[Andre607]

I know we have lots of FB employees at HN.

I would be genuinely curious to hear, via throwaway accounts if need be, about how FB staff rationalise things like this happening.

Do you shrug it off as not a big deal in the long run? As FB still doing a net amount of good versus what you perceive as isolated incidents like this? I'm just in good faith trying to figure out how people willingly work and continue to work for outfits that repeatedly engage in behaviour such as this. I know there are lots of speculative reasons we can put forward, but I think we have a great opportunity here in our community to have first-hand input.

[beatgammit]

I'm in a similar boat.

I worked with a group at Facebook, and I almost refused to take the project on. I'm the type that has deleted me Facebook and uses a blocker to stop their tracking, and when I showed up to work with the team, there were surprised that I didn't have an account.

From what I could tell, the teams are fairly isolated and thus don't see the forest for the trees. When someone points to an article like this, it seems that they just shrug it off and think the author probably got it wrong because it doesn't seem that way from the inside (again, they only work in isolated teams, but still think they have enough of an insider's perspective to discount it). Even huge companies we know now as bad had a ton of employees, like Enron.

I would really like the perspective of someone "on the inside". Facebook is one of the companies I trust the least with my data, yet they have so much talent that I can't help but wonder how they convinced them to work there (is it just the money?).

[po7w0toqweug]

Not a employee, and I like my data to be safe and not exploited as much as anyone. But, let me try to take a swing at this.

First, obviously there is the money factor, you may choose to ignore it but it is a big factor for many.

Second, the tech is truly state of the art and it is good experience/skill to have/pickup.

Third, I'd say almost everyone passing judgement about people taking up such jobs also judge having such jobs on your resume as a positive. That drives one's value as a candidate up even post such a job. If people care so much why don't they provide an incentive, would you hire someone who turned down such a job compared to someone who gained experience in such a job? No one ever asked me - so which jobs offers did you discard and why, during any interview.

Fourth, almost every big company has its scandals, now how does one decide which ideal is worth giving up job offer for, is big financial ok? is big pharma ok? is big tech ok? is big anything ok? is working on open source in such a big something ok, say open source software others use at their jobs? is a start up using questionable practices to get to the next level ok? define what's ok according to you, and why do you expect that would be the same for everyone else.

[jka]

Which technology at Facebook is state of the art?

I'd wager that for any area you pick - they probably have a lot of high-end technology relating to image/video storage, data replication, machine learning, and network-layer infrastructure - there are other more morally and ethically sound places where engineers could learn and apply that same knowledge.

We're already reaching the point where working for toxic companies is considered a negative during resume review; I won't provide any such examples here but the bay area tech scene is full of examples of environments where being a former employee at a company can at least warrant raised eyebrows.

Scandals may occur; what matters is how the organization responds to them. And yes it's certainly acceptable to leave an organization if you're not happy with the way it has handled such situations.

The only point I find difficult to disagree with in your comment is the monetary motivation.

[po7w0toqweug]

>Which technology at Facebook is state of the art?

Say data at scale, petabytes of data for example. I'd be curious to know if you can name all companies that have this scale of data and are morally acceptable to you. :) Google? Amazon?

> Scandals may occur; what matters is how the organization responds to them. And yes it's certainly acceptable to leave an organization if you're not happy with the way it has handled such situations.

While I can see your point of view, as an engineer you can find other opportunities that may not be as lucrative but are comparably still good. But, I also find it hard that its the engineers that get this judgement regularly on HN while you give users and shareholders a free pass. A scandal surfaces, repeatedly, users and shareholders don't care, nothing changes and for some reason that's ok while engineers are expected to be the moral compass. Wonder how many judging here use instagram/whatsapp/fb and/or own stock in such companies, perhaps even have family and friends that continue to use these services but somehow, I guess, its easier to judge strangers and expect them to behave a certain way instead.

[jka]

For me personally, none of the 'really' major tech companies are; I don't desperately enough need to work on the very cutting edge to trade-off against morality. But I'm not innocent either, most actions have (ideally unintended, and later rectified) negative externalities.

It'd be an interesting discussion to have with someone who feels like they really need to stay at the very peak of private data accumulation - because in my view those actions are potentially very detrimental to wider society, certainly depending on the culture. I'd extend more respect to Google than the others from what I've seen, although opinions may vary elsewhere.

Regarding scandals and reactions - users and shareholders can and do care, and they vote with their feet, or wallets, or ideally both.

The battlefield in these cases is over how much truth about the scandal and resolution are published. A good organization will generally tend towards more transparency in both, while perhaps keeping a few cards close so that they can react to any potential retaliation (such is the world of rapid fake news that we live in).

Edit: s/data accumulation/private data accumulation/

[JohnFen]

> would you hire someone who turned down such a job compared to someone who gained experience in such a job?

Yes, I would. At this point, willing taking a job at Facebook is a bit of a red flag about the potential employee's ethics.

[analogmemory]

From personal conversations with tech folk who don’t work at Facebook, I’d say it’s about the money. Most people say they don’t want to work there, but if the money was fuck-you good, they wouldn’t say no

[effbee]

(throwaway) I started at FB out of college relatively recently and wasn't there for very long, so I can't speak for longer-term/more senior employees but hopefully this is a bit helpful. I myself joined because I needed a job, the money was amazing, and I wanted to be in the Bay Area. When I went in, there were already questions about data privacy/elections, but this was still before Cambridge Analytica and the subsequent weekly bad news that's gone on for a year now. Personally I've never been a big FB user and wasn't that enthusiastic going in, but a) the money and b) the scale of their data/infrastructure/data infrastructure was attractive.

My impression was that many employees hold a self-contradictory view about the extent of their influence at the company. When asked about their jobs, they tell you that they're working hard on fixing the problem and making impact ("where better to fix it than from inside?"). But when confronted w/stories like Onavo, they get defensive because "it's a big company, I had no way of knowing." Which is fair, honestly; the problem is that they think they can fix anything in the first place. Part of the problem is that FB advertises itself internally as being super transparent but it isn't at all. (This applies mostly to product/data+ML people. The infra folks I worked with for the most part just want to make their money and go home.)

A lot of longtime employees joined when FB was good and amazing in the media, and it's hard for them to accept that it's really gone in a bad direction. A lot of younger ones join for the money, and/or because they're coming from FB's massive, culty college intern pipelines (especially if you come out of FBU) and confuse being dazzled by the perks with actually believing in the mission. The money is big for everyone (I was there for part of the long 2018 stretch where the stock price just fell and fell, and you could feel people getting antsy), and the defensiveness that comes from constantly seeing negative news is another part. Lots of blame thrown around internally (leakers, leadership, bad eng practices) but little responsibility; lots of sunk cost fallacy-ish thinking ("we all took jobs here for a reason, we can't just give up and leave").

[Andre607]

Thank you for taking the time to respond; this is insightful and informative.

[hsbaut76]

Thank you

[vjeux]

It’s really hard as a Facebook employee to engage in those topics. The probability of your comment to hit the front page of the New York times is very high. There are a lot of pending litigation so you’re also likely to be involved in those, which is the last thing you want as an engineer.

[untog]

When have HN comments been featured in an NYT article? I'd say they'd be very hesitant to do that because there's no way to verify anyone is who they say they are, which is usually a requirement.