Yes, bad idea. Significant moral hazard. You'll be tasked with implementing dark patterns in social malware that, despite all the recent criticism, is being used benignly for the most part today.
How would you feel if you knew your work started being used by authoritarian regimes to oppress their citizens speech and ability to organize?
How confident are you that Facebook wouldn't take that opportunity if it was presented to them? Same question, but what if FB's user numbers and usage have declined for a couple years and they are desperately trying to monetize any lingering network effects they can?
They currently have a friendly panopticon. Only the morals of their leadership and PR concerns are holding them back from changing the friendliness.
Hypothetically. Facebook has the capability to be turned into a very evil tool cheaply: they essentially have a surveillance apparatus for a large amount of online activity and history of demonstrating willing to implement features that are user-hostile dark patterns or mislead users about their privacy. I would never want to work there because I don't trust leadership to not pivot into something more Orwellian if their social network has a myspace-style migration and collapse.
> You'll be tasked with implementing dark patterns
Facebook is a large company, and there are other ways to make a difference or learn skills you can take elsewhere. For example, their teams in DC are working on the problems that people often criticize them about. Things like misinformation, foreign interference, security, public safety, etc.
I wish more people understood this. Were there bad people at FB while I was there? Yes. Did bad things happen? Also yes. On the other hand, I also saw good people and good things. I saw massive and frankly very disruptive efforts around privacy and data retention. I saw people fired for violating very stringent rules about handling of user data. I saw a quite-large company's worth of people and resources devoted to detecting harmful or inauthentic content. I couldn't see the content itself (see previous about rules) but from where I sat in the storage org I could see the names of the processing pipelines and know their scope. Maybe those aren't enough to outweigh the negatives, but to ignore the very existence of those people and those efforts does not IMO make for responsible or useful commentary.
A bad idea in what sense? Working conditions and pay will likely be good. What you're working on and what you're contributing to help support may or may not be.
Other people can't supply your moral judgments for you. Some people think Facebook is immoral, others think it's great. Try to reason for yourself about what problems you have with Facebook and whether you want to support them.
This is assuming that you will individually come up with all the most useful insights relevant to making this decision, which is silly.
Just as a very simple example, what if the poster is 22 and this question is about considering their first job? Surely those in the workforce will have all sorts of useful details you could never intuit on your own.
I made the decision years ago that I would never, ever work for FAANG. I think my life turned out just fine :). It's a big world out there full of interesting problems to solve. There's no need to compromise on your ethics for a job.
Some FAANGs are more ethical than others right now. Facebook is probably the worst of the pack, but honestly they do have products I would consider working on (Oculus, WhatsApp).
If you have choices, I guess it depends if you trust Mark Zuckerberg and his vision is something you want to spend your energy on.
If you don't feel comfortable wearing Facebook-branded T-shirts / jumpers, etc if given the choice to whilst commuting to work (if needed), you probably already know the answer don't you?
I don't think any FB employee (Except for Zuckerberg) would be comfortable with wearing Facebook-branded clothes at this time.
this is...very alien to me. i'm 100% certain there are plenty of facebook engineers who are comfortable wearing Facebook branded clothes at this time. i know some.
They can just have a job. Now if you work on the tobacco industry, knowing full well the bad side-effects of tobacco consumption and keep working on it then you don't have any morals.
Linking cement production to global warming issues is at least as strong a connection and similar scale as linking Facebook to whatever bad thing you think they're doing, which is to say, a very vague one.
Cement production is not a vague link to climate change. [0]
> In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total. More than half of that came from the calcination process.
I will say that in my current area that's obscenely republican after January 6th I actually started hiding my employment from the general public. After Trump got banned from Twitter and Facebook some groups were making lists of known Facebook and Twitter employees and there were generic threats of violence. The local BLM group that put up some billboards and signs eventually gave up removing graffiti because it would just get vandalized again right afterwards. One of the vandals even got caught in the act and local police refused to even warn the guy.
Exactly. Side-eye from some of my friends was unpleasant, but never enough for me to hide where I worked. But out in public? One need only look around here to see that some people are pretty hostile and closed-minded about the company, and it's not worth inviting their attention.
