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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

#331

Post by zeroonetwothree »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #69
fullshark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe the opposite at Apple? I was told by another engineer (paraphrasing), "They can't lay you off past age 50 without expecting an age-discrimination lawsuit. They'd prefer to give you nothing to do and you leave on your own."

Perhaps you mean "fire" not "lay off"? Generally layoffs are structured to avoid discrimination risks.

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

#332

Post by zeroonetwothree »

harimau777 wrote: post #267
Bnjoroge wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is specific to this industry. It’s far worse in others. Grass always looks greener elsewhere

From what I've observed, the big problem with working in tech is that you have all of the responsibility but none of the authority or autonomy. By comparison, in most service sector jobs you have no authority or autonomy but also little responsibility. In other engineering disciplines you have a lot of responsibility but also much more authority and autonomy.

> the big problem with working in tech is that you have all of the responsibility but none of the authority or autonomy

Very apt description of "Big Tech". That's why I decided to leave as well. This combination just creates a lot of stress and it was negatively impacting my health.

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

#333

Post by spongebobstoes »

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #247
vanuatu wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to defend zuck but its a common misconception that meta sells data advertisers dont see the personal data they buy for ad placement

There is no misconception. Meta also sells data, next to selling advertising space.

no, it doesn't sell user data. or, where can I buy some?

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

#334

Post by 5701652400 »

everdrive wrote: post #17

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.

probably a year or two. definitely less than three years. by then SWE as a job is gone.

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

#335

Post by ryandrake »

dyauspitr wrote: post #217
everdrive wrote: post #17

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.

I’ve been searching. I can’t find anything else that pays even remotely close to tech. It’s a sea of $40-60k jobs with a lot of work at the ground level.

Every CxO on the planet is foaming at the mouth now, because they see AI as the way they can finally cast tech into that sea of $40-60k jobs. I knew a (jerk) founder who would openly grumble about how expensive tech talent was and how "one day, when tech cools off, you guys are going all to be paid like the guys on the manufacturing floor..." Typically they're not so mask-off but I bet a lot of them think like that.

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

#336

Post by brk »

not_the_fda wrote: post #86
brk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post some links to companies hiring at similar compensation levels. Or, are you suggesting that every Meta employee is in a position to just like off of any random job they can find, or even no income at all while they go off "on their own"?

There is more to life than money. I've turned down FANG roles my entire career, especially Meta. There is lot of work out there.

Of course there is more to life than money, but people still need some base amount of money to live safely, especially if you have a family. If you are working in SV then your "big" salary does not go very far, I know lots of developers making $350K and have very little savings cushion, and these are not people just blowing money.

Most big enterprises get really good at paying you just enough to live comfortably, but not enough to give you financial autonomy. This makes the "why do you still work there" question land as naive most of the time.

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

#338

Post by itake »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20

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 don't think AI introduces anything new. In theory, manager could pull the reports of their 4-12 people to see which programs are active and what websites they are using for how long once a month, targeting individuals that they are looking for a reason to bump. No AI needed.

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

#339

Post by Trasmatta »

jkl5xx wrote: post #266
yojo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption. If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately. Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix. Amazon has ho…

This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.

It's not actually that hard, most companies are morally superior to Meta. Even the other evil ones.

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

#340

Post by stephenhuey »

ryandrake wrote: post #292
crispyambulance wrote: post #20

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…

In the years before the subprime mortgage meltdown, I was writing code at a massive bank. Didn’t have an iPhone yet and Gmail was blocked on the work computers, so I’d step across the street during the middle of the workday to sign into a law school library and use their computers to check my personal email. A lot of friends still didn’t want to spend money on per-message SMS fees so I could find out if anyone was inviting me to do something after work in my Gmail inbox (a lot of us used Gchat in those days but the only way I could access it was on a desktop/laptop, no mobile yet).

I agree that these days it’s vastly easier to avoid crossing streams since we all have a personal mobile smartphone.

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