Ask HN: Facebook engineers, what keeps you at Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Facebook engineers, what keeps you at Facebook?

76 pointsnobunaga55 comments

This is a legit question and not a rhetorical/troll question. My own opinion is negative of them, and I wish they did not exist but that does not mean others are not allowed to work there or do not have different opinions. However, I am curious, is the work interesting? Is the pay too good? Or do you feel that there is no negative impact of Facebook on the world and humanity in general or that its positive influence outweighs the negative?

Id love to hear why people stick it out there when there are many other companies that could pay as good or provide more fulfilling (again, subjective) work for less pay.

Edit : For context, I thought of this when I read about the ad Zuckerberg put out against apple recently, which is obviously far from the truth/false.

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Been at FB two years, joined after my wife had been there 1.5 years. There are tons of people who join bc of significant others or friends, it’s a good place to work.

* $$$ - There are only a few companies at that level of total comp. FB stock has climbed a lot in the last two years.

* Benefits - if you’re starting a family, FB gives the most leave of any big tech. I’m a dad and currently taking my 4 month fully paid paternity leave, after already taking 10 weeks paid COVID leave this year to take care of my two year old. We’ll be getting 10 more weeks of COVID leave for H1 2021 also.

* Culture - say what you will about the FAANG interview culture, but top tier companies have really good people and high standards. I’ve gotten pushed more in the last two years than any job before that. If you’re a high performer, the ceiling is insanely high, both in comp and responsibility.

* FB has tons of projects that have nothing to do with the things HN hates about FB. There is a massive chunk of the company working on awesome products that get used by billions of people.

* (flame war incoming) Not everyone agrees with the HN stance that selling ads based on user data is fundamentally evil.

* FB has done sketchy things in the past, but there’s so much government regulation and increased scrutiny, none of that would fly in 2020.

> FB has done sketchy things in the past, but there’s so much government regulation and increased scrutiny, none of that would fly in 2020.

You really believe that? Because FB was caught in scandals after scandals, and never seemed to change its approach on any issue. At this stage, it's not "some sketchy things", it's a mindset at top level.

Don't get me wrong: If we were scrutinizing all large corporate the way FB is, and ask people to quit if we found anything ethically questionable, there would be no large corporate and probably a high unemployment rate.

But let's keep in mind how FB "behaves" -Cambridge analytica -Selling users pivate messages to third party with a highly questionable excuse of users consenting -Threatening to leave Europe or Australia if they pass regulations FB doesn't like

And what fundamental changes were made at top management to give the company a radical different orientation preventing more scandals in the future: -

But my final point will be: all of these were well reported and described in details. FB users cannot say "we didn't know" in good faith. Fool me once: shame on you. Fool me twice: shame on me. Users have the absolute right to not give a damn, and FB has the absolute right to test the limits of acceptance. We're not talking about a charity organization here.

> At this stage, it's not "some sketchy things", it's a mindset at top level.

Of course working there requires sharing (or having rationalized) at least some part of that mindset.

I feel like the obvious answer is pretty substantial amounts of $$$. But in seriousness I think it is naive to say that Facebook has only downsides. Their tools do offer many benefits to many people, and I expect most of the engineers who on on those tools do so with that goal in mind.

Is there anything unique to the tools that Facebook provides?

It seems like most of the stuff they do has been provided by competitors at one time or another, or could be done better outside of the constraints of facebook’s ‘engagement’ model.

The network effect is unique to Facebook. No competitor is going to beat it until they get the same number of users.

Sure, but we aren’t talking about ‘beating’ Facebook. We’re talking about why people work there.

Perhaps some of the things Facebook does can be done better by other companies.

They don’t need to ‘beat’ Facebook as a whole, and if the engineers motivations are the features they work on, perhaps they can get more satisfaction elsewhere.

Most people have no issue going through FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc on a regular basis.

But when you say we should start using alternative tools in parallel to FB so that we contribute to grow these networks and reduce our dependence, then it's suddenly a huge cumbersome task.

Let's admit that the vast majority of users is actually ok with what FB does with their data. Showing concerns about privacy without actually doing anything is a cheap way of looking good.

