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I went to university in Texas and so many people went to work in the Oil industry and even with an awareness of climate change issues, whenever I questioned them the answer was "Oil is a critical part of our energy infrastructure and someone will need to figure out how to get it out of the ground."

It was fair reasoning but I always thought "you are a bright engineer, you don't have to be the person figuring this out, you could be taking your skills elsewhere and hopefully the oil industry will have to settle for worse talent."

Yes, Facebook is valuable in many ways to people but do you, personally, need to be the person aiding the mining of information? If you are upset about the deleterious effects of Social why don't you work for Netflix? Or any of the other similarly compensated companies. You don't have to work for a 'social good' company but there are absolutely well paying companies out there with a neutral effect on society. Working at let's say Stitchfix or Salesforce or Microsoft doesn't make you a martyr but shit, at least it's not Facebook!

I don't think my friends are evil for working in oil but I think there are alternatives to do less evil in the world. That same MechE working on oil could find just as challenging work elsewhere. If you are a talented ChemE how about working on batteries or pharmaceuticals (even tho that industry is shitty for other reasons, the output at least helps people stay alive.)

Yup, you can hear similar argument from meat eaters.

LOL that's so me; I am not perfect. My partner went vegan a few years ago while she was eating a filet mignon at our anniversary dinner and just said "I'm not eating meat anymore."

I don't eat meat at home now but I definitely get it when I'm out at a restaurant. Eeek. Occasionally she gets all 'cmon man' but usually it's OK.

That sounds unfair. Of course you very accustomed to working with tools you work with every day, especially if they're good. You'll also never find a 1:1 match between companies though and not-bad people can switch between systems as needed. Unless you need an intermediate level boilerplate writer ready to go with tech X and Y from day 1, it should be fine.

Why not say: These are people experienced with systems that work well. Maybe they can bring those workflows over and improve the company when they come here.

Because it's pretty clear the point of the comment was the lack of ethics in pursuit of money.

Not everybody wants to work at places like that, or with people like that.

What's the point in them bringing technical expertise to your environment if they poison the culture with their amorality and venality?

Money isn't everything, some of us know that, some of us don't care.

Assuming the premise, natch. :)

The post was much shorter when I responded and the technical bit was a more significant part of it. I totally get the other points, but they stand on their own.

This is the kind of discussion I love to see! I do wish the top comment showed that it was edited to make it more clear.

ah right, understand now, cheers

Yes, because everyone who works or has worked at Facebook is amoral and just after money...

Because their tooling knowledge is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic compared to their willingness to sell out their own people for a buck.

Support for your claim?

That sounded like an openion not a claim.

That is a very obnoxious way of saying you disagree. Please don’t do that in a discussion forum like this.

Quit men quit. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

If you are a Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram employee, you must know by now that these companies won't change by inside forces. If you work in these companies, you are an accomplice of everything of bad that is happening in the world: from climate change apologists, the destruction of Amazon by Brazil's government, the killing of black people by American police.

Quit. Now.

Passing judgment on thousands of employees like this is really no better either, you are just imposing your own morals on them.

If their morals are incompatible with yours, then its fair game to pass judgement on them and not hire them or urge others (who have to make their own moral decision on it) not to (or as the commentor is stating: to consider hiring others first). Nobody has to follow what this commentor is saying, if they disagree.

Personally, I question people’s moral judgement if they work for a company I deem evil and will dissassociate with them. Why wouldn’t I? Others with different values can do differently.

It’s really quite something to watch how quickly the self righteous vilify and stereotype entire swaths of people. Exactly the type of behavior they apparently abhor.

Shame culture is very poisonous, it turns people with good intentions into the exact opposite.

Ah the "I was just doing my job" defense.

No, not at all. Don’t get me wrong, I myself would not work at Facebook because of my _own_ morals. But I draw a line between what I believe in and how I project those beliefs onto others.

If there’s a thing I’ve learned in life is that reality is extremely nuanced and passing blanket judgements like the above is almost always bound to be wrong.

The Philip Morris of tech.

See my other reply on this same thread. I would never work for Philip Morris in the same way I would never work for FB.

This mentality is extremely dangerous because it cuts both ways: imagine companies discriminating against employees because they believe abortion is a right, or because they are strong 2A supporters or detractors.

If we go down this path, we _all_ end up losers. Attacking the employees is really not the way to go, in the end, they are the ones with the least leverage to influence anything.

Do you believe you don't need to compromise morals to work at Google? They're not the most wholesome of companies. You pretty much need to compromise some morals to work just about anywhere. Just Facebook stands out as being more than most places in this regard.

