They're probably not smart enough to get in, anyway. If they were, they'd go to FB, milk that huge salary, unload their RSU's on a regular basis, save and invest, and FIRE by age 35.
Signed, a CS graduate and FB stock holder with 500% return.
Signed, a CS graduate and FB stock holder with 500% return.
There are plenty of reasons, beyond ideological ones, not to want to work there. I don’t think I have any ideological objections to Facebook, but the product itself doesn’t interest me and I’m not a user.
I don't work at FB but I'm sure for a product of that scale even if you don't use or care about the product itself, there may be interesting projects for you to work on.
I also don't think I'd care to work on FB the product, but I'm sure it'd be interesting to get to use Haskell to fight spam and work with Simon Marlow. They also use OCaml for some compiler stuff that I'm sure would be interesting.
I agree and am not sure why you think I thought otherwise.
The person I was replying to said "I don't think I have any ideological objections to Facebook" which I assumed to mean they don't see any moral problems with Facebook.
I was merely disagreeing with the idea that someone's lack of interest in the exterior facing product implies there are no interesting projects for that person in the entire company.
It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.
Of the dozen or so folks I know at Facebook, I'd be excited to work with about two of them again. The others are...fine. Much like the folks Google hires now. They're fine.
Once you hit a certain point, you start hiring ditch-diggers just like everybody else. Because you've got ditches to dig.
Some are motivated by other considerations, such as impact of work and work/life balance.