This is sort of surprising information, from my view.
The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.
The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.
If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices.
They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "oh we fucked up" once the bomb exploded.
And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities.
While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. And they have a very arrogant culture. Somehow I doubt FB is going to bleed talent anytime soon.
It’s also just one tweet. It’s an article based off a single sentence in the nytimes article. Maybe people are transferring, maybe this is a reason or an excuse, but the support in this article is pretty flimsy.
having worked in Facebook games in 2012, I think some today forget how much worse for privacy Facebook used to be than it is today
> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I doubt it has to do with moral qualms as employees. More to do with your friends and family giving you crap for working at a company that's getting bad press.
I disagree. My basis is the conversations I had when I interviewed there. They did not extend an offer, so read what you will into my own biases. :)
But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occurring to me to make a choice".
With creepy consistency, the replies were rejections of this idea. "No, we're connecting the world!".
My conclusion was an echo of the Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
I hope that the quitting phenomenon is real, and that it represents the creme de la creme, with many other options, leaving because they can no longer avoid understanding. If this is happening, then FB's decline will just accelerate.
> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.
Doesn't need to be cynical. "I never thought of it that way" is maybe one of the most important phrases you can say.
These people didn't see their jobs as unethical until someone really put a spotlight on what they do. It forced them to look at their roles in all of this and say "is this right?". To quote David Mitchell: "Are we the baddies?".
We saw the same thing after Snowden, people were leaving the NSA in mass after the average person became aware of the situation.
Data collection is what enabled the Nazis to find Jews and homosexuals, the next mass percution can be more specific than race. Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV.
As the world becomes more aware of the dangers of algorithms and AI, Facebook engineers are rethinking their career path.
It's clear to me that Zuckerberg was entirely too willing to abuse his power from the start, he doesn't seem to have good intentions at all.
Facebook is a huge organization and although to the outside world it's perceived as one, internally it's basically hundreds of separated teams and companies. So to your point, yes probably some are aware of all what's going on around the company, but there's probably an equal amount that are not. I work for a Fortune 50 company and I get much of the information about the company from the news, despite having a relatively senior level role.
> "The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, "
Or just giving politically correct reasons that conveniently fit the current broader narrative.
Might this be the last straw for some that were already close to leaving? Sure. But it's not the only reason, just the one that's simple to explain and/or easy to spot.
That said, I have to wonder how often unintended consequences are discussed at FB, or at any of the other (tech) powerhouses. I mean, targeting ads based on personal info hardly sounds like a big moral / ethical problem, until someone finds a loop hole and attempts to exploit it (in what should have been foreseeable ways?).
The cynic in you is obviously right about this one.
The best case scenario here is many people simply didn't ever consider the actual ethics of the business that was paying them until everyone else started talking about it.
Not thinking about it until someone makes you doesn't make you a terrible person of course, but I won't be throwing any admiration your way.
> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions
Employees rarely flip until the organization stops making them money, then they flip en masse. As long as Facebook's stock remains stagnant, the insider leaks will likely continue.
yeah but it wasn’t in the cultural zeitgeist to care about these. Now that it’s popular, many people will want to virtue signal and leave the company so others see how much principle they have.
Or perhaps, over time, they have changed their minds. The principle of charity, it seems to me, requires that we take them at their word in the absence of evidence otherwise.
> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp
I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".
Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.
WhatsApp and Instagram seem to be much more respected than Facebook proper right now, so it kind of makes sense. I also haven't noticed a decline in usage of these apps among my friends, but posts on Facebook itself have really dried up.
I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns. Whats scary is if even internally people are moving departments because of ethics, that basically filters so that the least ethical people are on the teams with the most ethical concerns.
If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, not everyone that works for or wants to work for Facebook is unethical).
I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.
There are companies like cigarette makers who's entire business is generally considered unethical, and others like big banks that could be ethical but often aren't. I would expect this to make a big difference in the type of workers they attract.
Could Facebook exist without selling as much personal data to advertisers as possible? It doesn't look like it currently, but it is at least hypothetical possible.
