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

‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 560 posts

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#251

Post by saagarjha »

EpicEng wrote: post #107
yaacov wrote: post #9

> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…

This is true of anything, just a bunch of talk. It's easy to be opposed to X when X does not offer you anything. As soon as X is good for you, many (most?) people don't stick to their guns.

It’s always a compromise. Facebook offering you an extra $10K but you have to work on increasing engagement? Probably a pass. Facebook offering an extra $500K to work on public research that doesn’t help their bottom line? Maybe something worth looking at. Currently, I don’t see any jobs at Facebook that tip the scale for me personally.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#252

Post by eesmith »

xxpor wrote: post #190
eesmith wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a bit like blaming the scientists of the Manhattan Project for dropping the atomic bomb. Consider Joseph Rotblat. He worked on the Manhattan Project because believed that it was needed as a deterrent against a German nuclear weapon. After he learned that Germany had given up on the bomb, he left the Manhattan Project - the only one to do so - and felt betrayed by its use in Japan. "Rotblat believed that scient…

The difference is the nuclear arms race was inevitable. The soviets would have made it eventually anyway, and then what would we (the US) have done? Facebook on the other hand is not inevitable.

Should scientists always be concerned with the ethical consequences of their work?

Should Facebook employees always be concerned with the ethical consequences of their work?

I think your argument is that the ethics means we really needed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over?

And we really needed to let the government sell the lie that there was a 'missile gap' to the US population? Or was that lie in order to hide that there were U-2 overflights? Who were we hiding the knowledge of U-2s from? The Soviets, who could see them on radar and were developing ways to shoot them down? Or the US public?

It's all very odd ethics. I'm sure the Rand Corporation has some game theorists who would clear everything up.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#253

Post by saagarjha »

bootlooped wrote: post #105
about_help wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an extreme example to illustrate the point, not a direct comparison of FB to atomic bombs. However, one might argue that FB is actually worse. It is hard to quantify widespread societal effects and determine if they would have occurred through other channels. The massive privacy violations across the world through FB is another item that is hard to quantify yet 100% morally wrong.

I don't think it would be a very persuasive argument. Atomic bombs have some easily quantifiable negatives, for example $5+ trillion spent on nuclear arms in the US alone, and ~200,000 mostly civilians killed. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...

Just because something can’t be tied to “people died” does not make it a positive for society. Things like censorship and tracking don’t have clear and immediate negative externalities, but they are clearly wrong and they can enable other, worse things.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#254

Post by mcrad »

nemild wrote: post #169
yaacov wrote: post #9

> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…

I loved this quote: > “Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company creates new products or makes decisions, the correlation between the two is not so tightly aligned,” said David Chie, the head of Palo Alto Staffing, a tech job placement service in Silicon Valley. “Everyone’s having this conversation.” I call these anodyne missi…

Fun fact: Nike's mission is to do everything possible to expand human potential.

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/02/mission-implau...

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#255

Post by saagarjha »

bytematic wrote: post #148
sigi45 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaaaaaand gone is the moral. Great.

New grads don't have the liberty of filtering out 85+% of companies that have shitty morals. The ones that are too small to be newsworthy likely wish they could do what facebook does and more.

It really depends. You can be selective to where you apply and still a job, even as a new graduate. It’s not like it’s impossible to get offers if you’re talented.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#256

Post by ken »

techelitism wrote: post #72

Few comments on this because I think about this quite a bit. 1) I always read these articles and sigh. Seems like they only focus on 2 elite tech companies at the expense of all the others while only interviewing students at the #1 CS school in the country. I feel like a 2nd class citizen in the industry because of it. When will the normal people be heard? 2) I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. Th…

> I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons

I'm reminded of a line in Roger Ebert's review of American Splendor: "We don't fight over trivial things, because nothing worth fighting over is trivial. As Harvey might say, Hey, it's important to me!"

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#257

Post by mattlondon »

yaacov wrote: post #9

> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…

Yup. +1 to this.

Ethics are cheap when you've got nothing to lose...

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#258

Post by samplatt »

p1necone wrote: post #246
nemild wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved this quote: > “Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company creates new products or makes decisions, the correlation between the two is not so tightly aligned,” said David Chie, the head of Palo Alto Staffing, a tech job placement service in Silicon Valley. “Everyone’s having this conversation.” I call these anodyne missi…

My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec and I wouldn't expect them to have much relation to reality. Was I in the minority?

Not at all, but it's important to know that they're not universally bullshit. The last two companies I've worked for (both <1k people) have genuinely valued their mission statements, and finally incentivise results that exemplify it.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#259

Post by almost_usual »

yaacov wrote: post #9

> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…

It's not unusual for people to compromise their morals for pay. Actions speak louder than words.

Re: ‘I Don’t Really Want to Work for Facebook.’ Say Some Computer Science Students

#260

Post by saagarjha »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #195
dionidium wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unethical to accurately quote 19 year olds. This is an eccentric position you've staked out.

If you had to bet $5 on whether or not the reporter sat these kids down before interviewing them for the record and said something like, "Be advised, what you say in this article is going to be seen by every potential employer for the next 5+ years, are you ready to drop some truth bombs?" how would you bet? I would bet that she did not...

I mean, most of the people raised on the internet have generally learned by now that anything they say online will probably show up to their potential employers. So I’m pretty sure they do realize that this might hurt their chances of working at Facebook, which is a risk they are willing to make.
Post reply on HN