Virtue signalling is cheap, endangering your family's livelihood is hard.
"It's very difficult to make somebody understand something, especially if their salary depends on them not understanding it."
Facebook is, in general, an unethical company. And this has been known for a long time. If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either.
Therefore, please don't post like this to HN. Repetitive indignation is the opposite of curious conversation, and we seek the latter. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Disclaimey bits:
1. No, I'm not siding with Facebook or whatever; just with the intended spirit of HN. A comment like this breaks that spirit while seeming to be on topic.
2. I don't mean to pick on you personally. It sucks to be singled out and there is zero intention of shaming here. I'm just picking on this particular comment, about something that we basically all do at times.
As much respect as I have for the moderation team on HN, this time I will respectfully disagree -- but I will improve the website by restraining myself from commenting on such hot semi-political discussions in the future.
That would be best for everyone, I believe.
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EDIT: (after your edit): Rest assured, I am not taking it personally nor will I "attack" or press the matters further. I agree my comment wasn't well-spirited and was dismissive.
It's just that sometimes I get tired of what I perceive as virtue signalling.
But I agree that it's best to keep that opinion to myself and not add negativity to the forum.
Thank you for bringing this perspective. I feel I actually needed it.
You might be right. But you might be wrong. And the way you're framing it, it's either a) someone agrees with you, and has already left FB (meaning you were right), or b) someone has stayed at FB, therefore ethics is unimportant to them.
Your dichotomy leaves no space for the idea that you might be wrong, or that the people who work at FB might not agree with you that it is unethical.
One telling sign of that is that few, if any, media sources that criticized Facebook's decision even bothered to publish the rationale.
Think about that. Imagine perceiving yourself as journalist and intentionally not reporting the rationale of a point of view you disagree with.
Once I heard Facebook's logic... I actually found it compelling. I think it's good we have social media companies that don't all agree with one another and act as a single entity. That would be scary.
I don't think any reasonable human being will argue with that.
The problem are a lot of other practices of Facebook, like the lack of privacy and all sleazy corporate lingo and lobbyist pressure they utilize to never actually have to be a privacy-first company.
And that's not even touching their experiment with free Facebook traffic in India, simply branded as "Internet" which, predictably, led many people to believe that Facebook is the internet. (And surprising no one, this was stopped only after a big wave of negative PR.)
Don't virtue signal if you cannot take responsibility for possible consequences (like losing your job). Sure, you might actually disagree with Facebook, your employer. OK. But no point talking about it if you won't do anything.
- Good salary. The FAANG companies pay really well. Almost nobody else can offer you north of $200k annual salary.
- Prestige.
You have no idea why people have stayed and/or how their minds have changed over time. Everyone has their breaking point and this could very possibly be it for some people.
Also, your quote should be attributed to Upton Sinclair.
“Citations are optional on informal forums such as the Hacker News” —— Mary Wollstonecraft
I can't generalise all of them of course. But we never had historical data of people mass-leaving big corps over such issues so I'm tempted to believe in my generalisation.
Also, people greatly overestimate how easy it is for others to actually find new jobs. Yes, there are lots of high paying tech jobs available (I have no idea how the Covid-19 pandemic may have changed things) but some people -- for a variety of reasons: health, family and otherwise -- have great difficulty doing this. Hiring is known to be broken and is the cause of _great_ anxiety for some number of us for these reasons. (It's so problematic for me that I don't even bother, at a great cost.)
I don't. I am jobless for one month now and have been semi-actively looking for a job for two-three months. I never worked so hard for free in my life! I know exactly what you mean when you say it's really hard. Many people might underestimate it... but I don't.
My point was -- still is -- those people should not virtue signal if they can't put their wallet where their mouth is. Ask yourself "am I willing to leave this cosy position because I disagree with the policy of my employer?" -- and if the answer is no then IMO you should just save your disagreement for yourself.
- pro Kavanaugh
- genocide in Myanmar
- destruction of privacy
- facebook accepting it creates extremists
* except the Myanmar thing - but that wasn't an active thing, but rather not being responsible in growth and having incorrect assumptions about state actors
1) Have little concern about the ethics. 2) Care about money. 3) Feel smart and important for working there (I'm smart, I made it).
This won't change their view on those things.
It's completely okay for one to be unwilling to endanger their livelihood. I can sympathise with everyone having that sentiment.
But don't virtue signal and just move air. If you believe in the cause, prove it. If you can't prove it, get on with your day [and don't spam the internet with stuff you won't ever factually support].
this doesn't apply almost any engineer working at facebook. Everyone was hiring before corona hit.
If they are so unqualified to find a tech job in boom season then there were plenty of jobs outside tech too.
I don't agree that most of these engineers would never be able to find another job if they quit fb. Maybe a tiny % of protestor, sure.
You fill questionnaires and do elaborate solutions of rather complex homeworks... only for somebody to judge you by the grey hair in your beard or by you being caught off-guard on only one out of 20-30 questions.