[zippzom]

Personal anecdote: I had a job offer from Facebook and a couple other big tech companies. The Facebook offer was substantially better fiscally than the other ones and it was clear to me that they were having trouble hiring. Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck.

However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job.

[Panini_Jones]

> Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck.

* Google got rid of the cliff too. * The $75K sign-on bonus is nothing new. These are not signals that we're having trouble hiring now.

> However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the job.

Honestly, working at FB as a SWE is awesome. Like beyond awesome. If impressing other people is what you're optimizing for, you do you, but just know that you're missing out big time.

[blub]

A timely commit, because at this rate Fb will soon be just as cool to work for as big tobacco and bragging about all the awesome "cancer-causing" projects will be kinda awkward.

[pertymcpert]

They said it was also ethical concerns, so not just about impressing other people. If you don’t have ethical doubts, you do you, but some companies have beyond awesome ethical standards.

[webspiderus]

how do you feel about still having to use outlook because of concerns about a competitor that's not even doing social anymore? I've read FB SWEs be aghast about people uploading whiteboard photos to Google Photos to be searchable later, paranoid about Larry and Sergey poring over all the data while twirling their evil mustache.

Also, if impressing other people is not what you're optimizing for then you might not have a great trajectory at a company that's obsessed with i m p a c t and hallucinating metrics to measure it.

Some parts of working at FB as a SWE are awesome, some aren't, everyone's mileage certainly varies.

[mpeg]

Kudos for sticking up for what you believe in, but if I was you I would have taken the job, that kind of money that early in your career can shape your future massively.

I'm fairly senior and I would still do some really unethical stuff for a $75k signing bonus.