Your rant is unhelpful and applies broad stereotypes and assumptions to a lot of people. You also strongly imply you've never worked at a SV company, so you don't even have first hand experience here.

> You pretty much need to compromise some morals to work just about anywhere.

Then how come only people at FB are protesting and no one else?

> Best of luck to those of you looking to leave.

I would be shocked if even one of these people leave.

The issue aside, you’re simply chastising a straw man that you’ve constructed by assuming the worst possible interpretation of every aspect of your opponent’s position, seemingly without ever having spoken to one of them. This is not an effective way to communicate.

It’s just sanctimonious grandstanding. This is how you get lots of internet points while even further exacerbating the very same problem you’re railing against.

And that’s coming from someone who agrees with you.

Care telling me where you make hiring decisions so I can avoid it like the self righteous plague it must be?

Don't you think it might be a good moment to try to be righteous again?

By rightousness I mean a zealous belief that you are right and those who disagree are wrong. There isn't any correctness or incorrect implication with righteousness: it can power civil rights movements and the reign of terror all the same.

In this particular instance though, I am implying that OPs righteousness, devoid of nuance and juvenile in its simplicity, is indeed wrong. And I wouldn't work at an organization whose staff was curated by such a faulty logic.

FAANG talking down on other FAANG seems funny.

I'm not FAANG just a concerned contributor who gets to work with them daily and was watching this unfold while getting tear gassed standing in drum circles this weekend.

Unless this is about G attacking FBers, yeah, that has been fun to watch. As usual the FB'ers are pretty silent about everything. Couple of "hi i work for fb and want to leave what should i do" posts but that was all I really saw.

I'm concerned for someone who has so much wrongly placed anger... dude you're all worked up about Facebook for no reason, get real they aren't the enemy

I just threw an off the wall mention that I was out protesting and getting tear gas shot at me this weekend and you're commenting that my anger toward FB is misplaced?

Huh, wonder why I'm worked up.

Yeah me too because unless mark Zuckerberg shot tear gas at you I still don't get it. You just sound really mad at FB and silicon valley for no good reason

> You just sound really mad at FB and silicon valley for no good reason

As a reader of Hacker News, it'd be quite hard to imagine you don't have at least have an understanding of some reasons to dislike Facebook or Silicon Valley. Not agreement, but at least an understanding. Every week it seems there is something posted for both topics...

Of course I see comments and articles about it all the time, I do not understand it and think they are totally wrong. Like I said no good reason that I have seen

The funny thing is Twitter gets roasted for taking the opposite stance... There's no winning

Then you also know a good deal of people disagree with you, so what you see as wrong likely doesn't match the poster. So what's the point of going in this loop of useless comments?

The only person making useless posts here is you... I responded to this person directly to comment on their post and state my opinion, who TF are you? Did you actually just make a comment to say stop posting in aloop and add nothing to the convo? Do you see how ironically stupid that is?

My my company might support dictatorships that murder millions, but at least it has more rainbow flags than yours.

Translation: "If you don't agree with my moral notions of the correct balance between censorship v. expression, and various other complex nuanced philosophical notions, I'm going to insult you and hope that you never find a job again."

Spoken like a lover of freedom and someone who should be upvoted to the top comment.

This would hit harder if you mentioned where you work -- i.e., on whose behalf you're deciding not to hire devs with FB on their resumes.

Would it actually be helpful? Or are you just baiting to get OP fired?

I have no idea whether OP would be fired if they mention where they work. While through context I'd infer that they're interviewing people on behalf of an established tech company, it's also possible that they're running a small consulting business or something, such that publicly commenting on controversial topics wouldn't affect their relationship with their employer.

Either way, saying that FB is bad and their devs are immoral and you would prefer not to hire them because they demonstrate their lack of backbone by not standing up to Zuck is a pretty ironic thing to be posting anonymously.

I think it would be helpful because OP's post smells a lot like sanctimonious grandstanding.

I don’t know if it would be that effective- it’s clear this persons post is currently in the positive. It’s highly likely there are other people in positions where they can hire others who have contributed to keeping the position in the positive score range (or at least not so negative that you have to highlight it to see it). By making it more broad we can assume that a silent chunk of people upvoting it agree for their own companies and positions of power too, and those we can’t pull aside to ask who they work for.

The intention of this post isn't to "hit hard" it's just to remind people who may have forgotten and are in positions of hiring power that there are a lot of people (devs/non-devs) unemployed or furloughed right now through no fault of their own that should be considered before throwing FB employees, who are some of the highest paid in the valley, parachutes.