[jazzpush2]

This sounds bad to say, but it's difficult to feel bad for any meta engineers who lost their jobs.

You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet. Former employees will deflect and make the comparison to United Fruit workers, despite the obvious difference in employee-optionality and influence.

You made your bed. I hope your organization gets destroyed. I hope you reflect on the damage you've caused the world.

[98codes]

I've held a short list of organizations I wouldn't ever work for, for a long while. Meta is on that list, but so are most of the big tech companies you see in the various anagrams.

It's getting to the point where selling my soul to the highest bidder is going to be absolutely required for any big tech job going forward.

[everdrive]

>It's getting to the point where selling my soul to the highest bidder is going to be absolutely required for any big tech job going forward.

Can you expand on this? Aren't there plenty of "not-amazing-but-definitely-not-evil" organizations out there which need talented engineers?

[ryandrake]

I started doing this, but so many companies are bad that it's pretty career-limiting. Ultimately every company is, or one day will be, solely focused on "maximize shareholder value forever" as their one and only imperative. You just have to find the least bad ones.

[freejazz]

Meta's problem isn't that they "maximize shareholder value" it's how they decided to go about doing it.

[throwaway894345]

I would love to learn if people have structured approaches for identifying companies that are in that "least bad" band, but yeah, I agree that as long as we have a system based on extreme wealth inequality, it's going to be pretty difficult to find moral work. At the end of the day most of us are working to make billionaires richer--in the best case we do that by genuinely creating value, but frequently it's about taking money away from some middle or lower class person (however indirectly).

[throwaway894345]

A company's impact on the world isn't a good/bad binary, it comes in degrees. In the case of Meta, they are _aggressively_ promoting far-right wing propaganda (or at least that's my feed, and what appears to be the general consensus on the Internet), and they are clearly very close with the far-right Trump administration. Never mind "ordinary" bad things like pushing ads, building addictive ad tech, etc.

[pesus]

Also notable that they willingly and knowingly allowed FB to be used to facilitate genocide, which makes them culpable in it.

[ModernMech]

Right, in the tech world it’s a continuum between “do no evil (fingers crossed behind back)” and “They trust me. Dumb fucks”

[tetromino_]

> they are _aggressively_ promoting far-right wing propaganda

In my feed, they are aggressively pushing an approximately equal mix of woke propaganda, far-right propaganda, funny memes, and discussions of literature and philosophy. It just depends on what the Meta model decided you and your friends are into.

[nine_k]

Truth be told, the Meta engineering organization created PyTorch and React.

I won't color any large entity uniformly bad at all times and aspects.

[callmeal]

>I won't color any large entity uniformly bad at all times and aspects.

Oh yes, I would color Meta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_emotional_manipulatio...

"Company over country!" -- Mark Zuckerberg https://www.yahoo.com/news/book-zuckerberg-called-company-ov...

[embedding-shape]

> the Meta engineering organization created PyTorch and React

People created PyTorch and React, they happen to be working at Meta at the time.

Maybe it's unlikely they'd create those working elsewhere, but I think it's much more unlikely that someone else at Meta would have created the same thing without those people there.

[pcan77]

Totally agree. And who cares, the internet, computers and web apps worked before and will work after those go away. It's not like React is some irreplaceable genius invention, it's just a framework like Ember, Angular, etc etc. The people who made them are no doubt amazing, but what I'm saying is we're not "in debt" to Meta for these tools at all.

[nine_k]

> People created PyTorch and React, they happen to be working at Meta at the time.

Exactly. The fact that they worked on Meta's (then Facebook's) payroll does not make what they've done, or themselves, automatically as bad as some other things some other people at Facebook / Meta did.

And the bad things that some people did at Facebook / Meta are also due to their own choices, not by the virtue / sin of working for a particular org.

[embedding-shape]

> The fact that they worked on Meta's (then Facebook's) payroll does not make what they've done, or themselves, automatically as bad as some other things some other people at Facebook / Meta did.