Count me as one. Who can say if I'd have passed their interview process, but I was recruited by them and immediately said "no thanks", and told their recruiter I didn't like that they subjected their users to psychological experiments without their knowledge[1].
I find a fairly large disconnect between everyone saying people may be uncomfortable working at Facebook and their Glassdoor ratings (probably the highest of any tech company).
I passed, twice. I went through the whole process, was offered an enormous compensation package (7 figures). I went through it because the entire time I was telling myself if they came back with a big enough offer I'd do it. Turns out I was wrong, I couldn't do it even for what definitely qualifies as "gets paid".
This was several years ago, before any specific scandal I can think of. I have constantly questioned whether I made the right move ... it was a lot of money. Now, finally, I have my answer.
That said, of course my story is anecdotal and for the most part, I guarantee you that the great majority of folks would jump for a job at FB. At the time I was going through the process, the work environment was very much kool-aid, with kool-aid posters everywhere, "work hard" posters and such. It went past my sad filter straight to laughable. I was on campus a few months ago and that kind of thing is gone or mostly gone. I hear it's a pretty good working environment these days, actually.
I am one. I didn't even reply to the many targeted requests I got from recruiters for FB positions.
I'd say at the time several years ago it had more to do with "I don't want to have to re-activate my closed FB just to join the company", never mind having to drink the koolaid.
Remember being contacted by the Oculus recruiter, but the association with a white supremacist founder, Palmer Luckey, felt really wrong to me personally. Even after he left it feels tainted.
I left YouTube about a year ago, in part due to cognitive dissonance between my values and the company's objectives. If you're a current employee of a similar company and you're considering your options, I understand the struggle and am happy to talk about it! Everyone's circumstances are different, but for me personally the TL;DR is that I'm much happier working somewhere where I can get 100% behind the mission. Anyway, email's in my profile.
I used to work at facebook and I disagree. Even prior to the recent scandals, there are plenty of employees who have decided to leave facebook due to ethical concerns (myself included). However, most keep this to themselves as Facebook fosters an environment where dissent is not tolerated.
Of course, it's unclear from this article whether negative sentiments have increased substantially this year compared to previous years.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that I am innocent or that I have taken some sort of ethical high-road. I gladly spent many years cashing out my pre-IPO stock grants while turning a blind eye to numerous immoral business practices. But soon after going public, there wasn't much benefit working at Facebook compared to any other large silicon valley tech companies. Without the financial motivation, the ethical concerns made it hard to be excited about remaining.
I am well-connected to Facebook and I have no impression that employees are transferring or worried in any way. The media's exaggerations of employees' reactions is almost as bad as their exaggerations of what Facebook is doing with data.
I have a lot of respect for someone who chooses to not work at a place because that place is doing bad things.
There are so many things that go into that decision, how "important" is it to be employed, how "bad" is the business behavior, how "costly" to a reputation is it to leave or to stay. It is the kind of question that puts a persons character and self image on trial, and in my experience few people emerge on the other side unchanged.
Faulkner said, "... the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." I didn't really understand what he was talking about at the time. This was one of my High School English teacher's favorite quotes. But in the late 90's I met people who were being ripped apart by working at a dot.com company, knowing it was all smoke and mirrors, but staying to that they could vest their stock and sell it before the rest of the world figured it out. Being in a position where your personal wealth will benefit because you are participating in, although not directly responsible for, a fraud that is being perpetuated on the investors. How tainted is that silver?
A couple of years ago I was having lunch with an ex-Googler who was coming to grips with their loss of innocence. They had worked in AdWords and were part of a group that was increasing the average 'spend' of an AdWords customer with targeted messaging that was designed to appeal to their use of the system. This person had recognized that the goal of the program was to essentially "trick" the customer into spending more money when all the statistics said that doing so would not give them a commensurate growth in business or traffic. And as bad as they felt about participating, they continued to do so as the program manager stressed that nobody was "forcing" them to spend more money, just offering them a way to think about where they would "want" to spend more. This person was dealing with the realization that a younger version of themselves would be disgusted with the older version of themselves for "giving in."