Are you a working for another FAANG company? There are benefits to working on code at scale. You will learn how to commit code alongside dozens/hundreds of other engineers while minimizing bugs. You will become a better coder because other people will scrutinize and review your code. You will have access to some of the thought leaders in the web development space. You will see how professional software engineers maximize their productivity.
Politics aside, if you are an indie developer or have developed only on small teams, spending a year or two at a FAANG company will often greatly improve your effectiveness as a coder that you can then bring to your own projects or smaller companies. I'd recommend it, but don't get attached to the money and set an exit date.
i'm on a product team. morale is fine. what you should really be asking yourself is if you're comfortable with the WLB. most people work 50-70hrs/wk. TC is good though so you get what you pay for.
in general you're better off asking this question on blind because it's unlikely you'll get a lot of honest/revealing answers here.
A large salary figure doesn't seem like a good reason to work what I personally consider an insane amount of hours. By all means, to each their own though.
We tend to ignore the impact on our physical and mental health these working hours do. I would rather opt for lesser pay, smaller house with my health intact. Better bargain IMHO but then to each his own.
I don't know what team that guy is on, but there's plenty of us who work normal hours with pretty light on call duties. Once you factor in Bootcamp, paternity leave, paid holidays, PTO, sick leave, etc. I'm literally going to be working on a team for less than half of my first year. What's really nice is that depending on how much you're interacting with other people a good bit of the work can be shuffled around and overall it's pretty flexible. I'd rather work 50 hours a week with this kind of flexibility than 40 hours a week under a rigid 9-5 office job.
That's the funny part, my second PSC is probably going to be less than the minimum time due to paternity leave so really it'll wind up being my third PSC because I joined just prior to this half.
If you have to ask, probably is a bad idea. There are teams that do good work at Facebook, namely privacy and integrity.
You won’t change the course of the ship but if you pick your team carefully you will have a good impact in the world.
PSC is very frustrating however. Be prepared for a lot of stress and spinning wheels to prove impact as you try to work on meaningful things.
You will receive a lot of hate on the internet for it, some people won’t hear any words coming out of your mouth once you say “Facebook”. That said the internet is a more hateful place then it used to be.
Someone who works there will hopefully answer your question directly. I can only give my view
Facebook is easy to criticize because it is top of mind all the time. But unless you see out an org whose mission is focused on making an impact you agree with, all companies are basically equally evil if you dig deep enough. But outside of some regulated industries, they also provide things people want or they wouldn't be in business.
What other options do you have? Can you honestly say that whatever else you are looking at is more ethical than Facebook? It's a shitty fact of life that most money has blood on it.
You already suspect the answer and are hoping to be persuaded otherwise. You will be disposable to Facebook while you are doing the work of optimizing dark patterns and empowering display algorithms which are proven to polarize and reinforce beliefs.
On the flip side, Facebook could be a big payday which could be life changing for your family. I'm not intending to judge you, though society might. By that point you're probably part of the 1% so you wouldn't really care.
I'd say if you are looking to join a FAANG company based on moral criteria that Facebook is absolutely the worst offender. The list of its criticisms has its own dedicated Wikipedia page with 439 citations [1]. But allow me to give you a rundown of the worst ones in my opinion:
- Allowing the proliferation and organization of a genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar
- Same type of thing in Sri Lanka related to spreading violence
- Allowing the mass distribution of disinformation & the corruption of public opinion in the 2016 US presidential election
- The absolutely massive level of surveillance/data gathering
- The release of this data to a political firm (Cambridge Analytica)
- Running emotion/political influence experiments on its users
If you are looking at companies from a moral/mission standpoint, stay far away from Facebook. They are a Pandora's box of ethical problems and have broken every guideline you can name.
P.S. I don't know about morale issues at Facebook related to this but I've read that the younger generation of CS graduates is less willing to work at Facebook and asking recruiters tough questions [2]. For further information on the temperature there it might be useful to check Glassdoor [3].
