I get that we don’t like Facebook, but isn’t this a bit much? Are they worse than google or amazon? What about people who work for Coca-Cola? What about the people who make mobile games and loot boxes for Blizzard?
Where is it ethical to work?
I mean, I’ve been in public service for decades, so I know a thing or two about choosing idealism over money, but that’s not for everyone and I frankly don’t think Facebook is really that more evil than around 90% of the hundreds of software companies we deal with.
Like we recently ordered a system for abused children journals. A nationwide bidding landing in a 120 million danish or deal, for a piece of software that 30 municipalities build an equivalent of on their own for 2 million danish kr a few years back.
So some company is making 118 million because the world is rotten. That company is the most popular tech destination for newly educated CS grads in my country by the way.
From my experience, most of this negativity just appears on HN or on channels who have some strong bias (usually business related) against Facebook.
All my acquaintances working in tech, which includes people from very wide sociodemographics ranges, consider Facebook an absolutely prestigious employer, with top talent, top challenges, top compensation and top name for building a personal brand.
Hell, I interviewed at FB about a year ago and was _thrilled_ to get an offer (which I ultimately didn't accept for other reasons) and I loved the technical challenges that they are working and how they are advancing the state of the art on some really cool scalability problems.
I'll be downvoted, but when it comes to Facebook, HN is a broken record.
As a Googler, Facebook would certainly be a place I would consider if I wasn’t at google. You’re right, of course, that it is a better than fine employer.
That doesn't prove anything though: employee at biggest surveillance machine in the world considers working at the 2nd biggest surveillance machine in the world.
A lot of us software engineering types lack integrity and are perfectly happy to work on socially harmful projects as long as the pay's right and there's opportunity to grow one's skills.
> A lot of us software engineering types lack integrity
This is pretty insulting, working at Facebook doesn't necessarily mean you don't have integrity. The majority of the company is engaged in development efforts that aren't related to the odious part of the business to do with brokering personal data.
Additionally, I'm sure Facebook would move away from that if there was a viable way to get people to pay directly for social media. It's not like they're selling data because they're moustache twirling villains, they're doing it because it's the only business model anyone can make work for social media.
Further, it's interesting how Google is in exactly the same business at Facebook, yet receives a small fraction of public hatred for it.
Working at the company which is responsible for making election manipulation easier, facilitating murders and manipulating billions of people into giving up their private information is not ok, even if one actually works on some cool JavaScript library and not the evil bits themselves.
By this definition, anyone working for any platform that facilitates communication could be responsible for this unless they're policing literally every message, in which case they're grossly violating the privacy of users. This is a ridiculous standard to hold engineering staff against.
No it's not ridiculous. If Facebook is paying you to work on anything, they are getting more value out of you than your salary in their tracking endeavors.
Would you justify working for the Nazis if it was on open source libraries to better enable tracking people?
I've been visiting this website for almost 10 years.
Firstly, only in the past year have Google's or Facebook's reputations taken a turn for the worse. There are critics but there are many more cheerleaders, excuse-finders and whataboutists.
Secondly, this is not an HN bubble thing. Major publications in both the EU and US have written about the damage companies like Google and Facebook do to democracy, society and individuals.
And even if it were an HN bubble, it's about time HN woke up to the malignancy of these corporations.
I don’t work on anything I consider socially harmful, FWIW. Before you ask, I don’t think most people would consider what I do socially harmful either, if they knew what it was.
Whatever you're working on, you're helping Google maintain their dominance and continue their abuse, otherwise you can be pretty sure they wouldn't be paying you for it.
I seriously don't get why Google and Facebook got that brand name. 95% of engineers there are part of the pack and do mainly mindless jobs with very little impact. They are the mot "Sheep-ish" people I know, convinced that working for Google/Facebook give them something to brag at dinner parties.
The top 5 rockstars % (the ones they really want to attract with big money) are the ones taking all decisions.
??? You seem like you’re trying to find a fight here for reasons I cannot fathom. All I think of you as an employee of one of these companies is that you’re probably less well compensated than you could be.
Clearly it can't be that prestigious since they declined me :).
But seriously, while they probably are prestigious and cool right now, I do feel that there's enough hostility towards FB in the hacker community (and thus their supply of employees) that it might start forcing them to hire average-at-best engineers.
Anecdotally, I’m helping several friends, who are each exceptionally capable, employed at Facebook with new jobs. They reached out before this revelation, to their credit, though this threw fuel on the fire. I suspect Facebook will be known for having hired mediocre sell-outs a few years from now.