It seems that people will talk about honor, character, and integrity in the abstract with one set of views and then find their real character (or lack thereof) when confronted with a test of their values.
Too little, too late. Well, perhaps not, it's never too late, but still.
You built this behemoth, we told you so, you insisted because it was too hard to resist, deal with it.
For the record, the situations in which some people find themselves are complex and not everyone has the freedom a high salary or stocks or other perks grant some of us.
Nevertheless, for those of us who choose to make the world, our world, a nastier, less friendly, more neurotic place, I have zero sympathy. Reap what you sow, in my case it's disdain.
I apologize for the hard tone but I'm not exactly known for accepting "sorry not sorry" kind of apologies.
I was recently testing the water with some Facebook engineers about switching companies because of privacy related concerns. There was some sympathy wrt the company going in a bad direction, but by and large they were staying put because they enjoyed the technical challenges presented to them and pay. I think stories like this are mostly fluff. Most engineers simply don’t care.
We don't know if this is a cluster of concerned people, or a broad trend across the company. Given the vagueness, it's probably the former, because exaggerating the number lends to a more interesting narrative. Not much to see here, just a few people leaving FB.
Facebook is indeed in a crisis, but I just got the feeling that the media is exaggerating anything that has the slightest negative bend to pour more fuel to the fire.
The US is funny. We once had privacy laws that protected your video rental history. And yet very little has been done about protecting privacy except for COPA.
I have wondered for a long time why Facebook employees were even around. It's not like the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the first time an ethically problematic issue had happened because of the way Facebook was designed to work. The people working on the platform created all these issues in some way or another (due to not understanding the implications or management direction).
My guess is that employees of Facebook mostly stay for the money, with a second reason being for some kind of exposure on working on things on "planet scale". I find it difficult to understand anyone being fine with Facebook's ethics all these years and then changing their minds now. It is quite weird.
Facebook is a soulless company. If you're a Facebook employee and haven't understood that yet, I cannot even sympathize with you (while being frustrated and worried about the implications for billions of humans).
While data security is an issue Facebook must reckon with, it is not the major issue Facebook's existence poses to democracies around the world.
The real issue in my mind is that the platform can be used by bad actors to spread misinformation. It's as if during WWII the Nazi's had the ability to publish editorials in leading newspapers throughout the US.
While this is a feature/bug of the internet in general, the vast scale of Facebook and its near ubiquitous use amongst the general voting public in the US and other democratic nations make it the most potent vector through which a bad actor like Russia could spread propaganda and misinformation.
I'm not sure the recent move to label political advertisements as such will do much to safeguard us from misinformation.
How many times have there been privacy settings changes which undermined user intent or resulted in surprising defaults? How many snafus have we witnessed since its inception? I am astounded that employees are just now deciding they've had enough.
Maybe over concerns that their department is in limbo due to the general public's concern, but I can't imagine they have been working on their projects and only now found ethical issues with them.
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.
The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.
[+] [-] sametmax|8 years ago|reply
And I doubt it's a mass exodus either.
If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices.
They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "oh we fucked up" once the bomb exploded.
And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities.
While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. And they have a very arrogant culture. Somehow I doubt FB is going to bleed talent anytime soon.
[+] [-] idunno246|8 years ago|reply
having worked in Facebook games in 2012, I think some today forget how much worse for privacy Facebook used to be than it is today
[+] [-] hayksaakian|8 years ago|reply
I think you hit the nail on the head. I doubt it has to do with moral qualms as employees. More to do with your friends and family giving you crap for working at a company that's getting bad press.
[+] [-] rout39574|8 years ago|reply
But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occurring to me to make a choice".
With creepy consistency, the replies were rejections of this idea. "No, we're connecting the world!".
My conclusion was an echo of the Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
I hope that the quitting phenomenon is real, and that it represents the creme de la creme, with many other options, leaving because they can no longer avoid understanding. If this is happening, then FB's decline will just accelerate.