I kind of disagree. You're associating yourself with these people, supporting the same machine. If you actually disagree with the machine, then don't work there in the first place. Not to mean these people are inherently evil or whatever, people have different circumstances, people reflect, sometimes change and people don't always think before acting, it's only human. But everyone who worked there while having other opportunities available, because the pay was better or whatever, definitively should reflect on what imprint they want to leave on the world really.

[davidw]

Organizations that are overall bad can have people who have done some good things, or at least technically impressive things.

[jacques_chester]

As I learned while burning through all my savings in the 2023-2024 timeframe: You are free to have principles, but principles aren't free.

I am ashamed I worked there.

[neutronicus]

If you were remote and LCOL or MCOL you've also made significant inroads towards retirement after just a couple years at Meta.

Like, you can go be a middle school teacher and probably be fine if you stuffed the sack while the stuffing was good.

[cayley_graph]

I am completely willing to forgive Meta (and Palantir etc) employees who quit their job and donate their blood money (all wages above some low multiplier of median US SWE salary, adjusted for cost of living) to a reputable charity of their choice. Preferably one focused on repairing the incredible harm inflicted on other humans to which they have been a proactive and willing accomplice. Anything less than that does not constitute genuine remorse; we do not let millionaire criminals keep their illicit earnings because they apologized on the stand.

That nearly none will do this (I suspect most would be irritated at even the suggestion) tells you all you need to know about them.

[slibhb]

The idea that facebook is this "well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organization" that has caused "damage to the world" is a perfect example of scape-goating.

When you step back and try to explain exactly what the company has done that's so bad, there's nothing there.

[ben_w]

Off the top of my head, a genocide, albeit by being careless people rather than malicious:

  The chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar stated that Facebook played a "determining role" in the Rohingya genocide.[98] Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of Islamophobic content which targets the Rohingya people.[99] The United Nations Human Rights Council has called the platform "a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate".[100]

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_co...

[bla15e]

it's not a perfect exampe of scape-goating of the goat is still alive

[techblueberry]

> The idea that facebook is this "well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organization" that has caused "damage to the world" is a perfect example of scape-goating.

True, none of us are innocent.

> When you step back and try to explain exactly what the company has done that's so bad, there's nothing there.

WTF?

[throwarayes]

I think it says more about Metas inability to create new products or make investments.

Look at their big growth areas. They acquired instagram and WhatsApp. Threads seems successful(?) but is an extension of instagram.

Mostly they’ve just gotten better at weaponizing rage bait. Which I’d argue, long term, will be a losing strategy.

If this were a healthy culture, with all the people working there, Zuck would have promoted far more interesting internal experiment to full blown products. That just doesn’t seem to happen there.

[aantix]

Never understood why Facebook hasn't implemented the 'Explain this post' type feature that you see on X (@grok).

Facebook seems to be the most misinformed audience - an LLM fact checker would be a great addition.

[embedding-shape]

> Zuck would have promoted far more interesting internal experiment to full blown products. That just doesn’t seem to happen there

I don't understand this either, there are so many clearly advantageous ideas and experiments to be be carried out, that can make discussions better, thinking clearer and help people actually connect. But instead they're only thinking about how to optimize the ad-machine in the end, so depressing to see.

[ribosometronome]

>Threads ... rage bait

The advertisements within Instagram for Threads almost always seem to be fairly thinly disguised engagement & rage bait. Every time it gets me, I feel an increasing desire to move away from the whole ecosystem.

[thepryz]

Sorry, but your rant comes from a place of naive privilege when you assume meta engineers all had options.

I know a number of people that accepted roles with companies they vowed never to work for after being laid off and unemployed for a year. The reality is that when you look at tech in abroad context, there really are very few ethical and/or noble companies.

[fzeroracer]

There are plenty of options. I for example am one of those unemployed engineers that has been looking for a job for about a year now. Meta recruiters have came to me trying to poach me, and I've said no every time.