> I trade private equity stakes in technology companies. Former aerospace investment banker and before that, algorithmic equity derivatives trader.
You're also the one who submitted this article. Somehow I doubt you are actually helping friends at FB find new jobs.
I think it's much more likely that you are short FB. There's a lot of your type out there spreading articles like this as much as possible.
Maybe you should spend some time thinking about what contributions you investment banker types are making to society, if there is any. Good riddance...
I graduated six years ago, have worked at Microsoft and Dropbox, and anecdotally around a quarter of my friends at either of them wouldn't work at Facebook now. Parent comment is not obviously wrong, and you shouldn't assume bad faith.
Your last submission was titled "We're lucky Mark Zuckerberg is in charge" and around half your comment history is devoted to defending Facebook. At least if you're going to question someones motives, you should state yours.
Did you actually do a poll of your coworkers on this topic? :)
I think it's pretty reasonable to assume an investment banker isn't going to be much help to FB employees in finding a new job. Claiming that "Facebook will be known for having hired mediocre sell-outs a few years from now." is at best a baseless slander. How in the world is that not in bad faith?
Spreading misinformation to aid one's short position is a much worse case of bias, in my mind, than what I've said in defense of the company.
1. No, it's not reasonable to assume a technology-sector investor isn't going to be able to help techie friends find jobs.
2. The "slander" was supported by an anecdote. And this is a comment section -- opinionated statements will be found.
3. What might be closer to slander is the fantastic assumption that the other commenter is shilling for a short position in Facebook. That's a mind-boggling assumption to make on the flimsiest of evidence. Even setting aside that trying to promote your short in a random HN comment is laughable
4. You're curiously silent on your own bias, well noted by pantaloons
I'm not "curiously silent" on my own bias. What do you want me to say exactly? You're trying really hard to paint the same picture you're criticizing, namely that I'm some sort of shill.
I think the idea that everyone at FB who doesn't leave immediately is a "mediocre sell-out" is very far from the truth, and contrary to my own experience. Thus I'm suspicious of people who claim such.
There's already enough people on HN that will type out a borderline vitriolic four point list of why anyone who defends FB is wrong.
Why don't you look at JumpCrisscross' post history? This isn't the only anti-FB article he's submitted. Or are you a bit biased here? :) He has even commented on FB's stock price and predicted it will go down more in the future.
My bias is that I think there's another side to the story.
> I think the idea that everyone at FB who doesn't leave immediately is a "mediocre sell-out" is very far from the truth, and contrary to my own experience. Thus I'm suspicious of people who claim such.
You are so self-assured about your position that you immediately take the contrary assertion to be in _bad faith_? This seems silly to me, but perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree.
> I doubt you are actually helping friends at FB find new jobs
I did.
> it's much more likely that you are short FB
I don’t own a single share, nor am I short a single share, of any public company. I play in private companies’ equities and debts. That’s my day job, and it (along with super-safe bonds) are where I put my money. You may be confusing bankers with fund managers.
> you should spend some time thinking about what contributions you investment banker types are making to society
I think about this frequently. Many bankers waste their oxygen. But I don’t think I do.
At best, someone at Facebook might do something I strive to—help bring something new to the world that is good and wouldn’t have otherwise existed. At worst, I lose money. (Never fun, but by legal requirement I can only lose the money of those with very much of it.) At worst, Facebook prompts violent atrocities.
Hey what are the top challenges that Facebook offer? I dont work in tech and follow HN as I find the less technical posts interesting, and I can’t grasp why people want to work in many of these companies, like where is the buzz from working at Facebook now?
Downvotes but no responses... But seriously, its already built to a huge scale, its core product that people actually use (newsfeed / apps) havn’t changed in years(functionally - I’m sure the code base has..). is it the appeal of working on a product used by a significant proportion of the worlds population or just working at a huge company?
Downvotes because to be honest your response sounds either incredibly clueless, or incredibly arrogant/condescending (I wasn't the one who downvoted FWIW).
Here for a preview of something that is completely led by Facebook due to their scalability needs, and that most small/mid/large employers would never have the resources to fund, or the need to pursue: https://code.fb.com/open-source/linux/
All these projects have had major contributions during 2018, so not everything has been "figured out" yet.
Hi, thanks for the information, I did not mean to be condescending, definitely completely clueless! The interesting thing is building the tools that lets you run a platform the size of Facebook. Cool.
Generally it's FAANG (minus Amazon, plus some unicorns), for the reasons mentioned above: a very good balance of excellent compensation, talented peers to work with, and interesting work.
