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Comment by kjok | Hacker News Reader

> Everyone should quit, get ahead of the layoffs, useless company. Your work there makes the world a worse place. You can do better.

This is everything I wanted to say about FB. Always wondered why so many talented folks (with PhDs) choose to work there.

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I was contact by a recruiter from FB a couple of years ago. I knew I would never work there, but I talked to the recruiter long enough to get a comp number, and... suddenly my resolve to never work there took another day to firm back up.

That's mostly why, I think. In the end, I still said no, but it was much harder with the number in front of me.

My friend works there. In 2021 they made $1.5 million. Last year it was less I guess with the stock drop, but still, I can't fault them.

Probably because they pretty consistently had the highest total compensation packages for engineers.

People will say it's their compensation but there are many many places that pay well that don't make the world a shittier place. One doesn't have to sell their soul to the highest bidder.

> there are many many places

Can you please name 5 of those alternatives which pay as well as Facebook and yet are a better corp for the world?

Nit: they did say "pay well" not "pay as well".

"Pay well" might mean less than Meta but still at a comfortable level, subjectively.

Okay, let's start with "pay well" then.

Edit: I cannot reply to barbazoo so will edit here - you still haven't provided me 5 names who "pay well".

It obviously depends on where you live and what you consider good pay. I get that. Personally, being in the situation of earning >2x the median household income where I live, which is one of the HCOL areas in NA, I consider myself unimaginably lucky. But that level of income isn't uncommon here for senior devs.

You are not seriously claiming that there are less than 6 companies that “pay well”.

I never claimed that. Just want to know the actual alternatives to test OP's claim about well-paying companies which don't make world shittier.

Could also go and work for a hedgefund, pays well or better than Meta and doesn't have a negative impact on the world.

That depends entirely what the hedgefund is investing in

"Better corp for the world" is subjective.

"Pay well" but maybe not quite as well as Meta, and for our purposes I am excluding other FAANGs (except Waymo, sort of I guess):

- Roblox

- LinkedIn

- Robinhood

- Databricks

- Bytedance

- Box

- Stripe

- Two Sigma

- Lyft

- Uber

- Instacart

- Cruise

- Doordash

- Waymo

- Airbnb

- Pinterest

Companies which imo have a more positive impact on the world than Meta:

- Waymo/Cruise (autonomous driving)

- LinkedIn - close call, but a more professional social network with the intent of matching employers with employees and taking most of their profits from the advertising of those jobs without influencing global politics

- Stripe - value comes from payments processing for companies big and small which is a valuable product in its own right

- Lyft/Uber - close call again, but I think the disruption of the taxi industry and the additional options for transportation have really revolutionized how many people get around day-to-day.

Thanks for answering the question honestly. Looking at that list, I can see only LinkedIn / Databricks / Box / Cruise / Waymo as qualifying for "not making the world shittier" criteria. But quitting Meta to go work for another variant of social media like Roblox / Bytedance / Pinterest? Or Airbnb / Uber / Lyft / Instacart with lots of negative externalities by exploiting labor arbitrage? That doesn't really make any sense.

Sure, but that does answer your original ask. There are options, especially if you're willing to work for just slightly less (or in some cases you can still get a raise by switching) to work at a company that pays well and makes a more positive impact on the world.

> especially if you're willing to work for just slightly less

Well, in that entire list, following are the companies who don't make the world shittier: LinkedIn / Stripe / Databricks / Box / Cruise. (I will omit Waymo because its parent is Alphabet, which fails shittiness criteria).

Box stock is flat since 2015. Databricks / Stripe are private so no liquidity. So only LinkedIn qualifies for "slightly less pay but not shittier world". Though I agree that there is an option if someone wants.

I mean FB stock is negative if you count people who joined in the last year...Even flat is better than that

Let's compare Apples to Apples? I was citing Box stock since 2015. FB is more than double its 2015 price.

Roblox? This Roblox? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034

I never said it was a better company than Meta?

Just that it paid similarly.

Well, the whole point is about "pay as well as Facebook and yet are a better corp for the world". So citing Roblox is pointless.

You can also work there and do the bare minimum until you're fired, cashing in some nice paychecks in the meantime.

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