Ask HN: How do you rationalize working at an ad-tech/tracking company? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you rationalize working at an ad-tech/tracking company?

17 pointsrayvy8 comments

I work at a large ad-tech/tracking company that's ruining the internet (not FAANG, but in the next tier). Me personally - this is my first job post-undergrad. I tell myself that I need the money, and I'll only do it for 2.5 years, until I have the savings/skills/experience to branch out and do something relatively more meaningful.

View on HN

Sure the ad-tech industry sucks. But they do use a lot of very interesting technology. If you are working for some of the better ones or more innovative ones, they will be using massively parallel computing, geo-based location services, machine learning, and have a pretty significant foot print on AWS or Google Cloud Services. Every single one of those is a lucrative career onto itself. Learn as much as you can! Think of it as the best 2.5 years of paid training you will get. Either be a master at one of those or be a generalist and learn enough in each of those to be able to make a contribution. In 2.5 years you will be able to name your price and pick the industry you would like to be a part of. With the bonus that you will be have enough tech knowledge to start your own company should you decide to.

I worked for two ad-tech companies and they both taught me more about the craft of software development then any school or the previous 13 years of me working in corporations did.

As long as the company you are working for is not doing anything illegal or fudging the numbers, I don't think you need to justify anything.

Embrace the job, learn everything you can, and then you will be shocked how valuable you have become. Remember - you are trading your time for a paycheck. It is upto you to make sure that time is well spent and that it benefits you as much as the company you work for.

I've been building web analytics services for roughly 15 years.

Each one started as scratching an itch. I built my first web stats service back in the time before Google Analytics, when anything more complicated than a basic Apache log analyzer cost money I didn't have. The information tracked (referring URLs, pages viewed, time on site, bounce rate, language of each visitor, etc) is information that's been transmitted and logged since the very first web servers. That's now a freemium service with a couple tens of thousands of users, called W3Counter.

7 or 8 years ago a relative of mine opened a B&M store with a companion online store, and I built several products to help him run that, including a new web stats service that included ad and conversion tracking to show which ads (Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, etc) were generating which sales. That's now a premium service with a couple thousand users and marketing agencies, called Improvely.

None of this involves tracking people around the web or combining information from multiple websites using third party cookies. Just providing website owners with information about what happens on their own website. But both of my products are commonly included in those "ad-tech landscape" infographics with the thousands of companies on them every year.

Am I supposed to feel bad about that and need to rationalize it? Because I've never felt that way. Keeping track of which pages of your site are most popular, which ads are generating sales, which other sites are linking to yours and sending you traffic, seem as simultaneously essential and innocuous to me as the information B&M stores have when they track how many people walk in the door, what products are selling fastest, which circulars are bringing them sales by tracking coupons, which customers are their repeat customers and what they buy, etc. Their "tracking cookie" is simply your credit card or the grocery store loyalty card you scan every time you check out.

OP counts tracking conversions with the FB pixel being part of the evil ad tracking syndicate.

I wouldn’t rationalise it, but I would at least understand if you need the money - I myself have done things that I’m not too proud of when times were tough.

But when you’re in a position to leave, please do so.

Ad tech is ruining the internet? That’s a very narrow way of looking at it. Ads are what kept the internet open and allowed it to grow into what it is today - without ads, you would see nothing but paywalls everywhere.

This. People use ad supported sites because they're interesting or useful. They are useful because they have ad funding.

Are other jobs not an option for you? A lot of times, if you already have a job, the other jobs you'll find will be a step up from there. Why wait for 2.5 years to pass?

I think part of the problem is every industry has a dark side. As with everything eventually it becomes a race to the bottom.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com