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Comment by IpV8 | Hacker News Reader

Getting people to click on advertisements.

>Getting people to click on advertisements.

Came here to post the same, as I take a break from getting people to click on advertisements, at a job that pays way too much money to even consider anything else.

It's pretty damn depressing that the brightest minds of our generation have been sucked up by these companies that really do nothing but further meaningless consumerism. When people ask what I do, I say I work at a button factory.

> at a job that pays way too much money to even consider anything else.

I've seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere, and I don't understand it. While I can't speak for others, there are many jobs I probably wouldn't take regardless of how much they paid. These jobs often harm society or are bad for other reasons (lack of autonomy, burnout, etc.).

Most jobs I'm qualified for pay me enough that I'm happy. Once I reach that point, I'm optimizing other axes.

I think everyone has a price. Offer me enough and I'll reluctantly optimize advertising click through working with a 20 year old code base written in PHP with no tests and the only comments being the sarcastic rants of the anguished souls crushed before me.

yep and the problem with this is its a lot harder to move from 100k down to 50k a year than what people think.

I regularly accept lower pay to ensure I only ever work on things I care about. No complaints.

I think it depends on what you’re promoting. I run an ad agency and we do mostly Facebook ads, but we only take clients that do something positive with their work. If you’re promoting people or causes that you believe in, it’s rewarding work. I know people though that just push random products on users and they hate it. For me, it’s all a matter of perspective and purpose.

I don't have a big problem with ads on broadcast television or billboards or in magazines. But I don't see how you can feel good about what you do if it requires harnessing the surveillance apparatus of Facebook. Even if you are promoting something positive, doing so on the back of a company like Facebook just feels wrong.

To be fair. I can't explain it either but when you have the traffic people also click those ads.

Edit:// no idea why I got down voted. I lived of adsense half of 2015 and full 2016. Still don't know why people actually clicked, or why they didn't have a adblock to begin with

I also do this. Although I actually believe that my clients are doing something positive with their business (and I don’t take clients who aren’t) so I actually enjoy doing this.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”

— Jeff Hammerbacher

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