Their recruiters reach out to me about 4 times a year. I will say that some of the challenges and scale of the problems Facebook is solving really can't be found at other companies. You're doing data analytics, product design, infrastructure engineering, dev ops, security and software engineering at a scale that's pretty much never been done before. Also, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google generally define frameworks that other companies use. Think about products like Angular (Google), Bootstrap (Twitter), ReactNative/ReactJS (Facebook) — If you want to work on a project of that scale, there aren't that many options for companies to work for. I always tell my buddy who works at Turner — Your company is never going to be better than Facebook when all of the tools you use are built by Facebook. I also hear that compensation and benefits are really good, plus their stock value is going up faster than other companies in the market. If you live in the Bay Area, you need that equity boost to move up the socioeconomic ladder.
I probably won't ever work at Facebook (I have all of their services blocked in my host file and I've deleted my account and they aren't working on anything interesting to me) but I'm just trying play devils advocate and paint a picture of why someone would choose to work there.
Interesting bit is that, I wanted to counter the Stock price argument but after checking current trend it’s back to former values from last year.
Well thought out arguments. cheers!
I agree with everything except the projects. It is true that Google Amazon and Facebook have projects that are exclusive. But there are lots of other interesting and widely used projects out there. Redis, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Rust, Firefox, Python, VueJS, Linux, Apache Hive, Hadoop, etc. If you care about projects that involve the largest number of servers, you need to work for one of those companies. But if you care about your code being used by a huge number of people, there are lots of other interesting things out there.
This is just an anecdote but being a PhD student at a well-known university in CS I often hear from undergrads (via teaching) what they think about companies/where they go for internships.
Observationally, ethics does not even enter the equation. Especially career-driven students from backgrounds where name-brand prestige is important just want such a name-brand on their CV.
Not that faculty are any better given how many academics effectively sign away their lab to FB through 'collaborations'. All they see is resources to use, name-brand recognition, a big personal pay-check, and publicity for their work.
What I find most mystifying is that this is a literal non-topic. At best someone may forward a blogpost about a security leak and make a snarky comment, but I have never witnessed any political discussion.
I'd argue that top bay area tech companies are recruiting CS degree holders at higher rates than bootcamp self taught types. It may be harder for self taught types to get past the HR recruiting filter so they settle for second tier companies that are more ethical.
Also someone grinding through a rigorous CS degree might want the biggest ROI vs a self taught type that is happy to take what they can get without and still get paid well without the debt of a CS degree.
I don't think we can draw any conclusions and to state the obvious, correlation =/ causation.
And mine as well, and anecdotal for sure. But, if there's something to it, I'm not sure how to account for it. Though one thing comes to mind.
Some time ago, a study was performed in my home country to look into possible correlations between academic performance and work performance among doctors. As it turned out, the best performing doctors were not those with top grades, at least not before entering medical school.
Those who did best had left high school with adequate grades, but not good enough to get into medical school. Rather, they had spent time and effort with supplementary studies to get their grades up to the level where they could apply for medical school.
The possible explanation that was presented was that some of those who had great grades straight out of school simply chose to become doctors because of the promise of prestige and remuneration. Those who didn't, but still fought their way into medical school, however, had a calling beyond money and status.
Do you ever have (and use) opportunities to bring up the ethical aspects? It’s becoming a more prominent thing for people in the industry, and it makes sense to discuss before people leave academia. I know it’s not your problem to solve, but I think if the university isn’t talking about the ethical considerations it’s tacitly endorsing the ‘technology is value-neutral’ philosophy that’s begun to get some pushback.
I have with friends, but with undergraduates this is a bit more difficult.
An undergrad tells me they are going to FB for an internship. I am not their tutor or mentor beyond teaching. They have gone through stress and trouble for their internship, and it's too late to get something else for the year.
The only thing I can do in this instance (where there is no chance at all they would give up their internship to do nothing) is make them feel bad about it. Uncomfortable situation.
Honestly, I think the department should step up and disinvite FB from campus events and not allow them to advertise. It should also hold courses on ethical impact of technology and discuss a few cases of misuse.
At my German university that was a topic that regularly came up around internships, job fairs, and among those currently graduating and looking for jobs, with a wide range of opinions.
I feel like it's difficult to bring it up. What are you going to do... tell your friends/students their next job is at an unethical company?
Also, people generally believe it's quite possible to work on good things in a company that also does bad things. (And many of them indeed will.) So it's not the most compelling argument that you shouldn't work with X/Y/Z because they did bad thing W.
> What are you going to do... tell your friends/students
mentors, professors and friends can have a lot of influence which (imo) could be a moral and ethical obligation one may like to exercise? If you were receiving advise or learning as a junior and looking for direction from a mentor (or any person you feel you can learn from and also trust), wouldn't you appreciate hearing their personal opinion on a subject, and how they arrived at their believes?
