191–200 of 258 posts
https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-facebooks-employees-crisis-... has actual sources, and comes to the opposite conclusion.
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I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.
I grew up in Maryland, which probably has the most defense contractors in the country and I decided in college that I didn't want to work in defense for ethical reasons. But there is another side of it, some people genuinely believe that the work they are doing is helping to keep the country safe.
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> 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.
So where do you draw the line? How many of these would you put on your resume? "I wrote software that took advantage of addictive behavior in new ways" "My new flagging mechanism, tailored to prevent users from leaving the platform, led to someone committing suicide after being unable to block an abuser" "My relevancy algorithm, based on what had the most engagement, led to a genocide" I've made these purposefully ex…
I wouldn't put any of those on my resume, because they're ridiculous and don't represent the way people report their achievements. However, I would put the technology I developed on my resume that enabled any one of those things.
Personally, I'd be proud to have had significant involvement in the development of Facebook's data analysis and ingestion platform. I would not be proud of the Cambridge Analytica mistake in of itself, but that's because I don't conflate the underlying technology with a particularly grievous mistake that was happened because of the technology's existence.
Moreover, I contest your use of examples which are cartoonishly evil. I disagree with the fundamental premise that the technology is innately bad, or that your examples even remotely constitute an accurate portrayal of the internal culture at Facebook. I believe there are clear failures in Facebook's data analysis processes, but it's intellectually lazy and dishonest to misrepresent those failures using the obviously biased language in your examples. It's also unfair to mischaracterize the majority of people who work there as lacking in ethics.
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Leaking corporate data or trade secrets to the general public is not the solution for a couple of reasons. - Depending on the actual contents of the leak, people might panic; this is basically never useful. - Depending on the outlet, the contents may get distorted before being published in order to fit some narrative -- potentially causing a panic. See above. - You or the original leaker may be traced back using even…
Whistle blowing laws also exist, though. So if they are doing something illegal, and therefore one is protected from prosecution, they should absolutely "leak" it to the authorities. Doesnt matter if you are unemployable if you recieve millions in a whistle blowing reward from the government.
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How sure are you about that?
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…
You are correct that it doesn't. But our field also carries a lot less prestige, with most of it tied to the employer as opposed to our profession and skillsets.
This board often laments this fact.
I think adopting an Eichmann defense here is a big mistake and hurts our profession as a whole. We'd be indirectly surrendering a huge amount of autonomy. How can we have ownership over the positive outcome of what we create without also be willing to accept some of the responsibility for negative outcomes? When we wash our hands of these externaliities, to an outsider, it just looks like developers are nothing more than cogs in a machine, following orders. It just moves the glory up the food chain.
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You'll pass on a potentially excellent hire simply because of the name on their resume? You won't even expend a modicum of effort to interview the candidate or see if they're at all involved in the specific work you despise? Are over 20,000 employees guilty in your view? If this isn't irrational behavior, what would it take for you to be acting irrationally?
If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.
Cough cough https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-...
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> WhatsApp and Instagram seem to be much more respected than Facebook proper right now Yes, that's my point. These people, in my head, are trying to minimize the damage done to their reputation, but without actually realizing that moving around inside Facebook doesn't really help. I seriously doubt that how Facebook, the product, is run is significantly different than how Instagram or WhatsApp is run. Anyone who just…
From what I've heard, they're fairly independent of the mothership and have their own distinct identities, similar to how people at YouTube don't consider themselves to be Googlers as much as YouTubers.
Install Facebook and Instagram on iOS. Launch FB and note how long it takes to start, now launch Instagram and do the same. Instagram starts up nearly instantly.
Now, force quit both apps and remove Facebook. Start Instagram and all of the sudden it takes much longer to start. I don't know why this is but it certainly shows a deep connection between the apps in a way that users are probably not expecting.
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You'll pass on a potentially excellent hire simply because of the name on their resume? You won't even expend a modicum of effort to interview the candidate or see if they're at all involved in the specific work you despise? Are over 20,000 employees guilty in your view? If this isn't irrational behavior, what would it take for you to be acting irrationally?
If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.
Are there other companies you'd indiscriminately never hire from? What about Google? How is their data mining materially different, in your view? What about a subcontractor for Facebook? Would you hire engineers from a startup which advertised on Facebook? If so, why are they not complicit?
The real way to tell if there is a substantial number of employees and potential employees who feel this way is looking at Facebook compensation vs similar companies. If they have to offer more money for similar work then that means that there are a substantial number of people who don't want to work for them. If they are offering similar money, then that means that the people who don't want to work for Facebook are…
Price is a very thin signal, and deriving inferrences from it fraught.