Comment by LucidLynx
4 hours ago
I have a serious question to anyone working at Meta and reading this: HOW can you still work at this company!?
Why don't you quit this very toxic company, and start working at another place or even on your own? I genuinely don't understand...
Let just Meta die!
This is a tough one because I've been there. I have worked for orgs that don't align with my values, but when you're in there you aren't thinking that you are contributing to the absolutely horrible crap they're doing. You just keep telling yourself, "I just do this one little thing." And that's enough to convince yourself that it's ok. You're keeping your values and morals intact.
Saying that, I'm sure if more of them had options they'd jump in a heartbeat.
The number of people in these comments who would be happy to be "paid well" to contribute to what's inarguably a huge net negative worldwide is exactly how the company got to this point.
It's astonishing how many people value a ton of money over doing something good. Everyone who talks about setting values aside for cash is the problem. Gross.
One of my good friend "Metamate" argument is that "if he doesn't do it, another engineer will do it. Might as well take the money".
But at least they all seem to acknowledge it is a terrible company and they know they are working on something terrible (which is beyond me why you would accept to do that).
I used to think there was a solution to this but theres not:
There is no limit to human greed
I have a dear friend who works at Meta. The conclusion that all meta workers are valuing money over "something good" is not reasonable. This fellow, who I know to be a good man of excellent character btw, for example has to support his family (which all together number 6), and be prepared to pay tuition for 4 kids starting in a decade and then one after another for the other 3! Is providing for your family and their future not "something good"?
> The number of people in these comments who would be happy to be "paid well" to contribute to what's inarguably a huge net negative worldwide is exactly how the company got to this point.
Sorry, have to call bullshit on this. As to the Meta products, who is forcing anyone to use it? They could have had armies of geeks working for them but if no one ever came, would Facebook cum Meta ever be this huge? I personally, from back when most people here would downvote you to oblivion when some of us pointed out the emergence of surveillance capitalism in "Web 2.0", recognized this company for what it is and have avoided every single product offering.
Who is forcing people to use Facebook?
And what was the role of websites like Hackernews in promoting the 'permissive' (irony alert) ethics of these 'ventures'?
There are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine.
Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.
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Come on now. You make it sound like this guy is “just scraping but trying to provide for his kids.” You don’t need an obscene salary to do that.
There are no other companies that would pay your friend?
Facebook is forcing people to use Facebook. If there were realistic alternative social network systems that allowed account migration with contacts and messages, Facebook would be dead in the water.
You can't seriously argue that everyone can just drop a mainstream communication tool without acknowledging the lack of replacements.
There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on...
Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise given the other advantages you get? Everybody has a different answer to these questions. Some people would tell you that even working in tech is wrong due to environmental concerns.
Personally, I would happily work for Meta. Many people use their services and like them. Is it the greatest thing for society? probably not, but neither is Netflix or Amazon or Apple...
Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption.
If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately.
Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix.
Amazon has hollowed out local retail/is also bad for society, though not on Meta’s scale. But you sell your soul more cheaply there.
not to defend zuck but its a common misconception that meta sells data
advertisers dont see the personal data they buy for ad placement
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This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.
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Hey, at least you're open and honest about being okay with contributing to such a global net negative as long as you get something out of it.
This an ad company that proveably, willingly targeted insecure children. You could write the same things about Northrop Grumman or Palantir. I mean corporations were never angels, but how software engineers can work anywhere else with similar features... just why.
Putting Meta next to Netflix in terms of moral culpability is in my opinion laughable.
I don't disagree that there are reasons people compromise on things like the morality of their employer - tale as old as society itself. I do disagree that many people like Meta's services - the only things I have seen people like about Meta is Facebook Marketplace (which is really just Craig's List or eBay if you are looking at technical problems) or the Meta Quest VR (which they've since gutted employment wise since the metaverse debacle).
Not only is it a morally bad employer, but it's also not a very good employer overall. They've just got institutional inertia keeping them entrenched, and are trying to buy their way into AI dominance to boot.
It's hard to imagine a tech company with more clear disdain for their employees than Meta. To me, that seems like a recipe for a dead company, but by all means, build your resume and network.
*Edit: people also use Instagram, but the engineering problems with that are also found in newer social networks like Bluesky, with a little less engagement addiction focus.
Growing up, I’d wonder how people could work for companies like cigarette manufacturers even after it became well known that their products wreck havoc on your health.
This comment is a masterclass in the type of mental gymnastics people do to justify working for these kind of companies.
> Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line?
You couldn’t even answer the question you yourself posed.
