I think it's more than the money. Many engineers view FB and Google as kind of a rite of passage in tech. Ex-Googlers and ex-FBers are highly regarded. Your startup is safe hiring them because they have been vetted already.
I turned down an opportunity to interview at FB in 2008 when they were just starting to build their native mobile team. I was even offered a free flight from Chicago and was told I'd get to meet Zuck. Some of us have refused to work for companies that exploit user data and have always put ethics first. But "person who refused to interview at Google" doesn't sound as nice as "ex-Googler" to most.
About a week later, a tech recruiter called and asked me if there was any sort of company I wouldn't work at. I said, yeah, I wouldn't want to work in any social media company. He challenged me by pointing out that the money and prestige has to be tempting, right?
I told them Facebook contacted me the week before and I declined.
The hem and haw, followed by 'uhhh.... well" and silence was revealing.
To be fair, I have zero chance of getting into Facebook, especially for what they contacted me for.
You could have gone a bit further, and been a "person who refused a job offer from Google". That, imo, would carry more weight.
It's similar to the way some companies specifically look for newly admitted Stanford/Harvard/MIT students, then pay those students ridiculous sums to give up college and work for them instead.
I still believe that there are enough hackers who would be willing to work for a much worse salary if they could obey hacker ethics and morality. Of course this implies working at a place that is much cheaper than Bay Area. But even under this premise: Where is the money supposed to come from to pay an even much lower salary reliably?
I think this is essentially the role Mozilla fills in the SF/SV ecosystem at least. Everyone knows Mozilla engineers are equally or greater respected than anyone from Facebook or Google. The problem is there's only room for one Mozilla. There simply isn't enough donations to support more.
Which i am very happy about, they are still on the right side of history in my book. The recent issues with tracking and marketing channels have burned me a bit, but there is still good will left. I hope they don't fuck it up
- Assuming two working parents initially, either lose one salary or pay >$1000/month on child care per child until school (unless you're lucky and grandparents live nearby)
- Larger house, larger mortgage. In the UK at least, you probably end up looking for one in the catchment area of a good school which means even more expensive, or go private which is a lot more expensive.
- Kids are just expensive. Clothes, book, activities, clubs, holidays, books.
- College/University fund
Every expensive hobby that you start probably changes things a lot. Starting a family has the disadvantage that you cannot simply stop it if money starts to lack.
I quit when I realized that they were really selling a financial product to large banks by securitizing the solar tax credit... not solar to save the planet.
so, yeah... ethics. and convenience. and as much as I wanted to save the world, I knew that wasn't my way.
i hope other people can get themselves out of debt, and out of that machine. for me though... it's stressful af to be trying to make it on my own.
clearly the folks responsible for renewing the solar tax credit thought so.
> but forest & trees!
imo, neither the solar tax credit, nor the oil & gas R&D credits are valid uses of public funds. so I quit.
Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries to CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to hackers' ethics and technology morality.