Anecdata but "substantial amounts of $$$" can be found at a number of companies that are not Facebook. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/

I'm no fan of Facebook, and I think they've made a lot of unethical decisions, but I also feel like they're becoming this massive scapegoat for the social discomfort caused by the giant mirror that information technology has held up to human nature. Yes, the algorithms have had some horrifying effects, and yes, they have intentionally engineered their products to be addictive, and they deserve to be criticized and punished for those behaviors, but we also need to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that some of this is a consequence of the darker corners of the human heart. It's not like we didn't have holy wars and genocide before Facebook. To some degree we are all complicit in this problem. I'm not trying to be a defeatist and say that we shouldn't try to improve things, but if we adopt this attitude of "let's just abolish the tech giants and everything will be great," we're letting ourselves off the hook and I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.

The counterpoint to this is that ‘human nature’ never had to deal with the addictive algorithms designed to keep people viewing Ads. Obviously this applies to Youtube and others too.

It doesn’t take a long hard look at ourselves to acknowledge that we are quite vulnerable to manipulation or addiction.

Those vulnerabilities are not going anywhere.

I suggest that there is no value in somehow blaming ourselves for them and that what we need to do is make good decisions about how we shape our world to support humans as we are rather than to maximize exploitation of our weaknesses.

It’s quite straightforward to acknowledge that things like holy wars based on ideology have been with us for a long time.

It’s a straw man to suggest that anyone is saying “let’s abolish the tech giants and everything will be great”.

You say: “I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.”

Can you articulate what this deeper problem actually is?

I'm not suggesting "blaming" ourselves, per se. Sitting around and wallowing in our own guilt won't accomplish anything. But I do think we should accept that our own nature is part of what has led to this and be honest about the problem. I couldn't have put it better than you did: we should think about how to support humans as they are.

I'm not sure what I said is a straw man. I was being a little flip, but I think it's a normal human impulse to blame "that thing" or "those people" and to feel that a problem can be fixed by just eliminating whatever that is. Maybe nobody is explicitly saying "if we eliminate Facebook the problem will go away," but I do think some people implicitly feel that way.

The deeper problem, in my view, is that network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it).

I agree with almost everything you say here.

What I’m not sure about is how we are not being honest about the problem?

I agree with this: “network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it)”

Except that it seems over-general. I think this is feature of some social network designs, but I don’t see how we can say it applies to all ‘network technogies’.

To me that just leads back to there being a problem with how Facebook is designed.

It is designed to maximize engagement so they can sell ads - I.e. they profit from this disinhibition.

I think we largely agree on what’s happening, but what I don’t yet understand is how you conclude that Facebook is a scapegoat.

I consider them a scapegoat in the sense that they're sort of a catchall target for negative feelings about these problems. I also think they're not a scapegoat insofar as they're responsible for their actual bad practices. It's not really either-or for me: they're blamed for things they really are responsible for, but I also think they catch a lot of flak in general for things that are largely beyond their control. I'd like them to be accountable for the bad things they actually do while keeping our eye on the broader problem, which I'm not as convinced as you are that everyone is doing already.

Hmm,

Honestly that doesn’t really clarify it for me.

If the broader problem is:

“network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition”

Then Facebook is by far the most significant manifestation of that, followed by YouTube and Twitter who are also criticized a great deal.

What would it look like to address this broader problem without actually focussing on where it is manifest?

I think I might be able to see more easily what you are getting at if you could give an example of something you see as beyond Facebook’s control, but for which they are catching flak?

I don't work at Facebook, but I have found it to be an essential political organizing tool.

In my small city, Facebook is the public square. It's where policy conversations happen. And it's how I've built relationships, both strong tie and weak tie, with any number of people I would never have had the chance to converse with pre-Facebook. It gives us a network with which to easily keep in touch, and with which to broadcast notify each other of policy developments and debate their merits.

I recognize that Facebook writ large has deep problems. But in my local community, I can't imagine what would happen to our political dialog if it were to just disappear. It would be very, very hard to follow policy developments, remain plugged in to my local government, and to find like minded people to organize with.

one of the main reasons why I work at Facebook (4 years now) is because I genuinely like the product, and I know lots of people who it brings legitimate value to. Obviously we have made lots of mistakes and bad decisions -- nobody can deny that -- but I think we get a hard time on HN because the core demographic group here (young affluent american males) is one who sees basically no benefit to the product, so they're weighing those harms against nothing. If you talk to some people who genuinely use and love the product (who do exist!), you'll get a different perspective.

Why is this flagged? I get that it is potentially a flamewar topic, but I don’t see an actual flamewar, and it’s fair to say this question gets asked every time there is a negative piece about Facebook.

