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Comment by sagivo | Hacker News Reader

I am an x-Facebook employee. In the early days I used to be proud wearing Facebook swag. Later it bacame more and more an issue. People started making comments on feature X or policy Y they didn't like. I eventually didn't wear any swag in public, this is when I've realized I need to leave the company.

Facebook is still a great place to work but the brand is so damaged that it's hard to see how they gain consumer trust again. As a consumer company it means any new product (libra, unified family of apps etc..) will fail because of that.

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Not to discount your experience, but IMHO this is a pretty niche opinion. Most of my friends and family seem to be either oblivious to any issues with Facebook, or at most be concerned about X or Y but unwilling to part with their network.

I tried to dig up some stats, and the best I could find was a survey by The Verge[1] from Dec 2019:

According to the survey, 71% of people had a favorable opinion of Facebook, and 75% think Facebook has a positive or neutral impact on society.

However, Facebook scored relatively worse than most other brands surveyed (except Twitter), so you may be onto something. It's also possible that it's worsened in the past year.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...

If 10% of people think Facebook is the root of all that's evil, you are likely to have some awkward conversations regardless of what 70% of people think. It doesn't take a majority of people to make things awkward/ ugly, just a vocal minority.

Also, I suspect developers and knowledge workers are more likely to dislike Facebook. It doesn't matter what the cashier at Safeway thinks. If your friends and acquaintances hate Facebook, it's going to feel a lot worse. And if you are a developer or designer, it's likely you have a fair number of friends who are developers.

This.

It's not the 90% of oblivious people who are the problem.

It's not even the 10% of "woke" digital people who are the problem. We probably need to talk about issues more in this country.

It's the <1% of those "woke" digital people who will gun you down at the local grocery store because you work at Facebook who are the problem. In the end, it's always the extremists that represent the threat, and therefore oblige the appropriate security posture.

> It's the <1% of those "woke" digital people who will gun you down

Eh... no, I wasn't talking about anyone "gunning you down", the linked article is. I was just talking awkward conversations and getting the side-eye for working for the country's #1 douche.

I mean... yeah the 1% issue is likely bigger now, but this will blow over. Your buddies who think you sold your soul to the devil for a couple bucks will be around for years.

I have a red hat that says "make Orwell fiction again" on it that I haven't worn in years. Most people will either grumble to themselves and ignore it or read it and realize it's not what it looks like at first glance. I'm still not dumb enough to wear it on the Boston subway. Your buddies might think you sold your soul but they also aren't gonna dump a coffee on your or sucker punch you.

Jeez, I want that hat!

Going rate seems to be about $20 (and if Amazon isn't your thing I bet Ebay and all the other usual suspects have them too). If that's worth it to troll people IRL is up to you.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Make%2BOrwell%2BFiction%2BAgain+h...

I like the ones that just say "Made You Look".

While I can understand why that 10% would make someone unwilling to work there, until now I doubt that 10% caused brand damage that caused their products to fail.

A good comparison would be Nestlé. For decades now, a vocal minority have been calling for boycotts over their unethical methods, like with formula or or labor practices. Yet most people still happily buy Kit Kats.

>As a consumer company it means any new product (libra, unified family of apps etc..) will fail because of that.

I've seen multiple, separate parties see the commercials for Portal and be mildly interested in the product until it's revealed that it's by Facebook, and then they laugh and completely dismiss it a la "not a chance in hell I'm trusting Facebook to X".

I'd be curious to see how well they're selling (or not).

I was messaged by a Libra(now called Diem?) teams recruiter, went to the site[1] and thought in the back of my head, isn't this the facebook crypto-currency?

I looked through it and saw no mention of facebook or zuckerberg or even any facebook execs. I knew David Marcus is/was a facebook exec, but even he is listed as head of Novi[2]. That right there tells you how damaged that brand(facebook) is when their crytocurrency project doesn't list the company or the CEO(zuckerberg). Needless to say I said thanks, no thanks to that recruiter.

[1] - https://www.diem.com/en-us/

[2] - https://www.diem.com/en-us/association/#board_of_directors

also makes me really question the "a facebook" app thing they put prominently into the whatsapp startup screen. I've heard it was literally just Zuckerberg's ego being damaged because it became so popular compared to the blue app but it seems like a bad move

My understanding is they added this for legal reasons. Users were not aware Instagram and WhatsApp were owned by Facebook and legislators had issue with that.

> the brand is so damaged

By its own merits...

I hate it when people hide behind the brand. The reputation of people working there still is damaged, screw the brand.

People are more than the company they work for. Be careful not to be reductionist by judging them too much on it.

I’m 100% absolutely judging anyone still taking a paycheck from FB in this day and age. It speaks volumes about their character.

So the people aren't responsible. But "Facebook", being a corporation and not a human, has no moral or ethical basis at all and exists entirely to make money.

