I was very recently one of those students. Knew from the very beginning I never wanted to work for FB. If you don't totally agree with their political leaning, disagree with censorship, and hate ads, why would you want to work there? Sounds miserable.
This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency, civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also, if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany of abuses that they have either been horribly naive too or downright negligent in addressing.
If you are bright-eyed optimistic about Facebook I'd be interested to hear your counterpoint to all of the scandal. I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise but it isn't surprising that FB would have a decline in hiring.
This seems like an odd reaction from employees. There are many places you can go to work where the institution has clear values and a mission. Fb isn’t one of those places, that should be abundantly clear by now.
So what’s behind this overreaction? The dual need to get paid a fortune and be able to virtue signal about your employer’s political alignment at dinner parties?
It's official. I will never work for Facebook. In terms of hipness (lack of it), positive impact (lack of it), and sliminess, this puts them on the same shelf as Comcast for me. It also frames their ruinous impact on societal discourse as "hostile" rather than just a "a naive and clumsy mistake".
For Facebook employees: Is this really the company you want to work for? Is this the impact you want to have on the world? Is this really the best place in society to apply your talents?
Good for them. I haven't worked at FB, but I can only assume they're similar to Google in this regard, maybe worse, since their workforce tends to be younger on average. Things were already getting pretty unbearable when I left Google years ago, and (according to people I know who still work there) have taken a turn for _much_ worse in 2016. When recruiters email, I politely decline, without specifying why, but this is largely why. I actually liked working there when it came to _work_, but the environment was extremely politicized and oppressive. No differences of opinion were tolerated at all. You'd immediately be ratted out to HR for a mere suggestion that someone is too aggressive/uncivil in enforcing the dogma on internal Google+.
I agree. And these same folks also like their jobs at FB despite the politics ... they see it as one of the cons but are still happy with all of the pros.
I only commented because it's frustrating to see any company painted as if it's the one magical place in the universe that has solved office politics. Facebook is not that company.
I recently considered a role there, on a security team no less. I've never had a Facebook account and agree that the product as-is is fundamentally destructive.
However, there's some value in "running towards the fire" so to speak. Facebook does not seem to me to be fundamentally evil, just willfully blind to the problems it causes. It's probably worth a few years of someone's life to try to steer that ship in a better direction.
In the end I didn't take the job because the position eventually offered was too low to do what I described above effectively. But I bet there are other folks here who might get better positioned if they took the time to interview.
I haven't been on Facebook in over a decade; I didn't see that it had any positive effect on my life (quite the contrary), and I'm definitely not impressed by their lack of social conscience. Despite the excessive pay and "pedigree" that working for them would offer, I'd never do it. I hope that a growing number of people from my and future generations will think the same.
I worked at FB for three years as a software engineer. The people I worked with basically believed:
1) The core product is good and useful to people/society
2) Most of the negative articles about Facebook are based on some piece of truth but go out of their way to make things seem worse and more sinister than they really are
3) Zuck generally wants to do the right thing, but of course makes mistakes
4) Yes the company does bad things sometimes, but not significantly worse than Google or Amazon (which are the main places many FB employees would consider working if they left)
is it just me or would it be very hard to work at Facebook these days without constantly experiencing cognitive dissonance day in and day out?
feels like the only way to enjoy working there is to either be someone who only cares about the money and prestige and/or convince yourself that the criticisms against Facebook are invalid
Many see FB as an immoral company, so it starts with the question why did you work for such a company. IME a simple "I disagreed with X but I did Y" satisfies most. (No idea what % of people in hiring positions believe that.)
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