The reality is that more engineers need to be able to grow a spine, have longer term thinking and actually stand their ground when it comes to these companies. You could not pay me enough money to work at Meta or Palantir and while it's true there are very few ethical or noble companies, working for Meta is more akin to completely throwing out your ethical compass.

[shimman]

They won't reflect, these people literally have no morales. The only thing they value is money and giving teenage girls depression.

edit: sorry but if you purposely to chose to work at Meta after 2016 you clearly have zero morals and are fine with working at a company that not only willingly exacerbated a genocide but knowingly profited off of it too.

These workers can't be condemned enough, some of these devs should be in prison too.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> The only thing they value is money and giving teenage girls depression.

You really think if they didn't work there, someone else wouldn't?

You really think them and only them are the people capable of doing whatever technical things are causing the problems you perceive?

[98codes]

"Someone else would be willing to ruin this, so I may as well ruin it and get paid for it" is not a direction everyone wants to, or even is willing to go.

[jlengrand]

In case you care, what you're doing is called causal impotence https://philpapers.org/rec/NORTIO-18. Then you can also search why it does matter.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Where do you draw the line?

You're a TVC in the kitchen at Meta? All you do is give girls depression?

You work at a business that buys ads on Meta? Is all you do is give girls depression? Even if you work in a non-profit branch specifically to do out-reach for kids or something??

How far separated from Meta do you have to be to not be reduced to doing nothing but giving girls depression?

[lo_zamoyski]

It requires discernment, to be sure.

The Principle of Double Effect[0] is essential in such cases, because it helps determine when cooperation with evil is remote or proximate, and when such cooperation with evil is morally permissible.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

[mplanchard]

Obviously it’s a spectrum, no? Anyone contributing to the edifice is in some way furthering its core mission (giving girls depression, or utterly destroying society, depending on who you ask).

At one end of the spectrum you have very talented, smart engineers who could easily get a job anywhere, devoting their lives to targeting ads, surveillance, brain-hacking the masses with the algorithm in order to sell more ads, etc. At the other end is, let’s say, the cleaning staff. Meta would suffer if either group outright refused to work for them, but their mission is affected more by the engineers, they are harder to replace, they have many more options in terms of alternative employment, and they have greater knowledge of the impact of the business. Thus, they bear (much) higher relative moral responsibility. Compare to the cleaning staff, who, because of their relative lack of standing, agency (they likely work for some other company that Meta contracts with), or other options, bear negligible moral responsibility, even though their absence would likely make Meta’s offices uninhabitable.

Everyone working there is somewhere on that spectrum. They can make their own judgements about the degree to which they bear any moral culpability, but it’s not unfair to say that someone working on open source at Facebook still contributes to the overall mission by oss-washing facebook’s reputation, promulgating the brand into the engineering consciousness, etc., even if they are not directly contributing to giving girls depression.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> At one end of the spectrum you have very talented, smart engineers who could easily get a job anywhere

Not exactly...

> devoting their lives to targeting ads, surveillance, brain-hacking the masses with the algorithm in order to sell more ads, etc.

Nice try, but most of engineering at Meta has almost as much to do with this as the food staff...

So the question remains - if you're an engineer working on nothing related to any of that - most of Meta - why is your work reduced to "destroying girls lives" but the TVC's working in the kitchen are not?

Why are people working at GM, who have a large ad spend on Meta, not destroying girls lives? But the people working on storage compression algorithms to save on hardware costs are??

Why is the TVC not bad, but the person working on decorating the offices is?

[jlengrand]

Your obsession about teenage girls is worrying

EDIT: my bad, I read you wrong and didn't realize you didn't bring up the whole tenage girl thing. Sorry for that.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Nice dodge.

I'm directly addressing OP's original comment that "all anyone at Meta does is give girls depression."

It's almost as if it's not that reductive... even though you just made the same reduction...

Want to answer the actual question?

