Original nytimes article: "Facebook’s rank-and-file employees, who have begun to question the company’s leadership".
Business Insider derivative: "Facebook employees are quitting".
This article is just shitty clickbait.
Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
131–140 of 258 posts
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.
Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.
I suppose there will always be work for sociopaths
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#133I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns. Whats scary is if even internally people are moving departments because of ethics, that basically filters so that the least ethical people are on the teams with the most ethical concerns. If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, n…
I passed, twice. I went through the whole process, was offered an enormous compensation package (7 figures). I went through it because the entire time I was telling myself if they came back with a big enough offer I'd do it. Turns out I was wrong, I couldn't do it even for what definitely qualifies as "gets paid".
This was several years ago, before any specific scandal I can think of. I have constantly questioned whether I made the right move ... it was a lot of money. Now, finally, I have my answer.
That said, of course my story is anecdotal and for the most part, I guarantee you that the great majority of folks would jump for a job at FB. At the time I was going through the process, the work environment was very much kool-aid, with kool-aid posters everywhere, "work hard" posters and such. It went past my sad filter straight to laughable. I was on campus a few months ago and that kind of thing is gone or mostly gone. I hear it's a pretty good working environment these days, actually.
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
As sure as it's still a developer's market and FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals. Those accomplishments are easily untied from the politics of the situation. You may lose a small amount of jobs that would come your way, but you'd still likely have dozens of offers to choose from from companies that don't view you as 'tainted'. Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical…
> FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense t…
> Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume?
If the algorithm is truly novel then yes, absolutely.
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#135This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.
Doesn't need to be cynical. "I never thought of it that way" is maybe one of the most important phrases you can say.
These people didn't see their jobs as unethical until someone really put a spotlight on what they do. It forced them to look at their roles in all of this and say "is this right?". To quote David Mitchell: "Are we the baddies?".
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV. Let’s be honest: What we’re after is Trump voters, Alex Jones/Milo fans, supporters of James Damore, non-feminists, non-supporters of Emmy Awards stances and generally all people who don’t laugh enough at Steven Colbert jokes. It was made very clear, for example at Google, that managers are building blacklists, and that HR supports them.
Trump voters The other groups maybe , but I doubt even Stalin thought the Great Purges would have gone better if he purged 49% of the Soviet Union's population.
Are you implying 49% of the US population voted for Trump? It was closer to 19% of the population (63,000,000 / 326,000,000)
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#137This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
We saw the same thing after Snowden, people were leaving the NSA in mass after the average person became aware of the situation. Data collection is what enabled the Nazis to find Jews and homosexuals, the next mass percution can be more specific than race. Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV. As the world becomes more aware of the dangers of algorithms and AI, Facebook engineers are rethinking…
>Data collection is what enabled the Nazis to find Jews and homosexuals
It's also worth noting that a certain American tech company was responsible for this.
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#138This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
I disagree. My basis is the conversations I had when I interviewed there. They did not extend an offer, so read what you will into my own biases. :)
But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occurring to me to make a choice".
With creepy consistency, the replies were rejections of this idea. "No, we're connecting the world!".
My conclusion was an echo of the Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
I hope that the quitting phenomenon is real, and that it represents the creme de la creme, with many other options, leaving because they can no longer avoid understanding. If this is happening, then FB's decline will just accelerate.
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#139This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries. Doesn't need to be cynical. "I never thought of it that way" is maybe one of the most important phrases you can say. These people didn't see their jobs as unethical until someone really put a spotlight on what they do. It forced them to look at their roles in all…
>These people didn't see their jobs as unethical until someone really put a spotlight on what they do.
That reflects a certain quality in the individual that I generally think of as bad, but I suppose may have some place in the greater scheme of coporate america. However I generally think that we have a moral imperative to constantly ask ourselves, "is this right? . . . 'Are we baddies'?
I've understood that Facebook is essentially evil for a decade. People who work there who are jumping ship now either look like they aren't paying attention but are moralizing the company's action or are abandoning a sinking ship, neither are really positive traits in a potential employee.
Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
>While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. Feynman is semi-famous for testing at a much lower IQ than most people assume. (He scored 125 on his test at school). See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-ein...
Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago. There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO. RIP IQ tests :)
Tests can be sometimes inaccurate but still useful. There are false positive and negative rates for everything.