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Comment by foobar_______ | Hacker News Reader

Serious question - I know this will come off as inflammatory but I am genuinely curious. Do you ever talk to coworkers about the addictive, polarizing nature of Meta recommendation feed algorithms? There is pretty solid research around teen health (specially girls) around how many problems it causes.

Is the pay just so good you turn a blind eye? Honestly, I can understand that if I am being honest. But I don't see as many people being clear about this. I assume people are delusional on their impact for the dollar signs are so big they will look away from the hurt they help cause.

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Not OP and never worked at Meta, but according to Sarah Wynn Williams’ Careless People, the incentive is not so much the pay, it is the options. If you get in and leave before x number of years or get fired (not 100% sure how it works) you will lose the golden ”never having to work again” -ticket. Apparently it keeps people pretty meek and helps silence the jiminy Cricket in the backgrpund.

Not really how it works anymore. Everyone just gets 4 year RSU grants with an even vesting schedule and no lockout period, and it has been that way for a long time now. I've never really heard of anyone at Meta getting options (maybe possible for execs?).

That said, with enough stock growth, the stacking RSU grants can still enter into "never having to work again" territory depending on your role/level and how many grants you've been able to stack.

For some people (myself included), "options" is an informal name for RSUs.

Yeah, perhaps equity would have been a better word choice. Not a finance guy me.

Frequently! It used to be tolerated (even encouraged) internally, and many people are pushing hard against such things all the time. These days it's a good way to get targeted for layoffs though, so I'm assuming our days are numbered.

There are a lot of folks who also really do not care and are just here for the money though. The large majority, if I were to guess.

Thanks for the answer. Hmm, that is what I expected, but that's totally logical but a shame that people who have any amount of self-reflection on their work's impact are the first targeted for layoffs.

I lived and worked in SV for several years. Basically people don’t see anything they do as wrong and have no concept of shame.

It’s a combination of learned obedience to authority and greed.

You just take a bunch of people who made all A’s in school by doing whatever they were told by authority figures, give them new authority figures who give them new “homework” (monetize suicidal ideation), and the money to buy a car they can post on Insta and you’ve got a BigTech workforce.

To be honest it’s pathetic to watch up close.

This correlates with the information I gleaned yesterday about the US education system from a very exasperated australian psychologist [0]. Apparently learned obedience is a goal from very early education.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9MubNsh3rs

I never thought about it as obedience to authority, but ya maybe that is it. I still kind it would fall under the greed bucket where they are willing to submit to their corporate kings if it means they get more RSUs and the new car and the bigger house. Social media might be the single largest factor in the current disintegration of community and connectedness at scale.

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