anyone who's been awake for the past 5 years knows how shitty and unethical a company Facebook is. If they'd been there since the beginning, they could have figured out how lets's say "flexible" Zuckerberg's ethics were. And there are plenty of companies that are ethically benign, if not doing real good in the world. To suggest that people should act ethically, even when money is involved, is not classist. And, if yo…
Yet still not a single attempt to understand OP's perspective, actions there, time there, or reason for departure. Just an insistence on an immediate straight shot to, "Nope, they have dues that must be repaid no matter what". Got it. Edit: And again, I must emphasize nuance. People talented enough to work at a FAANG absolutely can have significant financial issues, outstanding debts, etc. that may make them prioriti…
You can not use the exceptions to morally justify the general case.
Let's say that 2% of the people took a white-collar job there because of some absurd hardship. What is the excuse of the other 98%?
Make it higher. Let's say that we are living in a bizarro world where 10% of the people that are well educated, talented, energetic and able to go through such a grueling interview process, yet they are facing some type of hardship. What is the excuse of the other 90%?
Also, how long do they need to continue working there until they can resolve their situation? If they took a job just because of the pressure of their hardships, presumably they could settle the score after 2-4 years and then move on to something else? Are these people doing that?
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Ironically this is how night clubs work, too. One gets a monopoly/gets popular and everyone goes there for a time until it because uncool and people move on to the next cool club. In social media see LiveJournal -> MySpace -> Facebook -> Tiktok. Each had a monopoly at the time until something cooler came along. The tenure also, ironically, seems to be around the same duration of a popular nightclub. Also, don't mista…
This is not a good take. First, it's not true that the most popular club has a monopoly in any meaningful sense. But even granting you that farcical premise: any "monopoly" effect is on a city-wide basis and does not scale, and does not trend towards global winner-take-all outcomes that social media does.
Your second point of the global nature misses the point I was making. Social things evolve. Whether on a global scale, country scale, or city level. Assuming there is a social construct that will "just work" until the end of time seems naive. But hey, if we are all using Twitter and Facebook in 20-30 years rather than the new social media company that has come to prominence then it will be a provably wrong take :).
Or maybe a better way to put it is if the next generation is using them, because certain cohorts (see original post) will continue to use it because thats where their network is, but younger people get no utility because their network isnt there. See twitter and facebook.
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>A software engineer is instrumental to how a company operates. >If you are smart, educated, and have enough work ethic to get a job at Facebook as a software developer, you certainly have what it takes to work anywhere else. There is a lot to Facebook, and a lot of various internal and external software that requires SWEs. You lament that people in OP's position "are failing us" because they're not doing more to spe…
> they're not doing more to speak out about FB's bullshit "Actions speak louder than words". I care very little about what they are they "speaking out" about. My point is that Facebook's reputation is not new. Its privacy abuses, the practices for exploiting user data for their own benefit, their "move fast and break things" mentality that applies even to things that affect the social fabric of the whole world ... ev…
We don't know, because you won't ask. Again, I agree with your general views on FB. But when there's someone right in front of me, I'm gonna talk to them and find out more before I tell them that they shouldn't be allowed to be a member of society. Life is nuanced, and the degree to which we harbor hatred towards those doing harm is nuanced, too. I will always be initially apprehensive of someone like OP, but at a macro/individual level I will always work to understand more - it's the fair thing to do.
If you want to ignorantly paint everyone with such a broad brush, go ahead.
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Yet still not a single attempt to understand OP's perspective, actions there, time there, or reason for departure. Just an insistence on an immediate straight shot to, "Nope, they have dues that must be repaid no matter what". Got it. Edit: And again, I must emphasize nuance. People talented enough to work at a FAANG absolutely can have significant financial issues, outstanding debts, etc. that may make them prioriti…
> People talented enough to work at a FAANG absolutely can have significant financial issues, outstanding debts, etc. that may make them prioritize finances above ethics. You can not use the exceptions to morally justify the general case. Let's say that 2% of the people took a white-collar job there because of some absurd hardship. What is the excuse of the other 98%? Make it higher. Let's say that we are living in a…
Forgive my bluntness, but I don't know how many times I've said this in this comment chain to you and others - fucking ask them. An ex-FB SWE posted here, someone ate him alive for simply having worked there, you piled on, and now you're rhetorically asking me what their excuse is for taking that job.
I don't know, and I won't pretend to. I've been saying y'all should ask, and here you are wondering, so... ASK OP. Talk to them. Have a conversation. They're right up there!
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To be honest, your reply came off as very condescending. I don't know how anyone could predict that Twitter's crazy algorithm would flag that tweet, any more than they could predict that Twitter's crazy algorithm would flag a video of a cat game. It's all too easy to sit in judgment in hindsight, given the fact that Twitter's crazy algorithm did flag the tweet. But nobody really knows how it works with foresight.
> To be honest, your reply came off as very condescending. Not my intention. You are right no one would have known it would be flagged. My point was merely that if the tweet isn't 100% for your work / online profile then I would use a different account to post it.
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They didn't file a police report, no, but this is absolutely the equivalent of verbally accusing someone of posting revenge porn. If someone walked up to you and said "Your most-recent tweet is revenge porn and it's disgusting" and then reiterated that after double checking both the innocuous tweet and that they had the correct person, you would probably be claiming they incorrectly accused you of tweeting revenge po…
When the security person at Best Buy stops you to check if your receipt matches what's in your cart when you head out, they're not accusing you of theft.
When they stop you, say "you stole that", ignore that your receipt says you paid, kick you out of the store, and stop you from coming back, they are pretty clearly accusing you of theft.
That's a straightforward translation of what Twitter did.
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> People talented enough to work at a FAANG absolutely can have significant financial issues, outstanding debts, etc. that may make them prioritize finances above ethics. You can not use the exceptions to morally justify the general case. Let's say that 2% of the people took a white-collar job there because of some absurd hardship. What is the excuse of the other 98%? Make it higher. Let's say that we are living in a…
>What is the excuse of the other 98%? Forgive my bluntness, but I don't know how many times I've said this in this comment chain to you and others - fucking ask them . An ex-FB SWE posted here, someone ate him alive for simply having worked there, you piled on, and now you're rhetorically asking me what their excuse is for taking that job. I don't know, and I won't pretend to. I've been saying y'all should ask, and h…
My point is that we collectively criticize the leadership on business like Facebook (or any "FAANG" for that matter), but we give a pass on all people that go work there. My point is that we should (collectively) start looking at them as enablers and also be responsible for all the damage that the companies have done.
Instead of saying "how cool, Johnny is making 400k/year to work at Google, I wish I could do the same", we should be saying "What's up with Johnny that he needed to sell his soul for $400k/year?"
Civility costs you nothing. Snark gets you nowhere.