[lbacaj]

I know a lot of people make their money on here from these companies. Heck, I interviewed at one of them twice. But my gut says these two are no longer good companies to work for. If you need the money desperately then do what you need to do, but if you can afford to take a role somewhere else you should. Anywhere else is better than these two right now.

I also recognize that they didn’t start the way they are now. Back when they started they represented the very best of our industry and they lured in young ambitious people with the promise of changing the world for the better. They did do that for a little while. The engineering capabilities were and still are world class, they are beacons our industry for that.

But unfortunately a lot has changed. They are absolutely monopolies now, everything in those slides is true. I know because I worked at a startup that relied on both of those companies for its growth. They abused us in the beginning, threatened us with bans and gave us strikes for arbitrary reasons, and then treated us like gold as we spent a lot more with them. On top of how they treat “partners” they now do far more damage to the fabric of society than they add value to it. Again, I recognize that at some point it wasn’t that way and without them tech wouldn’t be what it is now, but they are no longer that and we should all see it for what it is.

I don’t have a solution on how to fix this. I think it’s the business model that’s acidic and broken. I think only disruption can fix this but it’s unclear when and if that will come.

[tayo42]

I feel kind of ridiculous for having this view point, but I have co workers who keep advocating for using facebook open source stuff. I kind of want to push back on these suggestions, not really for anything technical, I just no longer think facebook or google are even neutral companies. Something just doesn't really feel right about continuing to use facebook open source stuff. Maybe if it was developed by facebook but run by some neutral organization now would be fine. But having the company all over it doesn't feel right.

I think a lot of people are just into solving tech problems without considering much else.

There's a large part of open source that seems to just exist for large corporations and solving corporate problems for free.

[wyldfire]

> advocating for using facebook open source stuff.

IMO truly Open Source software that comes out of FB and GOOG are the silver lining - the output from them that you should consume guilt-free.

For a while IIRC FB had some onerous terms levied on their Open Source repos, I'm not sure if that's changed. But if they have sane licenses, we should embrace this work (while still rejecting their misdeeds).

[tayo42]

I think there's potential for consequences just blindly using the stuff they give away. Its advertising for them. "The best and most innovative work here, look what they do!". Now Facebook is in all of our web frontends now with react, google is in all of our data centers with Kubernetes. Can you even be innovative and get traction anymore without corporate backing? I'm skeptical a project like Linux could take off in our current computing world. Sorry a little ranty but I don't see why we need to keep giving these companies even more share of the tech world, even if they give it away for free.

[fallingknife]

That's sort of a ridiculous standard. What counts as "corporate backing?" The Intel/AMD chips in your servers? AWS/GCP/Azure that hosts them? The cable companies that own the fiber your data moves over? Businesses don't, and never have, existed in a vacuum. Why draw the line at frameworks like React?

[tayo42]

IDK why you think im drawing the line at frameworks? I'm just highlighting it in this situation. I cant rant about everything negative thing corporations do, Ill never be done. But those examples aren't remotely the same. Intel and AMD is a healthy rivalry to have, for awhile AMD wasn't even competitive. Those companies arent trying to reach into every segment of the world. Cable company monopolies have been beat to death, and are an obvious problem so Im unsure why your even bringing it up? But comcast isn't even comparable to the reach google or facebook has. Something like 1/3 of the world in on facebook, you really want to compare that to American cable companies?

[tarsinge]

And amazingly it is self inflicted by peer pressure, because it’s absolutely possible to build great things without React or Kubernetes. I don’t care because I have my own company now (and yet it’s an everyday to educate both clients and junior devs), but if I were still mainly a dev I would seriously hurt my resume. I don’t know if it’s conscious or not on their part, but the tech marketing achievement is both impressive and disappointing.

[znpy]

I'm starting to feel that "Open Soruce" is somehow beginning to become a cancer. We should really aim for Free Software, not just "Open Source".

Grafana chose to relicense as Affero GPL, whereas Elastic has been kinda doomed by its own homemade license.

We'll see, I guess?

[ItsMonkk]

pg has a great article on AirBnB bootstrapping their business by doing things that don't scale. He says that they would go door to door and early on would take pictures of the rooms so that their on-boarding was easier. What I have come to realize is that all businesses do things that don't scale, and not just during the bootstrap process.

Open Source software scales perfectly, and therefore is worthless.