Joining these companies in the right teams is literally what makes it possible to have an exciting technical career AND the guarantee of being able to retire (or more generally, gain financial freedom) in your early/mid 40s, if one decides to stay on an individual contributor technical track. Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places. Always pay yourself first, with interesting works that keeps you marketable and with liquid cash to put into your retirement savings!
I would have jumped ship myself but, as I said in a few other previous comments, I had crazy luck to join a "very mediocre" startup who is growing a lot, so my appreciated equity prevents me from leaving, otherwise I'd for sure be in FB right now, since the offer they extended me was very generous and the specific work was something I wouldn't be able to do anywhere else.
A close friend of mine was hired for their network traffic team a few months ago. I spoke to him recently and he said: "boy, I thought I knew many things about handling large traffic at scale, but the things I'm seeing here are simply unprecedented". So, to all the people who say FB will go down in history for hiring mediocre people, please recognize how ridiculous your statements are.
> Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places.
For you, sure.
There are better ways I can think of spending my 20s and 30s than just setting up for retirement in my 40s, because when you're in your 40s, you're not in your 20s or 30s anymore.
I never said "than _just_ setting up for retirement". I am in my early 30s and early retirement has always been a major goal for me (grew up dirt poor and suffered because of it), and yet I don't feel I will ever regret working very hard during this past decade, since it allowed me to accomplish some things I'm pretty proud of:
- It allowed me to immigrate to the US and become a citizen in 8 years, coming from a poor European country, thanks to my engineering background I obtained by getting a BS + MS in computer engineering while other acquaintances were going down an easier path (e.g. "I don't want to waste my early 20s studying").
- It allowed me to live in San Francisco, an absolutely amazing city where I am having the time of my life, cultivating relationships with my diverse group of friends, exploring nature, ...
- It allowed me to work on very interesting projects and technical work.
- It allowed me to travel without worrying about budgeting, I take a month of international travel every year and in between jobs I took a 4 months break to explore more deeply SE Asia.
- All that hard work allowed me to be incredibly well compensated, and in my very early 30s my liquid net worth is in the 7 figures now (started from exactly 0 out of school), which gives me an immense freedom for the rest of my life.
So, I didn't "_just_ set up for retirement", and had I been in FAANG I would have likely done exactly the same (since that's what my friends working there do), just being paid more so right now my net worth would be even higher.
I'll certainly agree to disagree since my statement was perhaps too strong, but I just wanted to bring the perspective that one can work hard with an early retirement goal without giving up on the things that one could "otherwise enjoy" if pursuing a different goal.
Amazon is known to pay less and have a brutal work life balance.
Microsoft is known for paying less and being too big and too political to the point where making an impact is really difficult.
Mind you, this is on average: there are stellar teams at both of those companies that work on incredible stuff, and I would consider an honor and privilege to be in that situation, if the opportunity was given to me. Likewise, there are many teams in Google maintaining internal legacy applications with no challenges to solve, and you would have to pay me 7 figures to force me to work on those.
According to my experience, the average Amazon/Microsoft engineer would jump in a heartbeat to Google/Facebook, given the opportunity and assuming the logistics are feasible. The opposite is much less common. If you download the Blind app and start reading threads, you’ll quickly realize this trend yourself, and it matches what I’ve heard from acquaintances. Based on these observations, yes, I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers (relative obviously, they are still at a top tech company, so probably in the very top percentiles of the market).
Once again, this is on average, it depends on the specific team. There are insanely talented people at both MS and Amazon!
As far as you not getting accepted, not passing an interview there doesn’t mean you are not talented, but passing the interview very likely means you are talented, and for them this high false negative rate is good enough at this time.
I’ve been lucky enough to get offers at Google, Netflix and Facebook and the interviews were definitely hard, I can’t imagine a weak candidate passing those interviews by mistake, but I can very well imagine a smart candidate not passing them. Preparation is key: I played the game for a few months and prepared according to their interview style. It’s tedious and time consuming work.
>> Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places.
I don't apparently
> I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers
Well, I appreciate your honesty - when I tell most people about how I make ~$150k at one of those companies they usually claim they don't look down on me when I've always maintained they secretly do. Thanks for clearing it up.
I hope my life isn't forever ruined by my inability to get into FB/G/top startups out of undergrad. I prepared for years but never got past the onsites. Hopefully someday I'll be able to gain the respect of people like you.
