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?
An ambiguous title, came in expecting this to be about someone quitting his job at Facebook.
Which you absolutely should do if you work there. Facebook has an obligation to its shareholders to maximize its profits, which (possibly) means its strategy of monopolizing everyone's social identity is a valid one (though hopefully it could be mitigated through anti-monopoly laws, see the recent trend in the EU).
But no talented programmer has an obligation to help Facebook fulfill their strategy. If you care about freedom, don't help its opponents.
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.
Every Facebook employee should receive blowback for continuing to work there. They make the choice each day to create more value than they cost to support this platform - they implicitly support its reprehensible ideas.
reply