The naive public view of Google is that they are a Search company. The HN take is that Google is not a Search company, they are what they make their money in, which is Advertising. My claim in this comment is a company is whatever they do that doesn't scale. Google is a tracking company. They use that tracking to produce better search results, which they monetize by selling advertising.

It's the tracking that doesn't scale well. And Google knows this, and that's why their Search results punish slow loading pages. They want their tracker(which loads slowly) to be the only tracker. If all sites puts 25 different trackers all with their different stacks on a website, they would lose their 'doesn't scale' property. They then push this even further, by taking control of your browser with Chrome and your device with Android, which also doesn't scale. The market will never allow 100 browsers or 100 mobile operating systems. Developers Developers Developers after all.

So we can see that every company is what the things they do that don't scale. Once they have that, they constrain it and hold it within their walled garden, and from there they can bring in Open Source software. In essence Open Source Software allows the area of the garden to grow. Once OSS grows to being able to do anything that it can possibly do, we will still be constrained to the things that don't scale. These things will allow the companies to enforce monopoly rents within their walled gardens.

[lrvick]

Facebook and Google contribute heavily to the Linux kernel. Much of the security work in the kernel is a direct result of them paying people to work on it. Good code should not be rejected because evil companies happened to be one of the financial backers.

To be clear, I hate both companies and avoid their proprietary offerings at almost all costs but when they happen to do something not evil, even for selfish reasons like good PR, I take it. I will also still be sure and remind everyone they are still evil every chance I get.

I hate Microsoft too but if I was in a poor country with malaria I would be thankful for the help from their founder.

[open-source-ux]

"I kind of want to push back on these suggestions..."

What about programming languages? Go is open source and has benefitted enormously from support and funding from Google. That association has helped the language grow and attract developers. In fact, new(ish) languages with large corporate benefactors generally thrive compared to open source languages that have to scrape funding together piecemeal from different sources.

I think the popularity of some programming languages is buoyed by corporate sponsorship or the association with a company. This is not a bad thing, it just means the promise in other languages is harder to discern because they do not enjoy the same financial support, and thus struggle to attract new developers.

(I recently posted a Ask HN on this very topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27043717)

[genocidicbunny]

I'm in a similar position. There are several Google and FB open source projects that not only some of my co workers have advocated for, but that I would myself actually like to make some use of.

On the one hand, I think consuming their truly open source projects is a little bit of sticking it to the man -- you're getting for free something they spent money and time on.

But on the other hand, mindshare is a thing, and by using their products, even if truly open source, I am helping increase it.

For my own purposes, I have not used the Google or FB heritage of a given open source project to be an automatic disqualifier, but it is definitely a negative. If there are technically-comparable alternatives, I tend to lean towards those.

[taffronaut]

Another route is to lobby those projects to adopt an open governance model. This effectively puts the management of the project at arm's length from the corporate parent. It's a trade-off for them to get more engagement vs rescinding control. There are a number of hosting organisations that take this kind of thing on: Linux Foundation, Linaro, Eclipse.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"Anywhere else is better than these two right now."

Even SEO.

I used to think companies like DoubleClick and later SEO people like this Twitter author were the underbelly of the web. Then Google acquired DoubleClick. In case anyone had doubts about Google.

But what of SEO.

Seems to me they are just an unpleasant side effect.

This is a racket that will end one day. And not a day too soon.

[DistressedDrone]

> If you need the money desperately then do what you need to do, but if you can afford to take a role somewhere else you should.

I would never work for Google or Facebook (and they wouldn't hire me), but it's not fair to expect normal people to choose between their financial needs and an abstract notion of the greater good.

I find this idea puts the pressure on the individual for systemic problems. I am not responsible for what my employer does outside of my own output, and if I had a family to feed I would say: all my financial needs are desperate, fix your own damn world.

[JKCalhoun]

> but it's not fair to expect normal people to choose between their financial needs and an abstract notion of the greater good.

Truly, I have a more optimistic view of normal people.

And we're not talking about choosing to work for Google, or, sorry, no food on the table tonight.

[truth_]

Upper middle class people from high GDP countries do have the choice. There are many opportunities where a talented individual will make more than enough.

But what about people from countries like India? Talented people will jump in in a heartbeat. And I have never ever known any person who has turned down Google or Facebook's offer with US/EU posting. Even people coming from _very_ privileged families.