Why on Earth is this flagged? Honestly the flagging is out of control. We can't have a discussion about the ethics of working for Company X with feedback from people who actually work there?

Does the fact it's flagged change anything?

I recently quit to start my own thing but still feel qualified to answer:

1. I frankly didn’t even know how well the pay was before they made the offer. I applied there because Facebook products have been incredibly useful in my life and that of my friends/family...most of my life’s opportunities in the last 15 years came through Facebook. 2. I was of course aware that the company also makes mistakes but my attitude going in was that I wanted to be part of making things better 3. Looking back at my 5 years there I got everything I wanted and then some. I got to work with amazing like minded peers...people that would show up everyday to do better. I found that really inspiring! As a result my baseline for excellence has been pushed upward dramatically! 4. Individuals have all the impact and power there! Management generally took a more passive approach. Their main job is to provide resources and not to tell people how to do their jobs (within reasonable limits). 5. About the bad headlines: in the first couple years I made the effort to internally research every bad story I read in the media...but not a single time was I able to confirm the headlines and allegations. Every single time it turned out that the media was mischaracterizing or misrepresenting what actually happened. The picture that emerged for me over time was that the media was incredibly incompetent when it came to tech and how to piece together information they had...and frankly just looked for things that supported their narrative 6. That’s not to say that we didn’t make mistakes or that there wasn’t problems...but I have yet to find the media writing about that in a way that advances the conversation or informs people. 7. But you will easily find people who didn’t like it there and I get it...it’s not for everyone

top talent. It is an absolute joy to work with dedicated people who care about their craft, and FB is filled with them. Maybe you want to do a startup someday. You are going to need cofounders and go work at Facebook for 2 years and you'll probably build a working relationship with 100-200 highly talented people (while getting paid a lot!). Alternatively you could code by yourself for 2 years, without getting paid, and scrounge around on forums looking to build more working relationships. the former is MUCH more efficient.

products. For VR it's top notch (Oculus); for AI too; for VC (portal); for open source web tech (React); for data center tech. if you are interested in those domains (and I'm sure many more) its a top place to work.

information. they have brought billions people to the table to share online. while personally I would prefer if people were sharing more on open platforms and protocols, I think theres nothing wrong with competition and Facebook's "it just works" is great competition for Webtech and I still believe someday the web will get its act together and improve its core tech.

i worked at various big techs as an employee and contractor, and while never worked at FB, I can tell you the people building products mostly are building to build a better world, while at the same time the strategy of the company is to maximize the legal environment first to ensure profits, and put products second. So FB is no different in that regard.

Doing something big in the world. That comes with a whole lot of good - I can’t imagine COVID lockdowns and how lonely it would be without FB/IG - and unfortunately with some bad. The media demonization of the company is incredibly disappointing

Taking in to consideration scandals like Cambridge analytica, its impact on the election, disinformation, do you really think criticism of FB is not valid?

Facebook

- Provides groups for people with common interests.

- Allows people to share positive ideas and articles, not just negatives

- Brings far-flung family members together in a way not easily replicated

- Allows people who care for each other to easily stay in touch despite distance and years apart.

It can be easy to point to other applications that could do this, but there's nothing I know of that's good enough, and certainly nothing with the same number of users.

> there are many other companies that could pay as good

Not really, it's pretty much limited to the FAANGs

People that do not work in tech do not follow tech news closely. They are happy to use Facebook for the social features it offers. They wouldn't have heard of problems with Cambridge Analytica, hearings in the Senate, tech over-reach etc. I can imagine it is fulfilling to work for Facebook because regular users like Facebook.

If someone cares to fix problems with social media, then it makes sense to do it from inside as well as outside.

(I don't work for Facebook.)

What do you think is false about what he specifically said?

It is a little annoying how one sided the discourse here is against FB. Makes them seem far worse than they actually are.

Anyway, while I don’t work there, maybe an answer to your question: people find meaning in life in things other than “meaningful work”.

From my perspective, I do not think Apple is making their changes in iOS to limit small business in anyway and is having a positive impact in many respects with relation to privacy. I think you can still have privacy and help businesses succeed. Imagine if FB were more privacy conscious (might reduce their annual turn over a little but i dont think detrimentally), worked with apple to product a product and tech that preserved privacy while allowing advertising to continue.

It can happen, FB just doesntt want to for either $$$ or for loss of control.

Most people do not have the luxury of being able to pick and choose their employer based on whether they are individually comfortable with every aspect of the organisation’s impact on the world.