I don't think it is "bad" to join facebook or any FAANG company. That also doesn't mean I agree with everything they do/say etc. What I know is that as an engineer at almost any level (unless you've already be at a FAANG company) you will learn a lot about scale and delivering. And my guess is even if you have been at another you will still learn quite a bit. And you won't be paid poorly while doing it so not a bad overall situation.
As for moral judgement, only you can make that call, people can be quite polarized about this subject so you'll get people answering that typically feel strongly one way or the other.
people join FAANGs for 15-24 months stints. the morale stuff is very overblown.
some classes of people are privileged enough to care. others prioritize career experience and making money.
not everything you hear is relevant to you. just like you're an engineer in a career partially because pretending to start a company in a garage to $100mm in VC money is not relevant to you, because that garage is not in the wealthiest suburb in a the country, a stone's throw away from Stanford University.
Based on what I have heard, FB is a very demanding workplace. Lots of smart people trying to get ahead and with that comes a cutthroat culture and poor work-life balance. As an engineer you will have access to smart peers, which can make a big difference to your technical skills. Pay is very good, as is the name-recognition, which can both make up for FB's negatives. If you are planning to start a family, look for a less demanding workplace; otherwise, you can't lose much by doing a 2-year stint there.
Parts of it might be cutthroat. Others certainly aren't. Work-life balance isn't really a problem. I certainly never worked evenings and weekends outside of oncall shifts, and my kids loved coming to the office for lunch and that kind of thing.
Some friends who were planning on starting a family "sacrificed" a year or two at a FAANG/FAANG-like and had a nice nest egg/savings before conceiving.
I left FB about 9 months ago and still talk to my friends there daily. Many of them are down in the infrastructure layers, which is 1) where the interesting stuff is, since the top is just a sleazy web app with advertising, and 2) very insulated from most of the political stuff.
It's not a bad idea to join FB as an engineer. Just make sure you end up working on something that you wouldn't get to elsewhere, keep in mind that, like all organizations, it has its own unique pathologies, and set yourself up so you can walk away if you need to.
I don't work for Facebook and have no inside information whatsoever and let me tell you that I would not hesitate go join Facebook if the position was attractive (good salary, good benefits, great professional challenges).
See, there will ALWAYS be controversy in large companies. There was back then in IBM, there was in Oracle, there was in Microsoft, there was in Google and there is on Facebook. If you are trying to find a COMPANY that is a "innocent dove", you will have a hard time finding one that is not an NGO or Non For Profit. Or maybe go into one that is not VC funded and not publicly traded.
There are degrees of evilness though and each one should evaluate their own morals against that. Corporations are going to be inherently evil to us due to their incentives and motives but there are some much worse than others.
81 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadI also like that their other submission here is: "Ask HN: What Comes After Democracy?"
How would you feel if you knew your work started being used by authoritarian regimes to oppress their citizens speech and ability to organize?
How confident are you that Facebook wouldn't take that opportunity if it was presented to them? Same question, but what if FB's user numbers and usage have declined for a couple years and they are desperately trying to monetize any lingering network effects they can?
They currently have a friendly panopticon. Only the morals of their leadership and PR concerns are holding them back from changing the friendliness.
I may be speaking out of ignorance, but do you have an example of this occurring or are you speaking purely hypothetically?
Facebook is a large company, and there are other ways to make a difference or learn skills you can take elsewhere. For example, their teams in DC are working on the problems that people often criticize them about. Things like misinformation, foreign interference, security, public safety, etc.
Other people can't supply your moral judgments for you. Some people think Facebook is immoral, others think it's great. Try to reason for yourself about what problems you have with Facebook and whether you want to support them.
You should not have to ask around to make your own moral decisions. Answer for yourself.
(I don't work for Facebook or have any desire to, personally, but that should not affect you).
Just as a very simple example, what if the poster is 22 and this question is about considering their first job? Surely those in the workforce will have all sorts of useful details you could never intuit on your own.
If you have choices, I guess it depends if you trust Mark Zuckerberg and his vision is something you want to spend your energy on.
I don't think any FB employee (Except for Zuckerberg) would be comfortable with wearing Facebook-branded clothes at this time.
And who knows, there might still be some soul working at facebook who really believe they are building a better world.