Meta isn't nowhere near cigarettes manufacturers in terms of damage. Tobacco kills millions every year. Meta may need even more regulation, and you can argue that social medias aren't the greatest invention, but I don't think they are that bad.
There's no mental gymnastics here. I draw the line differently than you, that's all. I'm not a big fan of Meta and their products, I would be happy to work there anyway for the reasons I mentioned. But I wouldn't work for let say Marlboro.
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People always answer this question with money. But if we think of it as a version of the prisoner dilemma (Meta is one prisoner, the employee is the other), the right move is probably to work somewhere else for a lower salary. By working for Meta, they are defecting against you (openly screen recording you to train your AI replacement). Choosing to work somewhere else would be like you defecting against Meta.
Extremely simplified example. Ignore inflation, raises, etc.
Which choice is better?
- $400k/yr for 5 years followed by a layoff, with the possibility that the thing you've helped Meta build rolls out everywhere, and there are next to no job opportunities
- $200k/yr for the rest of your career, and employment opportunities don't dry up because you didn't help build the thing meant to replace you
After 5 years, you'll have an extra $1M in savings, and you can safely pay yourself 4% or $40k each year in perpetuity without doing any work.
This is also a really extreme version of the prisoners dilemma. In the standard formula, there are 2 prisoners, so it's somewhat practical to not defect, but there are hundreds of thousands of qualified candidates for working at Meta in these roles, so your personal decision to defect or not has likely no effect on the ultimate outcome. I.e. for the second option to work, you actually need to organize a unified labor movement with no defectors, which is probably impossible.
I think this is a unrealistic point of view. If Meta really were as draconian and toxic as many people make it seem, most smart people would have left. Market is tough right now, but then there were other times when jobs were booming. And people still joined Meta. Money is one big aspect.
I am not saying Meta is a paradise. I completely want Meta to face their reckoning for what they have done to the world, but painting it as like a prison camp is misplaced I feel.
How can you say the smart people haven't already left? The only people comfortable working at Meta are comfortable with a company that enabled then profited off a genocide, has mass teenage girl misery machines, invested in companies whose products caused users to kill themselves, worked on systems that helped erode democracy across the world.
I'm sorry but if you're at meta it's not because you are smart, it's because you are a human that derives money from ruining lives. Thinking has very little to do with situation outside of deciding how much greed you're entitled to for the human misery you personally create by enabling such a system.
I understand your point of view. It's not possible to execute a high growth company like Meta without extremely smart, high IQ individuals. And they are OK with the harm Meta is doing. My point was that Meta is bad, but the perception that it routinely abuses employees is misplaced.
Gavin Belson:
The Scene: Gavin’s development team complains that his new tech ("The Box") is antiquated. He fires back in frustration: "Why did you all take my money then, you entitled little pricks? You all think you’re John Lennon until someone waves a dollar in your face!"
Post some links to companies hiring at similar compensation levels. Or, are you suggesting that every Meta employee is in a position to just like off of any random job they can find, or even no income at all while they go off "on their own"?
There is more to life than money. I've turned down FANG roles my entire career, especially Meta. There is lot of work out there.
Of course there is more to life than money, but people still need some base amount of money to live safely, especially if you have a family. If you are working in SV then your "big" salary does not go very far, I know lots of developers making $350K and have very little savings cushion, and these are not people just blowing money.
Most big enterprises get really good at paying you just enough to live comfortably, but not enough to give you financial autonomy. This makes the "why do you still work there" question land as naive most of the time.
Lol you've turned down offers or recruiter reach outs? Two very different things lololol.
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Sometimes you need to realize you need to choose between having the cake and eating it.
Median pay at Meta is $380k. Median. I'm sure it's high variance but I would put up with a lot for that kind of money
Spy camera manufacturer workers complaining about office cameras....
One thing I have observed so far in SV (haven't been here long) is that folks who work in big tech but aren't from the US don't fully understand the difference in costs depending where you live in the US. I have to wonder if that informs the decision to stay in SV no matter what the work is.
Like, intellectually they know that it costs less to live in Beaverton Michigan than it costs to live in Palo Alto. But the magnitude of that difference, and how that scales your income needs, they've never thought to do the math. It doesn't scale proportionally, and that's counterintuitive.
This isn't a dig against anyone, and exceptions abound. But when I told my foreign-born SV-lifer colleagues how much my rent was in Wisconsin, you'd have thought I was the one from a foreign country!
But if you work in tech your rent barely makes a difference?
