Comment by Arainach
2 months ago
Bias disclaimer: I've worked at multiple FAANGs and Meta isn't one of them, but as with anyone in the industry I've had friends at all of them.
Meta feels very different - both at the top, with Zuckerberg's immunity from the board, full control, and personality "quirks" on public display - but also at the lower levels. Every company has a stable of people who will do what they're told to collect a paycheck but Meta had a much higher ratio of people - including people I know, respect, and consider very smart in other aspects - who bought in to the vision that what the company was doing was good for the world even in a post-2016 world when all of the consequences of social media and Meta's specific actions were fully evident.
My Amazon friends won't defend the bad things Amazon does, my Alphabet friends love to gripe, my Microsoft friends....you get the idea. But my friends at Meta would repeatedly try to defend bad things in a way the others don't.
The Koolaid is stronger at Facebook, because it has to be.
It does feel slightly cathartic to reject someone's resumè for having any time at Facebook on it.
Sounds like a net negative filter. I'd recommend you try prevent personal biases from playing this big of a role in hiring decisions.
Really? I think it's pretty normal to use your moral compass to take into account someone's work history during hiring decisions.
Did they work for a tobacco company, advertising harmful products to kids? I think that's bad, but you're right, it is a personal bias. Some argue that tobacco is actually fine.
Did they work for a buy-now-pay-later company which sneakily traps people into debt cycles? Again, I think that's bad, but it is just my opinion. And some people can argue that bnpl companies are good because they provide low cost* loans to consumers to buy Coachella tickets. *until you miss a payment then you're fucked.
Did they work for the Trump 2024 Campaign? Plenty of people voted for him so it's just like, my opinion man.
Or, did they work for Facebook, an antisocial, anticompetitive growth at all costs company which is absolutely a net drain on society. But hey - they did produce, er, buy, a messaging app which allows you to keep in touch with your family.
And I could go on and on.
There are plenty of smart people with a moral compass. I've been blessed to have worked with many - truly it has been a joy. There are also unscrupulous, smart people who will do any work as long as the money is there. I've also worked with those types, and it's not as pleasant. The best projects I've been a part of have had teams of people who truly care about the customer, they aren't trying to outsmart or trick them.
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Not really. Any FB experience post-2011 is a pretty strong signal that the potential hire has a weak ethical foundation, if not overtly unethical inclinations.
Maybe if you only interned there or it was your first job and you left before 2 years.
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> reject someone's resumè for having any time at Facebook on it.
I know some lovely, brilliant people who work at Meta or have. None of them carry around any such delusions or deserve this kind of condemnation.
Or if they do, then so do engineers who have worked at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or any other of a host of countless corporate tech companies -- which would be just as silly.
I share this experience -- had a friend who left from IG to form a startup and came back to FB a couple of years later. His entire perspective on the company shifted and he left after only 2 months. Complete disillusionment at all levels. "This is not the same company."
That said, I do think this kind of behavior extends across the industry. I've seen all sorts of wild things like founders&insiders starting a separate encrypted messaging company just so they had an app to send messages between each other about all of the illegal shit that they were doing in the main company.