[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.