What makes you still work for Meta, when it's clear how toxic the company is?

I know someone (not an engineer) who was applying to jobs for a long time and got a 100% pay increase from moving to Meta, about $60k -> $120k. In such circumstances, it is difficult to turn down such a job. You are only one small part of the machine and it is such a quality of life increase (in USA), I cannot imagine many people saying no.

Some other common reasons that I disagree with, but are quite defensible:

"Well-targeted advertising is a net positive, or at least not hugely negative, for the world. Better targeting has helped many small businesses succeed where they would otherwise not been able to get customers"

"I am working on account security/React/ML/etc which is a good thing. I don't endorse all the bad things"

"It is more complicated than it seems, and most people at Meta try to do the right thing"

"I might as well work at the company and try to make it better from the inside" (while making lots of money)

One of their recruiters, a fellow named Josh, hounded me for months to join Meta, and we went back and forth about the merits, the chance to work on something huge, but when he boiled all down.. it was the money. Meta pays a lot for the people they want, and that just wasn't enough for me.

I think people know they are making the world a worse place. But the salaries are insanely high. It wont change until society frowns upon the job. Also it makes the world worse through second order effects so its easy to not think about it.

At this point meta’s reputation is bad enough that, just by supply and demand, they must be paying a premium for worse performers

This is a virtue signalling post and rightfully flagged. The responses are interesting though.

I feel two quotes from the notebook are particularly relevant:

“…it’s not about following your heart. It’s about security” - Noah, the notebook

“Money! He’s got a lot of money” - Noah, the notebook

Curious, is there a minimum salary for migrant workers in the US? Here in Shanghai if you are a foreigner you can only get a 1 year work-residence permit unless you make x times amount the local minimum wage. Then there are also categories, for A tier talent the minimum is now 800.000 RMB per year iirc (recently adjusted from 880.000, which does not add up, because I got a A tier permit with 650.000 a year two years ago..)

What makes you buy conventional dairy farmed products? It's clear how harmful it's for a well being of cows/calves.

What makes you buy chocolate from giant corps that have slave/child labour in their supply chain?

Not working for any of them but given everything else equal, I'd pick Meta over Palantir under any circumstance, if I were to work for one of them.

There are many places at Meta that seem to be quite interesting for researchers. You get to play with a lot of hardware, with other talented people, and you can open-source some of your work.

It's all a slippery slope anyway. If you were to work for yourself and publish your research, people might do bad things with it anyway. Consider YOLO [1] as an example of where things might have gone wrong. Another fine example is Fritz Haber [2], who intended some of his inventions for good, some for bad, but eventually society found a way to reverse his intentions.

Given that most computer scientists are pretty good at putting things in perspective, they might come to the conclusion that working for Meta isn't so bad in the grander scheme of things. Slaving away in academia and having your work ignored isn't a very tempting alternative.

Instead of considering how we can make smart people stop working for idiots, it might be more fruitful to spread the idea that we should stop worshipping idiots altogether. If there is one thing I miss from the days when religion was still a thing, it is this suggestion [3].

[1] https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/code-no-evil/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

[3] Exodus 20:3-5

Dump truck loads of cash?

They’re $connecting $the $world and $making $it a $better $place!

Back when Meta was still called Facebook, I was in a spot where I had a few offers (including Meta) and the reason why I picked it was the following:

- cool project that is somewhat not related to shady stuff (Oculus)

- cool people I knew there

- I got down-leveled, so money was just a small % bump to my previous salary

I ended up quitting after less than a year due to said toxic culture and a bunch of other reasons.

Meta employees had (has?) this little stat on your profile page that gives you a title based on how long you were there. Staying 4 years gave you the title of "Mercenary". I think it speaks by itself :-)

Honestly speaking, some people actually thrive in the Meta culture and end up making bank with repeated promotions, but they are also clearly able to abstract the ethical side of things to focus on maximizing impact at all cost.

They get this thing called money which allows them to acquire the goods and services needed to remain alive. In the US, they also get the health insurance needed for the decent medical care to remain. Throw in supporting one or dependents needing those things as well, and it’s pretty easy to see why any one individual would remain employed there.

I’ll relay what i’ve been told years ago when moving similar arguments myself:

“If I don’t take that job (and that fat paycheque) then someone else will. Whatever Meta is set to accomplish, irrespective of whether it’s actually evil or not, will most likely be achieved. So might as well take the job and the money. As a bonus, you get to work on interesting stuff rather than the usual CRUD webapp.”

And the sad truth is, they were right.

Not only that, marketing yourself as an ex-FAANG afterwards (whether the faang is meta or whatever) will likely yield better positions or salary anyway. And the experience you get working on larger scale systems (along with much higher quality standards) improves you a lot as an engineer.

So long story short, it’s mostly upsides.

You must be incredibly naive or idealistic, or possibly both.

Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

It's the money.

quotation from Bertolt Brecht: "Food comes first, then ethics.“

Quite a good pay, maybe an environment individuals like and "I am not working on the bad stuff!"

1. Money 2. Most people couldn’t care less

Cognitive dissonance.

If we're still at Facebook before this you've been brainwashed into so many other bullshit ideas that this AI thing doesn't seem as out of the place.

Their whole idea of the metaverse was purely toxic, so is their idea about social media.

It's wonderful to imagine all the world's employers embodying "Don't Be Evil". And any exceptions being driven out of business by their employees quitting.

At times and in places, many of the young and optimistic have been able to believe that. Or at least to proclaim such beliefs - without immediately being called on it.

But similar to "Santa Clause won't bring presents to naughty boys and girls" - that ain't how the real world actually works. And the usual social convention for those "in the know" to allow young optimists to figure things out for themselves. "Don't spoil their youthful joy, the world is shitty enough as it is." );

If you are truly genuinely curious about your question then you apparently neither realize nor accept the amount of justification the average person will give for money or other personal benefit.

money. money will make almost anyone blind to what they're doing.

Aaaand despite the replies and support, the post was flagged. Dang, could you explain?

I don't but I would if they had remote anymore.

I am unwilling to bear the burdens of fixing a society that doesn't give a shit and asks me to pay the price while they continue not to care.

People still work at facebook? Figured they had fired all the humans and zuck just screams into an AI echo chamber.

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