[shimman]

Very interesting, never heard the term before but are there more philosophical concepts tying in the ideas of solidarity and labor movements?

Thanks for sharing the paper. Going to read it tonight, the abstract is very interesting.

[Anon1096]

Do you really think the guy branding thousands of people working at Meta as basically pedophiles can really be said to care about "solidarity"? I certainly wouldn't consider someone a peer if they randomly go and call me a pedophile because of where I work. I'm sure 95% of people working there have 0 relation to the algorithm decisions and definitely have no particular fixation on giving teenage girls depression.

[jbxntuehineoh]

But your honor! If I didn't sell heroin, someone else would!

[Retric]

Someone else isn’t a 1:1 replacement, when people refuse to work for you you’re stuck offering higher wages and or taking worse employees.

How well a job is compensated on average very much depends on how willing and able the average person is to do it.

[bigstrat2003]

"Someone else would do it if I don't" is not, and never has been, a valid argument for whether something is moral to do. If you want to argue that it's morally permissible to work at Facebook, you need to argue that on its own merits, not by appealing to fallacies.

[lo_zamoyski]

> You really think if they didn't work there, someone else wouldn't?

Putting Meta aside as I do not have a sufficiently deep view of the total scope of work at Meta and its relation to its misdeeds, I never understood how anyone found this fallacious line of reasoning convincing.

So what if someone else would do it? The point is that you are morally responsible for your actions and your actions alone.

It horrifies me completely to realize that so many people would excuse their own gravely immoral actions on the incomprehensible grounds that if they didn't do it, someone else would. Where is the logic? It is such a severely morally and psychologically crippled way of thinking. Yes, if I don't shoot the innocent civilian in the head, then SS-Schütze Schmidt will do it anyway, so I might as well do it. Incredible.

Morality is not some calculus that is concerned about whether certain events occur or about optimizing some sum total of events. It is about how you, personally, use your agency. That's it!

[freejazz]

>You really think if they didn't work there, someone else wouldn't?

What does that have to do with any person's individual morals?

[lelanthran]

> You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet.

One day, when there is no job for you, you will look back on this moment and chide your past self.

There is no organisation that has their hands clean. Not even the one you work for.

[swatcoder]

Regardless of what their hiring process screens for, it's safe to say that people able to pass screening for Meta are able to get work elsewhere. It is never an engineers only option, although it may be the only one in a certain luxurious compensation tier.

And while it's true that many organizations carry dirty laundry, especially as they scale into larger organizations with fingers in more pies, Meta's business model is specifically to maximize engagement by any means available so that it can sell their eyeballs to the most lucrative advertising opportunities.

In Facebook's early days and as Whatsapp continues to do, their products may incidentally provided a useful societal function for earnestly connecting people in the way that those people wanted to be connected. But there's no way to look at it through the lens of a socially responsible business -- a qualitative difference from an organization simply not having "clean hands".

[serf]

>One day, when there is no job for you, you will look back on this moment and chide your past self.

people say this as if having principles will leave you jobless inevitably, but there is so much evidence to the contrary that this rings more hollow the older I get.

I agree with your overall concept of empathy towards others, I disagree with the premise that all organizations are unethical and that there isn't room for the morally principal'd and employed in this world.

contrarily I believe that a morally principal'd and skilled engineer is so rare in this world that there are a few organizations that would snap up every single one they could find if the network was there to find them.

[Hamuko]

I imagine the stupid enterprise business software I make is way less bad than "our algo is making teenage girls kill themselves".

[serf]

yeah except that isn't how it's presented.

social media boards don't go creating slides and mission statements that mentions those second order effects.

most go something like: "Connecting people and souls through the technologies that empower every day life."

rather than

"Let's get Susie to jump off a bridge for yuks."

[kevincrane]

Almost all organizations have hands cleaner than Meta lol

[duped]

> There is no organisation that has their hands clean. Not even the one you work for.

There are plenty of organizations that don't enable genocide.