There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume.
Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there in a way it isn't for e.g. Apple or Google or Amazon.
> People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good on a resume
Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not universally respected within tech.
(Neither Goldman nor Facebook care about public opinion, outside of managing political risk, since neither sells its product to the mass market [1].)
[1] Goldman recently started doing this, though
But there's definitely some amount of stigma associated with having Facebook on your resume. The interesting question is whether that's temporary, or whether it will become even more pronounced over time.
I could see it going either way.
I'd be hesitant about someone who'd work for Madoff.