Ask HN: Would you go work for Facebook ("Meta")?

Everybody here seems to be judging them on their products. I don't use their products either - they far too invasive for me. But then I don't use the products I create at the company I work for either - it's a B2B thing.

I'd be going there do to software engineering. As a software engineering firm I rate them highly. Their products are solid. Video chat is reliable for example, far more reliable than say Teams, and I suspect works at much larger scale. They operate at massive scale, yet outages are rare. They grok open source, and they make numerous contributions to the area. Most recently llama 2 has given open source tinkers a leg up with AI. Thank you Meta.

I have no idea what their culture is like internally, but hey working with people who are among the best at what they do is always attractive. If their engineering culture isn't unpleasant I'd don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to work there as a software engineer.

I am not a fan of many of their products, and I have turned down hiring managers at meta before.

But I wouldn't rule out working for the company. Look, I am old enough to remember the time when Microsoft was the antithesis (and sworn enemy) of the open source movement. Yet today, they are a completely different company.

So, even if there are some things I don't like about Meta, I would still seriously consider any particular offer, and decide whether to accept it based on the details of the position, not the reputation of the company.

Depends. Would I learn anything interesting? Would anything I do have an impact at Meta or the greater world at large? Do I already have a job?

Honestly, what gets me up in the morning is knowing that my work is meaningful to the modern world and that the quality of people's lives would be negatively impacted if I didn't do what I do. Meaningful work, no matter how small the impact, does a lot for your mental health.

Just making money? It's not fulfilling and won't sustain your soul. But if you don't have a job at all, sure, I'd take it - let's be realistic, you need money to survive.

No, it's cursed money. At first sight, the compensation and interesting problems will spark your brain, but it will rip your soul apart.

Would you work in a weapons manufacturer when your country is invading a poor country?

That's what Meta is doing, but worldwide, with people's brains, abusing people's weaknesses and changing the fabric of society.

I'm surprised EU and other countries haven't just blocked that spyware crap. Look what it's doing to kids and the younger generation. Leave it to Americans.

Meta has approached me twice and I rejected both times.

Money isn't everything.

Maybe unpopular. I definitely would work there for the right role.

Besides all of the negative attention the company has drawn, they've also done a lot of good for the world that mostly goes unrecognized. I wouldn't be with my wife and have my family if it weren't for Facebook.

They're also invested in future tech which has great potential to be a net good for humanity. A lot of their open source and research gets released for public use.

I rejected a down-level offer from Meta a couple of years ago and I sometimes wonder if that was the wrong move.

Meta occupies the "biggest X in the world spot". It is difficult to separate controversy specific to Meta from controversy inherent in occupying that spot. I think resultantly many people are agnostic to the ethics, for whom considerations on the basis of career progress, access to high tech and so on, is a much simpler decision criteria.

No amount of money would make me want to work for the likes of Meta or Amazon. The planet is fucked up as it already is.

I'd leave the industry and return to poverty first. I can handle toxicity but that's a stretch too far for me

Yes, for sure. I would be there some years, get some experience and skills and get out.

Nope, they could pay me ten million a year and I'd say no. OK but fine, everyone has their price. If they paid me a billion a year I might say yes, then just work for a month or two and then donate most of it to charity.

While I do appreciate some of their products (React which I use, Quest which I don't have), I think by and large their revenue makers (Facebook, Instagram, I don't know what else they have) are a net negative to society. The commodification of community for profit was a bad move and will eventually result, IMO, in the worldwide downfall of democracies. I think our kids will have it pretty rough in no small part because of Meta, but hey, at least we got to share vacation photos and cat videos.

If the money was good enough, definitely.

Only if I can work 100% remotely.

No. I just wouldn't feel good about myself working for a company like Meta, regardless of how interesting the work was, how much I'd be learning, or how much I was earning.

If you are asking if we'd reject a well-paying job that is a good career boost because of a philosophical problem with how they operate... great, I'm all in favor of applying personal ethics to your work. But I'd encourage everyone to apply those same ethics to all jobs, not just Meta. After all, when you dig deep enough, most corporations are evil at some level. (Not all.) And most people are decent (or so I choose to believe.)

So which is worse? Refusing to get some personal gain from an evil corporation with an evil leader? Or accepting the reality of it, taking a job from them, and using some of the resulting wealth to create positive impact in other areas of our world?

There is no right answer to that question, BTW. Everyone has their own ethics. But there is more depth to be considered than just "Meta is evil, so reject job."

(For the record, I don't know anyone in leadership at Meta, so I cannot say if they are actually evil or not, that statement is just for the sake of argument.)