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Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

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Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO the ability for individual employees to negotiate for themselves is a positive? I keep hearing this, but FAANGs don't allow individual negotiations. You are banded, like you would be at a union. Also you're assuming that unions would be able to, or want to block the firing of bad performers. Since the bad performers would also hurt the bottom line, and therefore your pay. Unionisation might hurt the startup as…

Even Non-FAANGs have banded, bounded comp. I remember discussing a compensation increase at a smallish, medium sized company, and was given the usual "The book says the comp for your role is between $X and $Y, and you're at $Y." They even showed me The Book! Like, ok so you're just willing to lose me over this stupid book then? (Narrator: There were willing to) I dipped over to FAANG for a pretty nice increase. I gue…

It's just a larger book, yes. No matter how much value you deliver the most important value is that you are Smaller than the Big Guy, and at google he makes a lot more money.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#382
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, many companies don't want the liability issues. Like what happens if I open my bank account on my work computer? You could argue I can expect someone to be watching but I have no warning that someone is? Here in the EU that would probably be an easy lawsuit.

Why would you ever login to a sensitive account on a device you don't own and have root on? Like I trust my employer not to do anything shifty with my banking info, if I were to use it, but I'm not going to take that chance for a dozen reasons.

> Why would you ever login to a sensitive account on a device you don't own and have root on?

You mean like the phones that everyone uses with banking apps?

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more like $,$$$,$$$.$$

You're saying the average dev at Meta is making 7 figures?

I mean... their stock is up more than 1,000% since 2014. Anyone who has been there for a few years should have multiple refreshers that have grown significantly in value.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Often this kind of thing is put in as a relief valve to stop people demanding legislation. They can push back by pointing to this kind of measure, despite knowing in practice that employees aren't really free to use it.

[deleted]

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#387

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

I've always, throughout a 25+ year career, kept personal business on personal devices and work business on work devices, and never cross the streams. Oddly, this is really controversial on HN, though! I've gotten so many weirdly angry responses when suggesting people try it, like it's a huge inconvenience to just bring a personal phone to work in order to do your banking and fuck around posting on HN. It's so much ea…

Especially because many employers use security tools that log your activity, including keystrokes.

Which means your keystrokes (passwords, cc numbers, anything you type on your work laptop) may now be sitting in clear text in logs somewhere.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#388

I don't work for Meta, but how many more years do I need to work in tech? I'm in my 40s and my kids are young. I've already set up 529s for them, and am paying for some expensive home upgrades. Maybe when that is finished and I've built up a buffer I can switch industries for the last 5-10 years of my working life. Curious if anyone here has any similar plans.

My single minded focus is getting my finances in order so I don't need to work in this industry (financial independence) past 50. It's just getting worse and worse in terms of the open contempt for employees from the top down with no end in sight. Once you reach 50 it's just luck of the draw whether or not you are in the annual culling of the senior folks. There's no excuse anymore for being ignorant of how this indu…

Another way to look at it is that naked emperors and snake tongues are leaving a LOT of passion and talent on the table. And customers (we all are, to someone) are similarly yearning for some basic progress, too. How did we get so good at failing to make anything out of that? How can we change it?

And there is no money cushion anyone [0] can leave to future generations that could offset just leaving it to the worst of the worst, the "synergy" of the insane running the asylum with no counter efforts, like pulling all cooling rods in a reactor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer%27s_Apprentice

In that story the sorcerer saves the day. There is no such person in our story, and no group that play its role, and if we don't step up -- all of us, all of "them", everybody -- everything will be "awash", and nobody will "win" anything worth talking about, not on any timescales beyond what I would consider very short term.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up, I’d wonder how people could work for companies like cigarette manufacturers even after it became well known that their products wreck havoc on your health. This comment is a masterclass in the type of mental gymnastics people do to justify working for these kind of companies. > Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? You couldn’t even answer the question you yourself posed.

Meta isn't nowhere near cigarettes manufacturers in terms of damage. Tobacco kills millions every year. Meta may need even more regulation, and you can argue that social medias aren't the greatest invention, but I don't think they are that bad. There's no mental gymnastics here. I draw the line differently than you, that's all. I'm not a big fan of Meta and their products, I would be happy to work there anyway for th…

I think one could make a hypothetical case that working at a cigarette company in 2026 is a more morally justifiable position than working at meta in 2026, because cigarettes as they're regulated today generally only affect adults, only affects those who opt in, and kills people on average near the end of their lives.

Meta's decisions affect everyone, even non-users, because of their outsized impact on society. But they also have way more users than cigarettes, and deliberately prey on children and teens in ways that could affect them their whole lives (see recent lawsuit).

I would struggle to judge anyone working for either of these companies. I think the blame lies at the top, or is shared by all of us for failing to build a better society which prevents such exploitation.

Measuring damage to society, or the degree of moral bankruptcy in a company's leadership, is a very difficult thing to quantify.

So, I agree with you that these are personal choices, and everyone will draw the line differently based on who they're comfortable working for and what they're comfortable contributing to.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ah, hyperbole. You must be from Reddit. Since Meta workers are slaves, no one can blame them for their work or employer though, as you no doubt agree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
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