So by this calculus, all guilt, blame and responsibility is just waved away. They're only following orders, all the way to the top, where management are simply rationally trying to maximize revenue for stockholders, who also have no liability.

Using the Greysteil Graywashing System™, any crime may be committed and no one is ever held responsible!

Your response is hyperbole. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Just because not everyone should be held accountable for a large company’s decisions, doesn’t mean that no one should be.

Maybe someone sees it as an opportunity to learn from the talent around them, or enjoys the small piece that they’re working on.

But not everyone in a company that is less than favorable with a given population should be judged equally.

Ah, the 21st century version of "I was just following orders"

The 21st century version of Godwin’s law is still Godwin’s law, it seems.

Godwin's law just says that as the length of a discussion increases, the probability of a nazi comparison approaches 1. It says nothing about that even being a problem, much less losing the argument. Even better: as the length of a discussion increases, the probability of any comparison, any string of words, any combination of letters, "approaches 1". Something you can say about anything you might as well say about nothing.

People heard the meme a lot, so they think it has weight without actually having thought about it. Encouraging people to reveal this about themselves, with pride no less, is the singular useful property GL has.

> The reputation of people working there still is damaged

Most people need a job in order to continue to eat and to buy shoes for their children. They can't just quit. I don't judge anyone for working the job they can get.

That is probably true for the Janitor. It's less true for the (non-entry level) engineer there.

They not only have other choices, but also are implementing the policies.

> They not only have other choices

This is the problem with tech interviewing - it's so incredibly fickle that even someone with a senior job at a prestigious place doing practical work may not be able to pass an abstract problem-solving whiteboard interview somewhere else.

That senior developer at a "prestigious place" can find a job that'll pay the bills, though, without working at A Name You've Heard Of. They have other choices; they just might not be choices that are as cool. (Darn?)

If they consider Facebook cool, they don't seem to have an ethics issue with Facebook in the first place ...

(And yeah, some of the Tech they do is cool and there are only few places with such demand for technical solutions for that large scale of operation, but there's cool tech elsewhere as well)

Exactly. It's funny how you can "/s/Facebook/RedTube" and the principle still works.

Not even less than a week ago, there was a thread about how to "nail the Facebook interview" and how it is kind of expected to cram and prep for these "abstract problem-solving whiteboard interview"

If there is one thing that Facebook developers should not have an issue with, it's in passing these kind of processes.

I'd worry about the opposite: if the typical image of a Facebook employee is of a drone suited at "studying to the test", working at a company with zero ethical principles and justifying it by the good money, then how will they be able to adapt to a more value-based job?

> it is kind of expected to cram and prep for these "abstract problem-solving whiteboard

Well exactly - they may now have family commitments such as caring for people that make cramming impossible even if it was possible before.

> If there is one thing that Facebook developers should not have an issue with, it's in passing these kind of processes.

But they may have passed their interview a decade ago at this point. They may have also come in via an acquisition and so not formally interviewed at all if they come from an early startup.

You can take someone who passes an interview at Google but fails at Facebook, and vice-versa. These interviews are so incredibly astronomically tough and so subtle and fickle that it's no guarantee to be able to move.

You are missing the point. I am trying to argue that these people self-select. If they are at Facebook occupying a white-collar job, it is very likely that they share the ethics of the company. The challenge for those (rare) people that want to leave Facebook (or any FAANG, really) due to a realignment of personal values will be in finding a place where they can prove that they are not just a mindless robotic drone like Zuck, not their technical chops.

often these companies will not hire their own janitors, but contract a another company that doesn’t give them the same expensive benefits as the regular employees

That is true in the legal framework. In practical terms the Janitor however will say "I work at Facebook" (as long as they are proud of the brand) not "i work at sublease janitorial management corp" in a social situation as Facebook is where they are. And going back to the original article: Even such contractors sometimes get corporate swag at such places.

True, they go even further like most large tech companies, security(physical), IT, food chefs/preparers, even alot of recruiters are all permanent contractors.

Not just the IRL jannies, but the ones who police the platform too. They are contractors who make minimum wage and are exposed to horrors every single day with little psychological support.

In general, that's true, but I'm guessing the majority of Facebook employees (at least the technical ones) are highly employable at other tech companies.

I am sorry, but I am calling bullshit on that.

People are not working at Facebook because they don't have other options.

This is not some last resort, minimum wage, no other options work. People spend weeks or months preparing for interview and then some of them move to the other end of country to work there. In fact it's pain in the ass to get job there, so people there really want to be there, and jump through hoops to get there.

They are plenty other related job's that will keep your family fed and clothed. People are not working at Facebook because they don't have other options.

There are plenty of people on this planet that have hard time putting food on the table and clothes on their children, equating them with Facebook employs that make 150k+ is just wrong

> People spend weeks or months preparing for interview and then some of them move to the other end of country to work there.

Right, so that's what it takes to get a tech job. And if you can't do that anymore (maybe you're a carer for example), you'll struggle to get a new job.