> In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total. More than half of that came from the calcination process.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844
Stay safe dude.
(I moved on back in 2007, because moving fast and breaking things was not how I’m wired.)
Exactly. Side-eye from some of my friends was unpleasant, but never enough for me to hide where I worked. But out in public? One need only look around here to see that some people are pretty hostile and closed-minded about the company, and it's not worth inviting their attention.
Politics aside, if you are an indie developer or have developed only on small teams, spending a year or two at a FAANG company will often greatly improve your effectiveness as a coder that you can then bring to your own projects or smaller companies. I'd recommend it, but don't get attached to the money and set an exit date.
i'm on a product team. morale is fine. what you should really be asking yourself is if you're comfortable with the WLB. most people work 50-70hrs/wk. TC is good though so you get what you pay for.
in general you're better off asking this question on blind because it's unlikely you'll get a lot of honest/revealing answers here.
Jesus. Why?
click E5 under fb
> Uber 5A total estimate $385,469
I'm sure I must be missing something. (Disclaimer: I definitely do not do 50hr/wk at Uber)
lol you're frosh. wait till your second PSC.
You won’t change the course of the ship but if you pick your team carefully you will have a good impact in the world.
PSC is very frustrating however. Be prepared for a lot of stress and spinning wheels to prove impact as you try to work on meaningful things.
You will receive a lot of hate on the internet for it, some people won’t hear any words coming out of your mouth once you say “Facebook”. That said the internet is a more hateful place then it used to be.
Facebook is easy to criticize because it is top of mind all the time. But unless you see out an org whose mission is focused on making an impact you agree with, all companies are basically equally evil if you dig deep enough. But outside of some regulated industries, they also provide things people want or they wouldn't be in business.
What other options do you have? Can you honestly say that whatever else you are looking at is more ethical than Facebook? It's a shitty fact of life that most money has blood on it.
Just don't go into the insurance industry :)
You can't be serious about this opinion.
All companies are evil.
All white people are guilty.
All men are guilty.
All black/gay/women are victims.
You just have to dig deep enough. If you don’t agree, it’s because you’re privileged or indoctrinated into self hated.
Yes, it’s a bad idea. Their product is shit, their engineers are shit, the leadership is shit.
On the flip side, Facebook could be a big payday which could be life changing for your family. I'm not intending to judge you, though society might. By that point you're probably part of the 1% so you wouldn't really care.
- Allowing the proliferation and organization of a genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar
- Same type of thing in Sri Lanka related to spreading violence
- Allowing the mass distribution of disinformation & the corruption of public opinion in the 2016 US presidential election
- The absolutely massive level of surveillance/data gathering
- The release of this data to a political firm (Cambridge Analytica)
- Running emotion/political influence experiments on its users
If you are looking at companies from a moral/mission standpoint, stay far away from Facebook. They are a Pandora's box of ethical problems and have broken every guideline you can name.
P.S. I don't know about morale issues at Facebook related to this but I've read that the younger generation of CS graduates is less willing to work at Facebook and asking recruiters tough questions [2]. For further information on the temperature there it might be useful to check Glassdoor [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/technology/jobs-facebook-...
[3] https://www.glassdoor.com/facebook
As for moral judgement, only you can make that call, people can be quite polarized about this subject so you'll get people answering that typically feel strongly one way or the other.
some classes of people are privileged enough to care. others prioritize career experience and making money.
not everything you hear is relevant to you. just like you're an engineer in a career partially because pretending to start a company in a garage to $100mm in VC money is not relevant to you, because that garage is not in the wealthiest suburb in a the country, a stone's throw away from Stanford University.
It's not a bad idea to join FB as an engineer. Just make sure you end up working on something that you wouldn't get to elsewhere, keep in mind that, like all organizations, it has its own unique pathologies, and set yourself up so you can walk away if you need to.
See, there will ALWAYS be controversy in large companies. There was back then in IBM, there was in Oracle, there was in Microsoft, there was in Google and there is on Facebook. If you are trying to find a COMPANY that is a "innocent dove", you will have a hard time finding one that is not an NGO or Non For Profit. Or maybe go into one that is not VC funded and not publicly traded.