> Also, people generally believe it's quite possible to work on good things in a company that also does bad things. (And many of them indeed will.) So it's not the most compelling argument that you shouldn't work with X/Y/Z because they did bad thing W.
it's difficult if not impossible to convince somebody that a company they just passed their 1st interview with, to refuse because of ethics. Especially if they never had a job they might say I'll do it anyway and see for myself, I can still bail if it's that bad.
But employees already working there have more power by changing things from within. I think this is why point above is valid because everyone has mentors so speaking up (without judgement) is key. Only by changing the inside it's possible to have a dialogue about impact on environment/society and only by talking about it will we eventually be able to abolish the practice of labeling any such discussion as anti-profit or social-justice seeking. It does affect the long-term image and how the company/brand will be perceived in the long run.
This is particularly important for young professionals! It's super important for fresh graduates, who enrolled in CS/CompEng because of how enthusiastic they are about technology to hear this stuff!
Why? Because, while we're wondering whether or not ethics is even something that we should bring up in a discussion like this, Facebook has PR and recruiting departments full of smart people who are actively working on getting these folks on board.
And when you've spent the last four years of your life studying a highly-competitive field, in which there's barely any room for the study of philosophy, ethics and humanities, it's pretty hard to figure out this stuff on your own.
So damn right tell friends/students their next job is at an unethical company. I mentor interns every year, and whenever one of them asks me about companies like Facebook or Google, I absolutely tell them that I would never work there. I tell their recruiters the same thing. I tell my friends from outside the tech world the same thing.
> Also, people generally believe it's quite possible to work on good things in a company that also does bad things.
The problem isn't that you can't do good things, the problem is that these companies use them to whatabout the media away from the bad things they do. You think Facebook worked on those "Mark yourself as safe" thing out of the goodness of their heart? As if it brings them any kind of money? No -- they do it to capture a little bit more of their attention, and to point out to any reporter that questions their morale that they're totally on the Light Side of the Force, just look at how many users rely on us to let their friends know they're fine.
The Socratic method might be a viable option - ask questions. Ask if they have concerns. Ask where their hard-stop lines are. Be friendly about it - attacks don’t help things but conversations can, even if it doesn’t look like it in the moment. Bringing the topic up and making it something people talk about will actually start to help.
I refused a job interview with them for ethical reasons, but I'm not blamming people accepting. Morality is an abitrary line. My phone is probably made by slaves, my clothes by children and my bank account probably invest in arms companies.
It's good if one can take the opportunity to take a stand. But let's not pretend we are parangon because we do.
Given the widespread apologism and hand waving around Google, Facebook and others here this is hardly surprising. Decision makers shoulder the blame but what we are seeing from these revelations is rank and file tech folks are 'eager' and willing enablers.
Ethics is reduced to meaningless posturing if whenever it comes to action people have a litany of excuses on hand. In the case of surveillance whether its government or private its individuals empowering themselves at the cost of others not particularly burdened by the wider social ramifications.
It's a bit tragic that its only when without power that people talk of ethics and even with little power it seems self interest always rules. And discussions become pointless as it becomes impossible to tell how many will do differently.
It depends. If you have a variety of employment options, it is easy to follow you “conscience”. When you have fewer options and more personal responsibilities (private school tuition, piano lessons, etc), you start to lose the luxury of working for less pay.
After their internal memos about valuing "connecting people" over anything else (like safety) leaked[1], some of the comments by Facebook employees were almost cult-like[2]:
> Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company
> How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes Facebook great?
In particular, this included comments about wanting a loyalty test "screen" in their hiring process:
> Although we all subconsciously look for signal on integrity in interviews, should we consider whether this needs to be formalized in the interview process?
> This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity. We are probably focusing on the intelligence part and getting smart people here who lack a moral compass and loyalty.
That last one really drives me nuts. Isn't having a moral compass almost the opposite of loyalty (at least in cases where both are involved)? Maybe not 100% opposites, but enough that it would seem they don't belong together like that...
It's interesting that they use the word "integrity", when I would consider integrity standing up against your employer (if they are doing something bad). They seem to be conflating "integrity" and "loyalty".
This would seem to make the most sense, as it's the same line of thinking around why only 1 out of thousands at the NSA would be a whisteblower (see: Snowden); despite the shady shit that they were (and probably still are) undertaking.
Also, non-disclosure agreements really fuck people in the overall scheme of things. If you worked for Facebook and came out tomorrow showing some really shady shit that they were doing, it's conceivable that no other company would ever want to hire you. (I think the term is "black-balled" but not sure if it's still in use, today?)
(Whistleblower laws only protect government workers and do not affect the commercial industry. Even then, the whistleblower laws only go so far...)
So, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I probably won't ever work at Facebook (I have all of their services blocked in my host file and I've deleted my account and they aren't working on anything interesting to me) but I'm just trying play devils advocate and paint a picture of why someone would choose to work there.