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
Doesn't need to be cynical. "I never thought of it that way" is maybe one of the most important phrases you can say.
These people didn't see their jobs as unethical until someone really put a spotlight on what they do. It forced them to look at their roles in all of this and say "is this right?". To quote David Mitchell: "Are we the baddies?".
[+] [-] notjtrig|8 years ago|reply
Data collection is what enabled the Nazis to find Jews and homosexuals, the next mass percution can be more specific than race. Anti-vaxers, pizzagaters, people who don't watch anough TV.
As the world becomes more aware of the dangers of algorithms and AI, Facebook engineers are rethinking their career path.
It's clear to me that Zuckerberg was entirely too willing to abuse his power from the start, he doesn't seem to have good intentions at all.
[+] [-] tinbad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|8 years ago|reply
Might this be the last straw for some that were already close to leaving? Sure. But it's not the only reason, just the one that's simple to explain and/or easy to spot.
That said, I have to wonder how often unintended consequences are discussed at FB, or at any of the other (tech) powerhouses. I mean, targeting ads based on personal info hardly sounds like a big moral / ethical problem, until someone finds a loop hole and attempts to exploit it (in what should have been foreseeable ways?).
[+] [-] freshhawk|8 years ago|reply
The best case scenario here is many people simply didn't ever consider the actual ethics of the business that was paying them until everyone else started talking about it.
Not thinking about it until someone makes you doesn't make you a terrible person of course, but I won't be throwing any admiration your way.
[+] [-] FilterSweep|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|8 years ago|reply
Employees rarely flip until the organization stops making them money, then they flip en masse. As long as Facebook's stock remains stagnant, the insider leaks will likely continue.
[+] [-] oculusthrift|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KC8ZKF|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itakedrugs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|8 years ago|reply
I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".
[+] [-] ryanSrich|8 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.
[+] [-] pxeboot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dizzystar|8 years ago|reply
Now the pendulum swings hard opposite, and foolish as the kids where, they wanted the prestige 3 months ago and should suffer that choice today?
Even though I'd never work for Facebook, I can acknowledge the people who work there are working on some tough problems.
I'll be fully convinced when every Facebook product is removed from every website, including React.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] itsthejb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomtang0514|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taurath|8 years ago|reply
If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, not everyone that works for or wants to work for Facebook is unethical).
[+] [-] ThemalSpan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pxeboot|8 years ago|reply
Could Facebook exist without selling as much personal data to advertisers as possible? It doesn't look like it currently, but it is at least hypothetical possible.
[+] [-] kbd|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...
[+] [-] BeetleB|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiveturkey|8 years ago|reply
This was several years ago, before any specific scandal I can think of. I have constantly questioned whether I made the right move ... it was a lot of money. Now, finally, I have my answer.
That said, of course my story is anecdotal and for the most part, I guarantee you that the great majority of folks would jump for a job at FB. At the time I was going through the process, the work environment was very much kool-aid, with kool-aid posters everywhere, "work hard" posters and such. It went past my sad filter straight to laughable. I was on campus a few months ago and that kind of thing is gone or mostly gone. I hear it's a pretty good working environment these days, actually.
[+] [-] r00fus|8 years ago|reply
I'd say at the time several years ago it had more to do with "I don't want to have to re-activate my closed FB just to join the company", never mind having to drink the koolaid.
[+] [-] stevenwoo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kcorbitt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collingreene|8 years ago|reply
The article cites one designer who left (out of ~25,000+ total Facebook employees).
[+] [-] cierra|8 years ago|reply
Of course, it's unclear from this article whether negative sentiments have increased substantially this year compared to previous years.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that I am innocent or that I have taken some sort of ethical high-road. I gladly spent many years cashing out my pre-IPO stock grants while turning a blind eye to numerous immoral business practices. But soon after going public, there wasn't much benefit working at Facebook compared to any other large silicon valley tech companies. Without the financial motivation, the ethical concerns made it hard to be excited about remaining.