Knowing India, this is justified to me.

[tayo42]

Anything you do contributes to what your employer does, other wise what are you doing at work. Especially in a tech company. We absolutely should put pressure on these employees of companies. People working at google, facebook etc are not barely getting by. Theyre people fought over, being paid enormous amount of money.

[blacktriangle]

We're not talking about people who have no other choice here, we're talking about software engineers. We are the most in-demand, remote friendly profession on the planet right now. The choice isn't between Facebook and starvation for us, the choice is between netting $250,000/yr at a very questionable company or $100,000/yr anywhere else.

[lwansbrough]

If working for Facebook or Google is an option for you, you are not at risk of not meeting your financial needs.

> I find this idea puts the pressure on the individual for systemic problems.

Systemic problems don’t exist: they are the problems of individuals and their interactions observed at scale. Your next sentence highlights why systemic problems exist at all: deferral of responsibility.

[sahila]

With this attitude, why would anyone look to better the world?

[lrvick]

I expect normal people with ethics to reject employers that lack them.

I for one would sooner give up on technology and be a poor farmer than work for Facebook or Google.

They are undoubtedly a net negative in the world and I don't see how any ethical person could die with pride having made them bigger for money.

[blacktriangle]

Represented the best of our industry? Google maybe, but Facebook has always been sketchy.

[khazhoux]

You mixing two different messages together: 1) don't be employed by these companies, and 2) don't "partner" with these companies.

Certainly, any company who relies on these giants needs to understand that they're at the giant's mercy.

> I worked at a startup that relied on both of those companies for its growth

[znpy]

    I also recognize that they didn’t start the way they are
    now. Back when they started they represented the very
    best of our industry and they lured in young ambitious
    people with the promise of changing the world for the 
    better. 
    [zip]
    But unfortunately a lot has changed.

So what do we learn from this? Maybe we should learn that tech should be judged on the basis of what it can be used for, including nefarious uses, and not only for past or current intents of the developers.

[genocidicbunny]

I would like to see past work history at either of these companies (Facebook and Google) be something that is critiqued and questioned during hiring. Being a past employee of Google or Facebook should make it harder for you to find another job, unless you can justify your participation in a monopolistic, damaging-to-society company. "The money was good" should not be a valid justification unless you were seriously pressed for money and other opportunities.

[jclulow]

Alternatively, you could view as a positive signal their decision to leave and find new less ethically compromised opportunities at their own pace. I don't really understand how people choose to go work at these companies, but I appreciate when those who are already there realise they don't understand either.

[genocidicbunny]

Any time I take issue with someone's past employment at a company, I never hold that against them without an opportunity for them to address it. Their tenure at these companies is also a major factor in how I view it. Someone that started in the late 2010's and only stayed for a few months is going to mostly get a pass. Someone that joined in 2011 and stayed around for 7 years is going to get a lot more than a cursory glance.

That is, if you worked at Google or FB before, I will definitely ask about your time there, and what led you to leave. This is not necessarily something I would do for some other XYZ Software Co. on your resume.

[0xy]

"The money is good" isn't an excuse in any case because Google is no longer paying top of market, and Facebook is getting outbid by several other companies with better reputations on privacy and security.

Choosing to take less money by working at Google is an ego play. It's not the only place with scaling challenges, good working environment and high pay. There are dozens of others.

[pmoriarty]

"Being a past employee of Google or Facebook should make it harder for you to find another job, unless you can justify your participation in a monopolistic, damaging-to-society company."

That would be lovely, but unfortunately 99% of people probably don't care.. especially if they themselves are owners of capitalist corporations (who are probably advertising their own products and services on Google and Facebook).

[googleryouhate]

This Twitter thread is all about why you shouldn't spend your marketing dollars on Google and Facebook. And yet here you are railing against people working at Google and Facebook. Why?

If engineers at Facebook or Google decide to work somewhere else, they'll just hire more. There's an endless supply of people who want to make a buck. But if the marketing dollars disappear, these companies go under.

So why are you railing on the people working at these companies, instead of all the entrepreneurs around here sending ad dollars their way?

[sizzle]

Why not attack from both ends? It isn’t mutually exclusive and talented software engineers are vacuumed up by these mega corps so having the cream of the crop devs leave will pressure mega Corp to fix things and make it a place these employees are demanding it be for them to stay.