The point is that these peoples in the article have leverage. Companies are competing for them not the other way around, so it's natural for them to consider ethics because it will not affect their standard of living.
If I have the choice between working for Palantir or Facebook, I choose Facebook. If have to choose to between Facebook and Apple I choose Apple. Whatever I choose I will still live extremely comfortably. And yes not all those companies have an equally bad impact on society.
In both of your examples it's fair to say that you (or CS grads in Denmark) probably don't have that kind of leverage, because this is not the Silicon Valley.
If you have to choose between working for FB at 150k$/year or public service for a third of that, then yes, choosing ethics has a big negative impacts on your life and it's hard to blame anyone for choosing FB.
Danish CS degrees are in high regard, and we’re all fairly good at English.
There are a lot of Danes in Silicon Valley, I mean, C++, C# and Ruby were made by Danes, so it’s not like Murica isn’t open for us.
You can make a lot of money in IT anywhere though. I manage 70 people, in a muniplacity that is well paid. I’ve been headhunted for much higher salaries throughout my career though, but I’ve always preferred public service.
The fact that I could be home at 15:00 on a Friday, with my kids picked up and the groceries done helped a lot in my younger years as well of course.
"Danish CS degrees are in high regard, and we’re all fairly good at English.
There are a lot of Danes in Silicon Valley, I mean, C++, C# and Ruby were made by Danes, so it’s not like Murica isn’t open for us."
That is my point. Many of them move to the SV because they can get better conditions (caused by more leverage) there than if they stay in Denmark because there is a magnitude more tech companies there than in DK.
I'm pretty sure they don't just move to avoid the rain :)
I'm coming to the conclusion, pretty much nowhere is inscrutable and free from scandal in one form or another.
However that doesn't give us a pass to be glib and just throw our hands up and say, it's all bad who cares, get money. Nothing positive comes from cynicism.
It's especially important to call this out when companies are talking about "making the world better" or otherwise making broad statements about them being a positive force in the world. It's incongruous between reality and their public relations, and that needs to be talked about.
I live in Brazil, where a Facebook company, was used in a plot to spread fake news to elect a far right president. They are really against doing anything that may affect their bottom line.
Can you elaborate? What was Facebook's role in this? Do you blame Facebook for not filtering out any potential fake news or did they take an active position in the matter?
The winner candidate created a well funded structure to disseminate fake news through WhatsApp. There were demands to limit the ability for a individual to spread fake news, but WhatsApp/Facebook had deaf ears.
Here are a bunch of links from reputable sourcers:
It was a Conspiracy Theory created by a journalist who wrote that non-media companies were sending fake news, with no evidence to show for it. Whatsapp, which is supposed to be E2E encrypted, is the most popular app in Brazil and the government wanted Facebook to censor information, but they said no. Obviously there were false messages about every candidate in the election, not just the one the above guy didn't like. There was even a deepfake video. I can't stress how dangerous it is to ask the government to classify what is true and what is not. This is totally different from the facebook case in America because there it involved ads. Here it was messages from individuals. But sadly the left was advocating for censorship while calling the others fascists.
> Are they worse than google or amazon? What about people who work for Coca-Cola? What about the people who make mobile games and loot boxes for Blizzard?
The recent Times article indicates that they are dirtier than Google and Apple, so yes.
When I was in college and looking for an intern job I declined to interview with RJ Reynolds and several local alcohol producers on moral grounds. I wouldn't have accepted a job there no matter what they offered me. So, I can understand why people wouldn't want to work for a company and believe that there are people in the world that won't compromise their morals for a paycheck.
I still like Facebook, but I get all the hate. It is an annoying product and can be addictive. And it used to be less annoying, more about persons and not products, and they don't care about not being addictive. They seems to be trying to cope with thinks like fake news, though. It is part of being a totally new product.
Working at Netflix, Apple, Salesforce, Oracle, or Microsoft seems to be a category more ethical than Facebook/Google, wouldn't you say? Isn't that a good place to start? At worst, those companies are mainly just screwing over other companies (though depends on if Netflix is up to something behind the scenes)
I’ve been in public service for decades, so I know a thing or two about choosing idealism over money
Even here, different people in different situations might see this as either choosing idealism over money or the opposite.
I hear the Danish public service is good. Here though (ireland) the public service has a name for meaningless jobs with good conditions. This may be a self fullfiling prophecy.
Sometimes the differences can get abstract.
I watched an interview while back with coalition soldiers and mercenaries. Soldiers are generally seen as self sacrificing patriots. Mercenaries as greedy assholes. But, both are being paid and they do the same job in the same war and take orders from the same place.
Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to perspective.
They aren't worse. They are different. People want to work on products they relate to, especially when they are young and without dependents. Young people don't relate to facebook anymore, but they relate to google and amazon because they use those services in their home life and career life.
There are plenty of ethical places to work. You just need to not look only at the richest companies with the most generous compensation, because they tend to be the ones that aren't.
It's a simple question you have to ask yourself. Do you value money more than your principles?
It is their personal moral decision, you can't make it for them. I encourage everybody to try to align their values with their work. Capitalism is wrong that we are all just replaceable cogs that can be put to work on any capitalist's dreams.
> Like we recently ordered a system for abused children journals. A nationwide bidding landing in a 120 million danish or deal, for a piece of software that 30 municipalities build an equivalent of on their own for 2 million danish kr a few years back.
Can you give the name of this company / case? I can't find anything in English news of Denmark.
The system that does the same thing DUBU does today, and the next DUBU will, good enough is called sbsys.
It’s not a secret, the 120 million might be 128 million though, but it’s not completely unreasonable for what it’s meant to do, the politics involved and so on. It’s just hilarious that communal co-ownership of software did it for 2 million. I mean you could argue that it’s illustrating how silly enterprise software companies are in general, but it is what it is.
I’d say the same thing for enterprise companies though. It’s not like they bank that money.
They use it on project management, sales management, key account management, four layers of testing setup that still lets bugs slip into production, and a whole lot of other useless stuff.
I mean, the budget is transparent, they spend less than 20% on actual development and makes less than 10% out as profits, so that’s 70% inefficiency, and they only won the contracts because all the big companies are like that.
You’re not wrong though, turning it political isn’t really great for building software. My point is just that a big company is almost as political as the public sector, and sometimes they are less adaptive because their political leadership and vision changes slower and has smaller range.
The equivalent system sbsys was also build by private sector developers you know, but here the political side handled the project management and codebase leadership, and apparently we’re just a lot better at that.
Oh yeah, companies of substantial size have large/meaningless overheads too. That's the unfortunate consequence of having a lot of people work together with varying opinions/motivations.
They also have to spend a lot on warm bodies/lobbying to get those contracts in the first place.
I'm not letting the enterprise providers off the hook. Just pointing out (as you note) that true responsibility lies with the project managers. Ineffectual project managers mean overblown budgets and undercooked results.
> You can't blame them - they're just acting on their natural capitalist instinct to maximize their return to shareholders.
Yeah don't blame the exploiter, blame the victim!
I am sickened by this philosophy. Why do we let people get away with doing horrible things because "they're just doing their job". This sort of thinking breeds more immoral actions that are easily excused.
If you can link the fall of democracy to misinformation being spread on their platform, genocide and mob murders, yes I’d say not all tech companies are that bad.
I think poor education, stagnation of living standards and rising inequality is a lot worse in that area than Facebook.
Granted, I think angrymob-media would be a much more fitting description than social-media, but it’s not like humanity wasn’t perfectly capable of making really shitty decisions long before the internet.
yes, they are worse than all those. Perhaps loot box companies are close and only less so because of current scale and not because of less sinister intent.
Google is not fbook, (not that I am a fan of big G - it's evil in other ways more so than fbook) -
Where is ethical in my mind is more shades of grey rather than place A is and Place B is not..
I think many people do not understand the immense power the fbook wields to truly get how damaging it is and can be. Some of us may not get sucked in by our evolving news feed, but that does not mean that it is not indeed sucking people in and keeping them hooked for it's benefit and to the detriment of other's lives.
there are so many ethical things you can use your brain on. first of all, you can start by not investing your talent/intelligence on advertisement. everybody knows ads are bad and they make making people suffer in many ways. we know so well that facebook, google et.al have no good intentions for the planet and are harvesting massive profits. ultra capitalist, maybe? we have many choices as humans, we can choose to organize, work for honest people and take a big shit on evil companies destroying our environment!
Where is it ethical to work?
I mean, I’ve been in public service for decades, so I know a thing or two about choosing idealism over money, but that’s not for everyone and I frankly don’t think Facebook is really that more evil than around 90% of the hundreds of software companies we deal with.
Like we recently ordered a system for abused children journals. A nationwide bidding landing in a 120 million danish or deal, for a piece of software that 30 municipalities build an equivalent of on their own for 2 million danish kr a few years back.
So some company is making 118 million because the world is rotten. That company is the most popular tech destination for newly educated CS grads in my country by the way.