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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?

Anecdotally, of the five-ten people I knew throughout the years who ended up at Facebook, all had a very specific personality-trait.

Those that I knew who went to Google/Amazon/etc. were more diverse personalities: ambitious, interested in hard problems, wanting a good life, etc.

Those going to Facebook though, I'm not sure I can put it in a polite way. Let me just say, in different times and different places I could imagine them joining a certain type of organization.

It sounds like you had an interesting observation but it’s not clear to me. Can you state it more plainly? What kind of organization?

I have also noticed FBers have a certain kind of personality. Vaguely utopian but removed from reality with a heavy emphasis on hedonism.

@goldenchrome - Facebook:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”.

Italian philosopher & Minister of Public Education under Mussolini Giovanni Gentile, who was arguably the architect of 1930's Italian fascism.

Sorry for sounding cryptic, it is hard to pin down exactly, but I somehow see Zuckerberg himself kind of like that; maybe someone who likes technical problems, but sees human relations in a kind of formulaic way, and oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work, not interested in the classics or humanities.

> oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work

He was told about the consequences pretty much from day 1. I don't think anyone at Facebook (especially not Zuckerberg) gets to be oblivious.

I don’t think anyone realized the full extent of the consequences until very recently. Even now, we’re still learning just how pervasive the mental health consequences of social media have been. See the recently released CDC data on teen mental health.

The trajectory for Facebook has been consistently bad. Not knowing the "full extent" is not absolution.

The CDC study is a lagging indicator; it describes the trendline of a mental health crisis that's self-evident to practitioners. On the research side, there have been many studies in the last 10 years associating Facebook use with poor mental health outcomes.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out 5 years ago.

This sounds mildly apologetic for someone who lacks basic empathy, or is just a giant dick.

Smart, Fun and Nice: there are LOTS of people who have all three; don't settle for less!

I've noticed this as well. There is a "type" to the people from my peer cohort who joined Facebook.

I mean, by almost any measure, some of the most brilliant programmers of the past 20 years have worked in ads at Google and Facebook, yes.

Were they the ones laid off this year?

Of course, because layoffs don't magically avoid hitting good people. What matters is what part of the org you are in. If it's a part that is not in favor, you are gone, whether you are good or not.

It goes both ways.

If you win the lottery starting a company at the right time, are you really the best mind of the generation or just lucky?

Somebody in a garage today is working on a business that will be worth billions within 5 years, and we'll all kick ourselves with "why didn't we think of that!"

Right, but for everyone of those people, there are 1,000 other people just as smart also working on good ideas that are going nowhere fast.

I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing or neither.

But I think the "why didn't I think of that guy" is mostly luck.

Lots of people are smart and work hard and don't really get anywhere.

Smart and Work Hard are only two of the 5+ components needed for success, of which Luck, Opportunity and Timing also belong. I'm sure there's more.

What is timing beside luck?

The founders had a good bit of luck, but then hired a lot of super smart people fresh out of college.

Who are you to judge? Maybe they needed to support sick kids or parents. Arrogant and ignorant statement.

Great point. It was a question not a statement but I like your perspective a lot. Thank you.

Sounds like you are trying to equate “intelligent” with “wise and good”.

FAANG unquestionably soaked up a lot of highly intelligent people, and built a lot of clever stuff and solved a lot of challenging technical problems.

To a worthwhile end, maybe not so much.

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