I know good people working for Facebook, but it does make me think "After everything you know about Facebook, the fact you would still work there, makes me respect you a lot less"
I have quite a few friends who have worked and still do work for Facebook. I used to know someone who worked on their "security" team that truly had some frightening powers re: privacy, but with the excuse that it's ok because of stories of saving some kidnapped child's life, or helping track down someone with terrorist connections because they had Facebook messenger on their phone so they could pinpoint their exact location and report it (along with message history) to the police.
I know a guy who worked on a content moderation team and has been severely psychologically affected as a result. Like, he's not the same guy anymore. But he still works there and doesn't seem to consider taking any other job. I think it's because once you've seen all sorts of horrific images and have knowledge of heinous acts going on in the world after you're put in a position of policing them, you feel like the problem is bigger than yourself and your needs are secondary. It's sad, though.
I've never heard any of the people I know talk negatively about Facebook in any way, especially not a "wow, I can't believe I work for these people." There's always a focus on the good they're doing, and how the good outweighs the bad. After Trump got elected, there was all sorts of talk about how Facebook is bringing people together with feminist and anti-trump groups, ignoring the other facts. When Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress over privacy issues it was all about how he's being misrepresented and Congress doesn't understand the internet.
Only recently have I detected some small dissatisfaction from someone who has worked at FB for 7+ years, but instead of jumping ship entirely they switched to working for a different Facebook owned brand.
But I hear the pay is great, benefits are great, stock options are great, and the Facebook kool-aid is a mighty potent drink.
Personally, I wouldn't overlook someone who worked at Facebook. I don't really like them as a company, but it doesn't mean everyone who works there is a bad actor.
If this is true, then it would be good for humankind!
My position on this has always been that people still working at Facebook and its other properties don't think much about what affects millions of other people negatively (they got their money and some interesting work though).
I wish that sometime in the next few years, a past job at Facebook is seen as a personal blemish and a question of character and conduct.
I know some principled, driven, and wonderful people who work for Facebook.
While I despise Facebook as a company, that doesn't reflect negatively on said people, at least insofar as they do not work on the kinds of things that I dislike Facebook for.
I would however hold them to account and openly criticize them if they did start working on such things. And I can and do criticize them when they spin apologia for Facebook as a company.
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
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?
I wonder how much of it is that Facebook isn't all that much fun anymore, and working there would provoke all sorts of "I don't use it anymore" comments from one's peers.
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)
I recently had a long conversation with someone who works at FB, someone asked them “what’s the morale like there right now, do people feel bad for working there at all?” And his answer was “yeah morale’s pretty low right now because the stock price tanked recently but other than that things are good.”
It made me realize that some people truly do not think critically about the impact of their work. I think Facebook inadvertently selects for those kinds of people (or at least filters out people on the other end of the spectrum).
You are probably correct and I agree with you about working for employers like that. I admit to not being a facebook expert and probably shouldn't have commented. But it seemed obvious to me that there are problems, contrary to what the OP says, for some people.
Indeed. It's hard to imagine people who could work basically anywhere in the world chooses to work for the company that has demonstrated they only care about money, don't care about its users and actively do more harm than good.
I could understand people who started working for Facebook 10 years ago, before we knew the beast. But now, just a year ago start working for Facebook? I really wish we (engineers working in the software industry) could be more ethical inclined and stop caring about money so much.
Anyone with a background at Facebook definitely needs to be spoken with regarding their integrity. Obviously only a small subset of FB employees make the shitty decisions we see in the news, but it's very concerning to me that engineers still go to work there. There are at 2 or 3 other BigCos that pay comparably, and many others that pay a level down that don't require you to be complicit in unethical behavior of this scale.
I know a few people at facebook and it is certainly possible he works there (this kind of attitude seems slightly more prevalent amongst newer hires), but I agree it definitely is not the general sentiment around the company nor amongst most of the people making strategic decisions.
I know multiple people that have taken jobs at Facebook in recent years that feel it is a net negative in the world but could not resist the paycheck and justify it by committing to either by work hard as user advocates from the inside, or just finding open source work that doesn't directly exploit users to drain their resources on.
I for one have taken interviews at Facebook with 0 intention of working for them just because they have a tough process and it is good practice. Wasting some of the time and resources of an organization that inherently evil also makes the world that much better.
One of the important qualities of a great place to work is that decisions are made based on sober analysis rather than reflexive corrections. Maybe you're right, and Facebook is just too important to allow that, but I think it's fair for Facebook employees to be unhappy about this.
I know good people working for Facebook, but it does make me think "After everything you know about Facebook, the fact you would still work there, makes me respect you a lot less"
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