[+] [-] stepanhruda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazzlazzlazz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
There are so many things that go into that decision, how "important" is it to be employed, how "bad" is the business behavior, how "costly" to a reputation is it to leave or to stay. It is the kind of question that puts a persons character and self image on trial, and in my experience few people emerge on the other side unchanged.
Faulkner said, "... the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." I didn't really understand what he was talking about at the time. This was one of my High School English teacher's favorite quotes. But in the late 90's I met people who were being ripped apart by working at a dot.com company, knowing it was all smoke and mirrors, but staying to that they could vest their stock and sell it before the rest of the world figured it out. Being in a position where your personal wealth will benefit because you are participating in, although not directly responsible for, a fraud that is being perpetuated on the investors. How tainted is that silver?
A couple of years ago I was having lunch with an ex-Googler who was coming to grips with their loss of innocence. They had worked in AdWords and were part of a group that was increasing the average 'spend' of an AdWords customer with targeted messaging that was designed to appeal to their use of the system. This person had recognized that the goal of the program was to essentially "trick" the customer into spending more money when all the statistics said that doing so would not give them a commensurate growth in business or traffic. And as bad as they felt about participating, they continued to do so as the program manager stressed that nobody was "forcing" them to spend more money, just offering them a way to think about where they would "want" to spend more. This person was dealing with the realization that a younger version of themselves would be disgusted with the older version of themselves for "giving in."
It seems that people will talk about honor, character, and integrity in the abstract with one set of views and then find their real character (or lack thereof) when confronted with a test of their values.
[+] [-] mFixman|8 years ago|reply
Business Insider derivative: "Facebook employees are quitting".
This article is just shitty clickbait.
[+] [-] ILikeConemowk|8 years ago|reply
You built this behemoth, we told you so, you insisted because it was too hard to resist, deal with it.
For the record, the situations in which some people find themselves are complex and not everyone has the freedom a high salary or stocks or other perks grant some of us.
Nevertheless, for those of us who choose to make the world, our world, a nastier, less friendly, more neurotic place, I have zero sympathy. Reap what you sow, in my case it's disdain.
I apologize for the hard tone but I'm not exactly known for accepting "sorry not sorry" kind of apologies.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starpilot|8 years ago|reply
We don't know if this is a cluster of concerned people, or a broad trend across the company. Given the vagueness, it's probably the former, because exaggerating the number lends to a more interesting narrative. Not much to see here, just a few people leaving FB.
[+] [-] hcnews|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkcomp|8 years ago|reply
Better yet, become a whistleblower and leak to the press.
[+] [-] fredliu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newscracker|8 years ago|reply
My guess is that employees of Facebook mostly stay for the money, with a second reason being for some kind of exposure on working on things on "planet scale". I find it difficult to understand anyone being fine with Facebook's ethics all these years and then changing their minds now. It is quite weird.
Facebook is a soulless company. If you're a Facebook employee and haven't understood that yet, I cannot even sympathize with you (while being frustrated and worried about the implications for billions of humans).
[+] [-] meri_dian|8 years ago|reply
The real issue in my mind is that the platform can be used by bad actors to spread misinformation. It's as if during WWII the Nazi's had the ability to publish editorials in leading newspapers throughout the US.
While this is a feature/bug of the internet in general, the vast scale of Facebook and its near ubiquitous use amongst the general voting public in the US and other democratic nations make it the most potent vector through which a bad actor like Russia could spread propaganda and misinformation.
I'm not sure the recent move to label political advertisements as such will do much to safeguard us from misinformation.
[+] [-] some_account|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdragnar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stolson|8 years ago|reply
Maybe over concerns that their department is in limbo due to the general public's concern, but I can't imagine they have been working on their projects and only now found ethical issues with them.
[+] [-] neves|8 years ago|reply
Sorry for the following link. Sure, it is not the same, but this is the great debate of "following orders": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
I'd also like references about the ethical debate about the Manhattan Project where the greatest minds of humanity gathered to develop WMD.