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Comment by llimos | Hacker News Reader

It's an old article. From my point of view I'm interested in hearing the story of the developers tasked to work on this kind of thing. Do they know what they're building and do it anyway because their manager told them to? Or are they kept in the dark and each build a small part so they can't tell what it's going to be? Or does the company estimate which teams would be ok with building something a little shifty and give it to them?

I'd be especially interested to hear any insider perspectives, from any $bigcorp

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> Do they know what they're building and do it anyway because their manager told them to?

Apologies for steering your thread into charged political territory, but this is one of the biggest reasons I think Zuck and other Valley CEO-types love the H-1B system so much and constantly seek to expand the H-1B cap, e.g. Zuck's "FWD.us" PAC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FWD.us

Disagreeing with one's boss will always have a "filter" when it can mean having to leave the country if tensions escalate into something employment-ending. Why risk it when you can just write the code, collect your pay, and get to live another day in the country you call home? I could never blame someone for making that safe choice.

Disclaimer: this is not a criticism of any H-1B individuals, many of whom I am lucky to count as my inspirations, peers, and friends :)

If you managed to get into Facebook is it a realistic fear that you can't find another job willing to do a H1B transfer within 60 days?

yes, it is

Firstly, the whole 60 days thing is NONSENSE

Your status ends ASAP. The day your job is ended

Secondly, getting H1B transferred is not automatic. You have to get lawyers and have to get it approved

Thirdly, now with so much talk of H1B being ended, and slow approvals, who will take the chance

Fourthly, most H1B are India and China. Both countries' tech firms and countries in general are being attacked by US Government as 'taking US jobs' etc

So all those H1Bs are particularly worried

H1B is basically bonded labor

everyone fixates on - you are taking US jobs and bad mouths them

they are coming here (to the West) to get a good life for themselves

If they do anything that their employer doesn't like, they are screwed and must go back to their home country and give up on their American Dream

To give you an idea of how crazy it is, I got a 44% salary increase when switching jobs (H1B to H1B)

That's life as an H1B. You are usually being paid 40% to 60% less than comparable skilled Americans

It is a system set up to HEAVILY FAVOR companies. That's why FB, Goog, Etc are screaming about 'competitiveness' . What they really want is

underpaid, trapped, bonded labor who have no choice when it comes to where they work

With extra long H1B and Green Card approval, they are getting 22 to 28 year olds who will have to work for them for 10 to 14 years (if India or China)

What company wouldn't want such amazing terms for hiring people

>Firstly, the whole 60 days thing is NONSENSE >Your status ends ASAP. The day your job is ended

The government literally published a rule in 2017 that literally includes a 60 day grace period. Not sure how much I should take your statements as factual rather than emotionally tainted beyond recognition when you don't know (or omit on purpose) something like that.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/18/2016-27...

Facebook acquired the app in question, so I'd imagine that many of the developers working on it joined before it was part of Facebook.

As for why they'd be okay with working on it -- well, the world is not so black and white. I think many people would consider a free VPN that collects statistics on what apps you use to be a fair tradeoff. There are many circumstances where being able to hide your activity from your government / employer / ISP / whoever is more important than some random third party knowing what apps you're using.

Some people just don't care and are proud of the technical challenge irrespective of ethics. I once had a CTO candidate boast about writing desktop spyware back in the day and how he'd hacked all our families (his words, not mine, he brought up the topic).

You didn’t quit in the spot?

We didn't hire him, the whole team had very strong and very negative feedback once the shock wore off.

edit: It was generally a very weird job and this was probably one of the least odd incidents.

Likely internal propaganda. About how this doesn't really harm the consumer. About how you protect them from worse things. And that its all laid out in the EULA.

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