Finishing up my degree in spring, very few people say no to prestige coming out of new grad, but there are some, and those are absolutely avoiding Facebook among a few others. Currently, the main blacklist companies in my book are Facebook, Palantir, and Uber. Google still isn't evil enough. Amazon gets a bad rep overall for work environment but isn't avoided on moral grounds.
As a soon-to-be college grad, I can attest to this. I applied and interviewed at a number of big tech companies, but explicitly avoided Facebook because of ethical concerns.
On the other hand, I know of only a few classmates whom I believe would not consider them as an employer.
New grads don't have the liberty of filtering out 85+% of companies that have shitty morals. The ones that are too small to be newsworthy likely wish they could do what facebook does and more.
Very anecdotally, but I've found that fresh grads are more likely to avoid FB because of the reputational issues vs more senior engineers (who might have families to support or might cynically believe that all big cos have questionable anyway and FB isn't special in that regard)
I know of at least 2 companies who will explicitly not hire ex-facebook engineers, with the rationale that anyone who would work for facebook is morally bankrupt, especially the more recent years.
Facebook isn't going to blacklist someone over a bad interaction with a university recruiter, at least short of sending an email full of hate-speech.
It's an opportunity missed (it's a great place to have an internship or be a new grad, not so much for senior people who've worked elsewhere in industry) but the OP will certainly have no trouble applying again with some future recruiter.
Clearly it can't be that prestigious since they declined me :).
But seriously, while they probably are prestigious and cool right now, I do feel that there's enough hostility towards FB in the hacker community (and thus their supply of employees) that it might start forcing them to hire average-at-best engineers.
I hardly think getting blacklisted by FB would lose you opportunities outside of FB. Sure, you probably can't get a job at Instagram because they probably share the recruiting database. Beyond that, there are a million startups, and tons of other medium and large engineering companies that need technical people. Seriously, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc are all trying to steal each other's employees. They are competing so they definitely don't share such information.
If this person is good, they will definitely have opportunities elsewhere.
They don't care. A job at Facebook is still considered prestigious by a large part of the tech community. They're starting to be grouped more with Palantir than Google, though.
> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said.
This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than the other 'Big-n companies'. So it's hard for a new grad to say no to a Facebook offer, even if they're morally opposed to its products.
Would surprised to know if they are paying half of what Facebook is paying to new grad, which can reach 200k.
Well, i think saying Facebook has a negative effect on the resume is definitely a stretch. It is probably more proper to say that working at Facebook no longer bears the showing off value it once did, though that is largely true for ALL tech companies as well. The general public just grows more skeptic and indifferent towards tech industry overall.
I have observed a dangerous sort of fashionable cynicism based on the (claimed) belief that things are so bad in general—in politics, in industry, and in society—that surely working for such a company, or on Wall Street, isn’t such a big deal. In other words, that this is just how things are.
In fact it seems like some sort of perversion of the Protestant ethic where instead of undeserved salvation being witnessed by material success through hard work, so-called intelligence and maturity—“ironically” acknowledged to be the fruits of privilege and good fortune—are evidenced by holding reactionary (“centrist”) views and by taking these sorts of jobs.
This accounts for many of the upper middle class new grads I see (kids who couldn’t guess how much their family earned within 100k and wouldn’t see that as unreasonable).
When it comes to lower income or many international students, there is definitely an advantage to the Google/Facebook brand on your resume, magnified when you are talking about using your resume overseas. And of course in that case or if you expect to have to pay medical bills for aging parents soon it is a grand sort of luxury to turn down such a job offer.
The consequence, ironically, is that both the fashionable cynics as well as the idealistic new grads who turn away from Google/Facebook thus end up being mostly affluent and (debatably) largely white. Go to the careers page of some social-good startup and check out their photos!
That covers the pull factors I’ve seen. In terms of push factors you have to also account for Google/Facebook just having an order of magnitude more recruiting money and brand recognition.
Facebook's biggest problem in the next few years is going to be that it will struggle to attract new talent. Simply put if you're a senior SWE, even the possibility of FB putting a stain on your resume is going to drive you away, because there are so many other options out there. It's not worth the risk of always having to explain your time there because everyone has an opinion on the company these days. It's not that Facebook isn't a great place to work, it probably is. It's the fact that if you're at the level where you can get hired by Facebook, there are many many other options to reach for and the vast majority of people at that level are just going to reach for those other companies that are just as prestigious but carry none of the stigma.
Sorry to break it to you, but anyone who is still at Facebook at this point thinks they are at the top of the heap and a lateral move to maybe Google, Apple, or Microsoft would be worth considering if it included a bump in grade. Amazon is a place Facebook recruits from, it does not go in the other direction. [FB and Amazon have the same moral issues if you work there but the environment at FB is an order of magnitude better, particularly for mid-level engineers.]
I graduated college not too long ago, and you hear stuff like this all the time. A big one is Financial Tech-- people talk a lot about how they don't want to work for those companies.
Some people are against working in big-tech, or AirBnB because of the housing crisis, Uber because of the sexual harassment and competitive culture, etc.
This is however the first time I see a NYT article about this. They're really going after Facebook with all they can find.
I agree with the general recommendation that you should consider those factors.
I also agree with your rough assessment. Facebook is pretty sketchy as well on the privacy front but you're not really forced to use them if that's a concern.
Having worked for Facebook is probably better for the CV, too if you decide to move on (debatable depending on the specific line of work. Palantir is obviously not an unknown).
Does F still have resume prestige? I predicted more than 10 years ago that someday having worked at Facebook would be the resume stain that you wear for life. Has it not yet come to pass that having worked at Facebook is a red flag? Sure, you are probably smart. But anybody that lists Facebook on their resume is going to find a lot of their interview time with me going to probing their ethics.
You can replace facebook with google, apple, ms or amazon and you have the same picture though.
And they got the best projects and the most money.
Yet when I said to my relatives, 5 years ago, that I refused an interview from google and facebook, they questioned my sanity.
I don't pretend to have the moral high ground here, as i made enought bad things in my life, but this kind of pondering work opportunities doesn't happen enough imo.
Facebook has been notoriously easy to get into for the past few years. Some of the people I’ve seen hired were B players at best. I think it’s been hard to hire top people since their reputation scraped the bottom of the barrel. Anyone who’s competent enough to get a cushy job with high prestige and pay has many options.
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