Most people have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and would be delighted to have a well paid job with a leading tech firm.

Generally speaking, the folks at Facebook have options to work other places in the industry.

How do you know for sure the "other places" are any better? FB is much more scrutinized than other companies.

And as I wrote earlier: scandals were largely reported and extensively covered. Most users stayed. So if users are happy with it, why should the employees quit a good job?

The idea that all of the 'scandals' and morally repugnant behavior within Facebook management and in the company as a whole has been reported and revealed is so laughable that I cannot believe anyone would try to suggest this with a straight face. Facebook continues to lower the bar on ethical behavior, it is built on a foundation of mass surveillance for profit, and it continues to deny, deflect, and obfuscate whenever it is caught again doing something immoral. Most users stayed due to lack of a good alternative, not because they felt any affinity for Facebook. The continued decline of Facebook the brand and the fact that legal and legislative corrections to their behavior are gaining traction is a reasonably good indicator that users are, in fact, not happy with it.

What decline of the brand? HN isn't really FBs general audience, who clearly do not care. DAU continues to go up. The fact that you think the planned 'legal and legislative corrections' by the same entity that approved their acquisitions only a few years ago, is genuinely hilarious. They're a political scapegoat and not much more, same reason Google will see the same antitrust case from the same AGs this week.

>The idea that all of the 'scandals' and morally repugnant behavior within Facebook management and in the company as a whole has been reported and revealed is so laughable that I cannot believe anyone would try to suggest this with a straight face.

The point is not that all potential scandals have been reported. The point is the ones that have been uncovered have been extensively reported. And that didn't change anything to the majority of users.

So why would you think more scandals will do?

> Most users stayed due to lack of a good alternative, not because they felt any affinity for Facebook.

When asked what the alternatives miss, the answer is almost always the network. When you ask to contribute to alternative so you grow that network, it's "meeeh, too complicated to use 2 networks". But it's not too complicated to use FB, and Twitter, and Instagram, and Linkedin, and...

"There is not good alternative" is a lame excuse. The honest answer is: "I don't want to do any effort nor any kind of compromise whatsoever".

And if you don't want to change anything, in my view, you're fine with the status quo.

I’m sure they have options, but do they have options to work for employers that perfectly align with their own moral compass?

I doubt even Facebook employees have that luxury, which is the point I made.

> Most people do not have the luxury of being able to pick and choose their employer based on whether they are individually comfortable with every aspect of the organisation’s impact on the world.

This is true of most people. This is not true of most facebook developers.

If you are an engineer at FB you have choices, including the luxury of being able to pick and choose your employer based on their moral and ethical impact on the world. There are no salaried employees at FB who are facing the prospect of taking the job at FB or living on the streets.

So what place do you suggest they go work at that’s so ethically pure?

The government? A church...oh wait

Nice attempt to apply the fallacy of the excluded middle. There are lots of places that are less ethically challenging and morally questionable where you can seek gainful employment, in fact the list of places that are a bigger ethical minefield than working at Facebook is vanishingly small.

Important caveat: TO YOU

Note I said: “based on whether they are individually comfortable with every aspect of the organisation’s impact on the world.”

I’m sure Facebook employees are talented and have options for employment, but even they are unlikely to find an employer perfectly aligned with their own moral compass.

People replying to you presume if you got an offer from FB then you can get many $400k offers from other companies. Obviously, it isn’t true. Many people only get the one good offer when they interview. With the interviewing bar constantly rising, I expect people to find it harder to even get the one offer.

And of course, people will say, “you don’t have to live in X, you don’t have to live a lifestyle resembling professional middle class outside the Bay Area, etc.” moving the goal posts...

People used to ask me the same about working in finance, I gave these answers:

* nothing I do on a daily basis is immoral or I wouldn't do it

* if my employer wasn't doing this, plenty of other companies would

* if I jacked my job in, nothing would change, the company/industry would replace me and move on exactly in its current direction

* I make good money and that means I pay a tonne of tax (which I don't try to avoid or evade) and that's what actually paying for schools and hospitals and roads and everything else you see around you

* if I did leave, I may be replaced by someone who is willing to do immoral things and evade their taxes so how would that help?

I imagine the same key points are true for every employee at any organisation.

I don't work at Facebook, so I am not the target demographic, however if given the chance, I would love to work for Facebook.

Here is a controversial stance, but why is Facebook such an evil corp?