> Right, so that's what it takes to get a tech job. And if you can't do that anymore (maybe you're a carer for example), you'll struggle to get a new job.

No that's what it takes to get one of the best paying tech jobs on the planet. If you lower your criteria there are plenty of other tech jobs that demand less, and compensate less.

that's because Facebook is still a very sought-after tech job... I'm in Atlanta and there's tech jobs out the wazoo (Delta, Home Depot, IHG, Turner, etc. etc.) and then there's new tech companies like Calendly, MailChimp, SalesLoft etc. etc. — all of which are easier to score a job AND don't carry the scarlet letter type of branding

Facebook's is in an unenviable position: They tried to commoditize user-data to go after Google which back-fired. They tried long and hard to not be sole arbitrators for content moderation and were squarely blamed for it. They do take a stance to de-platform the most powerful person in the World but are now in the cross-hairs of every conservative as well. The left-wing obviously would like them regulated to oblivion... They have always been between a rock and a hard place post IPO.

Kind of gives perspective to how long Google (with Android, YouTube, Groups, GMail, GSuite, GCP) has managed to go relatively untarnished (as a brand) but Facebook couldn't.

It’s kind of like being hated by everyone on all sides might mean you’re an asshole or something.

Facebook still has something like two billion of mostly happy users.

Being locked-in isn't the same thing as being happy.

> Kind of gives perspective to how long Google [...] has managed to go relatively untarnished

I reckon that's because Google largely works on pull models: you ask for something and G gives it to you. Its services superficially appear like databases just sitting there, even if we know that's not the case.

FB and Twitter, on the other hand, largely work on push models: you log on and the app will give you stuff to look at, as well as notifying you incessantly. It easier to perceive the app's own agency and priorities.

In this sense, it explains why Google tends to get heat over Youtube: because it's closer to a push model, both with homepage and suggestions.

Also, Google services are largely useful to get stuff done, in a way FB and Twitter are not. That gives G a big pass.

That is not the case of YouTube, though. YT pushes recommended videos on you.

There is an interesting speech by Zeynap Tufekci on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI

> In this sense, it explains why Google tends to get heat over Youtube: because it's closer to a push model, both with homepage and suggestions.

It’s impressive that they have been so successful with their mostly-pull model. It seems like a good long term strategy

Google is Search. Facebook is The Feed.

However you frame it, Google are showing you things you want to see - it's an affirmative feed back mechanism.

Facebook at best do that. Frequently they show you things you don't care about. Also things you don't want. It's an adversarial feedback mechanism.

In this light it's not surprising Facebook has earned a lot more ire a lot more quickly - though not undeservedly either.

On some level this still feels like you can squarely pin it on "optimizing for engagement". I highly doubt Facebook would be earning the anger it currently does if The Feed has remained a simple linear timeline. They were functionally getting into editorializing when they went with the new thing.

Google Search is trending in the same direction and could easily end in the same place, with search results skewed to support (or suppress) particular narratives and ideological beliefs. Look at the "ML Fairness" debates and ask yourself whether their workforce will at some point decide that they have a moral obligation not to present the raw content of the internet for a given topic, but rather to elevate the "correct" content.

Google absolutely could show me whatever maximizes "engagement" instead of what I want to see too. I wouldn't use Facebook if there wasn't something I wanted to see there (and there almost isn't now, I just use it for some groups, and messenger - the feed is useless now, but it hasn't always been).

Interesting observation. Just imagine if google search was more engagement driven. It’s pretty great that it is only so to a small degree (in the sense of figuring out what links people are most likely to have been searching for, which is sort of a case of that positive feedback loop in engagement systems)

Honestly I'm not sure they could: unlike The Feed which is something you look at when you're bored, search results don't benefit much from the normal click maximizers - i.e. "What you read next will SHOCK you!" isn't a useful result when I'm searching "difference between lawnmower blades".

We're basically there already as far SEO spam goes, and Google goes to some efforts to try and minimize that because it's a bad search experience and drives people away.

Facebook was a lot more pleasant to use before the feed went nuts. It was nice to log in and wonder what somebody was up to, then click the link to their profile to see what they had posted. It was a long time ago though

> Facebook is still a great place to work but the brand is so damaged that it's hard to see how they gain consumer trust

"trust" is not meaningful where the whole purpose of Facebook is to profile people in order to influence (=manipulate) them through advertising and promoted content, and sell their data to third parties for other kinds of (mis)use.

That is what Facebook is about, in terms of its commercial model; it's not as though they're claiming something else and ask you to "trust" them.

(and of course, there's the small matter of letting the US government eavesdrop on all communications.)

The passive voice conceals many secrets.

"the brand is so damaged" as if it just happened for no reason

But in fact, Facebook destroyed its own brand.

Libra is a perfect example of it. After years of malfeasance, Facebook is going to print its own money! Why wouldn't we trust you?

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