You think Google is gonna start hiring mediocre talent rather than bend over backwards to stop hemorrhaging their loss of world class talent.

This is an effective strategy in forcing the hand of a mega Corp at scale.

[googleryouhate]

* hemorrhaging their loss of world class talent*

This is just never going to happen. Only the tiniest most vocal percentage of people will act against their own self interest, in the benefit of society. Asking that of people will only ever backfire.

I think people are just taking out their aggressions on individuals. Individuals who they don't know, and who may have special circumstances. Or who might be doing good from within.

It's analogous to (though not as extreme as) railing on individual soldiers for the crimes of the military. It's mean, thoughtless, immature, and perhaps most importantly to you it's ineffective.

Edit: as a single data point... I work at Google. I'm just a regular person who wants respectable pay and a good work environment. I don't work on ads, and I'm not really convinced of whether Google as a whole is bad for the world. I'm interested in the arguments... they just don't seem very convincing to me. The vitriol seems way out of proportion compared to any harm from Google. I especially don't understand singling out Google, compared to other areas where harm seems a lot more egregious.

I also don't understand why people lump Google and Facebook together. They're incredibly different companies. I wouldn't work at Facebook unless I really had to, because it's obvious and clear how Facebook has been a disaster for society. The arguments against Google aren't nearly as strong or convincing.

I'm also not rich, despite being at Google for a number of years, and if I didn't work for Google my family and I would be forced to move.

[lostmsu]

I am sorry, but at what time Google or Facebook were not ad machines?

[Clewza313]

They've always been ad machines, but once upon a time Google was the good guy of the ad world. Even regular sites used to be full of punch the monkey ads, popups and pop-unders. Google with its dainty little text-only ads neatly on the side of search results was a real breath of fresh air, and we all cheered when Chrome came along and started blocking many of the most annoying ad tactics.

[riffraff]

Not only that, e.g. Google's support for open source and open standards was huge at a time when not many did, for example.

When they first announced the Summer of Code the common response was "wow, Google really is special like that".

[pmoriarty]

"Even regular sites used to be full of punch the monkey ads, popups and pop-unders."

Commercial sites were. But there was a time before corporations started treating the internet like the Gold Rush. Before that the internet was actually not full of ads, much less all the spyware the likes of Google and Facebook brought.

But Google and Facebook are just two big worms in an internet that's been rotten by corporate influence.

[Clewza313]

That time largely predates Google though? Google was founded in 1998, and the first monkey punch ad was 1999.

[pmoriarty]

True. The internet was already ad-infested by the time Google came around. AltaVista, which was the dominant search engine before Google overthrew them was full of ads, and (ironically) Google's value proposition at the time was that it was ad-free and a lot faster than AltaVista (which was slowed down by all their ads).

How times have changed.

[foxrob92]

Google wasn't an ad machine prior to the dotcom crash. Before the crash they had a very small advertising group, and it was pretty maligned.

It's also somewhat important to differentiate between "doing advertising" and surveillance capitalism. The scope/scale is completely different.

[aembleton]

1998 - 2000

http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-self...

[bcrosby95]

It isn't just these companies. It's most of them. The number of "good" companies is minuscule. Leaving one of these companies for another slightly less evil (or maybe more evil - just less powerful) one won't result in any good being done. Modern capitalism is crooked, and these individuals can't "fix" the problem. Play the game, but work to fix it. Until it's fixed, your life depends on playing it.

[duxup]

> The number of "good" companies is minuscule.

Is it?

Most companies I've worked for aren't canceling people's talk... they're busy just running their business in pretty mundane day to day fashion.

[solipsism]

Neither Google nor Facebook cancelled anyone's talk in this case.

[duxup]

Agreed. I was more riffing off the comment I was responding to as far as what a bad company would be.

[googleryouhate]

Yeah, and they're buying ads from Google and Facebook.

[caffeine]

This logic extends to individuals. “Most” people aren’t doing any “good” by the lofty standards of people who make these statements.

So let’s just get rid of everyone?

Or maybe this is a bad standard.

[unishark]

It's a level of negativity bias which seems to be overwhelmingly widespread nowadays. Things are either pure or else evil.

I think it comes from taking the upsides for granted. So the downsides are seen as seen as unnecessary and resulting from some kind of conspiracy or luck (e.g., network effects), rather than a trade-off where a company earned its success by providing benefits people wanted in return.