They don't pollute the world like Exxon does, they don't have "banana republics" like Coca-Cola used to do, they don't steal water like Nestle does, they don't have sexual harrasment lawsuits like Google does (correct me please if I am wrong), they didn't fire their own diversity officer like Google did, and you don't have to be a part of a cult to work for them like you need in Apple?

Don't get me wrong, I know they have negative sides, and Zuck does appear like an evil mastermind, but come on, the demise of Facebook has been greatly exaggerated, Facebook still is by far a net positive, no matter how much the media tries to convince us otherwise.

Also, if people can go and work for Oracle or Palantir, then Facebook is not even comparable..

Here you go

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...

I’d say they do pollute the world with disinformation.

That is just as much an externality as the pollution you mention in your examples.

Do you agree with everything your current employer does?

I do.

I'm self-employed and even I don't

definitely No. I disagree and argue a lot about it. But since its is large corp, my effort of changing things is all wasted in gutter.

No, but they also dont have as much of a negative impact on humanity (disinformation, cambridge analytica, elections impacts etc). I think there is a big difference between being annoyed by a decision that has very small blast radius vs what facebook does.

Started working in April.

- I work with the most talented people I've met, by far. These people are crazy smart and experienced. Nobody slacks, everyone's valuable and productive.

- I'm challenged in my daily work. It's never boring (I work on an internal tool that's very complex). All my previous jobs have been "plop features on this CRUD app". I'm positive this is one of the best places to become a highly competent software engineer as fast as possible.

- Comp is nearly double my previous job. After being on the inside, seeing how it's run and how competent everyone is at their job, I'm also pretty bullish on the company's future and stock price.

- I get to write Rust daily. It's still in early stages of being supported at FB but had a decent following and should be well supported soon. Developer experience is extremely important to me and Rust is just great to work with.

- My manager is great. Very empathetic and I trust him with any problem I have, he always does his best to solve any issue I bring up.

- Internal mobility is great. I'm thinking after a couple years on my current team I can go work on VR, Rust infra, Pytorch, or whatever else seems interesting, anywhere FB has an office. Can go full remote after one more promo.

- The company is structured so that incentives are fairly well aligned. All the organizations I've been at previously had problems with this. It's not easy to game the system or be too self-serving here.

- Internally, dissenting voices are not silenced. There's a healthy discourse about the company's decisions, people are very free to bash it or Zuck without fear of repercussions.

- I think that the hate FB gets is somewhat deserved but not to the extent that HN believes it is. There are a lot of media stories that are exaggerated or plain false (example: FB does not sell your data to anyone), but I'd only know that because I get to hear both sides of the argument. There's also a perception of neglect or malevolence that is associated with FB, but the truth is that solving every single problem with running a social network is incredibly difficult and despite FB's size, it's not possible to make everyone happy. Example: conservatives complain that FB is censoring them unfairly, progressives think FB isn't doing enough to counter hate speech. Finding the perfect balance is virtually impossible. We've also come a very long way since Cambridge Analytica, there's a ridiculous amount of resources being put towards making sure there are no privacy violations. FB is the least popular big tech company but I don't think it's any less ethical than Google or Amazon.

- I also think FB's benefit to the world is largely underestimated by HN. Reducing friction for finding and maintaining human relationships is incredibly important. We're also loved by small businesses, countless companies may not exist without FB advertising.

- It's the only big tech company that would give me the time of day. I probably work have taken a Google offer if I had the choice.

I intend to be here for a few years, at least.

That's not to say it's all good: FB infra is all in-house and breaks often. Hack (PHP with a type system duct-taped on) sucks, is totally proprietary, and is everywhere at FB. The company steals product ideas from other companies. It's secretly more or less stack ranked, so there's a lot more stress than other companies. I'm very wary of who I tell where I work given the negative sentiment.

> FB is the least popular big tech company but I don't think it's any less ethical than Google or Amazon.

Can't argue there, but that's an incredibly low bar to set.

Oh come on, HN. Plenty of people love using Facebook. Despite what you might think, it isn't a giant global Nuremburg Rally.

I don't personally have an account but everyone in my family does and their feeds are dominated by entirely benign family photo sharing.

There's such a disconnect between FB's reputation online vs. what most people see. My feed is almost entirely < checks > pictures of kids and pets, and ads for geeky t-shirts. It's hard to take all the negative press seriously when most ( US ) users don't see anything like it.

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