If you are a senior engineer and make 350k$/year (Meta is more like 500k$/year) and you pay 5000$/month for rent and could potentially pay 2500$/month instead in a MCOL, that's only 30k$/year of savings? Negligible compared to your income.
And on top of that most companies will cut your income for moving to a MCOL/LCOL by more than those savings.
If anything it is an argument to stay in SV!
Apart from housing the costs aren’t that much more. You pay the same to travel. You pay the same to buy stuff online. Food is maybe slightly more but it’s not that significant.
Once you get past being able to afford housing it’s insanely lucrative. It’s harder for entry level people of course.
I have had that discussion multiple times with people. They all seem to think you absolutely need to live in a 5 bedroom 5m$ house in Palo Alto (because how else are you going to live?).
But if you rent a normal 2BR for 4000$ in the Bay area, and could potentially rent the same for 1500$ in a LCOL, that is a minimal saving compared to your income. Everything else stays mostly the same. An on top of that most companies will give you a paycut.
But for some reason people think you are going to be a king just by moving to LCOL. I think it is the opposite
Now, if you get bamboozled into buying a 5000 sqft house like the average american does, then yes, big savings in a LCOL.
$$$,$$$
more like $,$$$,$$$.$$
All the more reason to head out.
A few years on a salary like that and you may find that you can live fairly comfortably for a long time… in a place where the cost of living and housing are inexpensive.
I have an aunt who is quite old, who has been living for decades in a trailer in Eloy, Arizona. I suspect few people reading this will think that's any kind of an "escape plan", but I have been jealous of her seemingly contented and relaxed retirement for a long time now.
Perhaps you have to weigh it against, "working in the industry you hate for an other decade or two." Could you enjoy yourself in your retirement in your trailer? Is there something more you need to enjoy your retirement?
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You're saying the average dev at Meta is making 7 figures?
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If you can hang, it pays great. I don't work there but I know some who do.
Have you tried finding a new job recently?
Yes, and I found one. It pays enough for having a very stable life, and in a company with ethics!
No reason to be that sarcastic, the job market is not dead (at least not in Europe).
Money. Even I would put up with this if they paid me enough.
Ick.
I'd down vote this if I could.
Why not sponsor my free software work instead of downvoting? I wouldn't have to choose between getting rich and doing the right thing if I was making 200kUSD/year on my AGPLv3 programming language work. I'm currently making around $24/year.
https://github.com/sponsors/matheusmoreira
This seems like rhetorical question where you know the answer.
Despite corporate propaganda, work is not self-fulfillment, moral quest, or meaning for most people. It's money and future. When you earn $191K-$4.36M+ and don't want to move your family to some cheaper neighborhood, you put your head down and keep working.
Unless you are hardcore libertarian, these questions of workplace privacy are solved individual by individual. They are political questions. Improve labor laws, privacy laws etc.
In the end, most people choose money.
Maybe you should be asking that question on 1.3 acres and not here
Money and/or visa sponsorship obviously. Some things are more important than internet cool points.
You need to be more cruel if you actually want these people to quit.
Make them fear for their professional and personal reputations.
Make them embarassed to show their face or state their place of employment.
We need to treat these people like Nazis.
I am not sure about all your talk about Nazis and such - seems a bit much.
But I do agree with the general premise. Instead of Meta being seen as a signal for being a high-quality engineer, I hope the signal being sent is more like: engineer who is so money hungry they are willing to abandon almost all sense of responsibility and reasonable character.
We need to make Nazis fear for their personal safety.
We need to make engineers who work in surveillance or advertising ashamed enough to avoid putting that work on their resume.
I think that's a pretty big difference.
Nazis or not, I’m pretty fed up with that glaze of a quote that goes something like the most brilliant minds of my generation are occupied with optimizing ads. There’s no condemnation, just a wistful yearning for the big brains to be unfettered from their big wage enslavement to save us. It speaks to a craven culture where intelligence is the only praiseworthy trait and character is not even a concept.
You think people raised in such a culture will save you? More likely they’ll be hooked by the next moneybag or hoodwinked by some insane philosophy (Libertarianism, AI Singularity, Effective Altruism...).
In the US, if you quit your job, you lose access to many benefits, including affordable health care. It might be hard to get a loan for a car, to find an apartment, etc. This is systemically set up this way, including making sure employment doesn't get too low, which would give more power to employees.
Meta is still better than 80% of the companies. Other company spies on you, do micromanagement and still pay way less.
Pick your poison.
> I genuinely don't understand...
Really? Its quite obvious to me. They get astonishing resume and salary. That is until they get fired or burned.
> astonishing resume
Not sure about that one.
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