Very good compensation is one reason I can think of.

Yep, my brother decided to join Facebook in a non-tech role (admittedly, right before the #deletefacebook movement began), and it was purely for the compensation. He even joked he had joined "the dark side". I've been off Facebook since 2011, so it was a bit disappointing. But, the compensation was the highest out of the companies he got offers from (Google, Stripe, etc.), so I don't blame him.

In this case I'm not getting that your brother wanted to be associated with them necessarily. If compensation was equal, which do you think he'd have picked?

Right but that's kind of irrelevant isn't it? Perhaps a semantic detail, but Donald Trump could hypothetically pay me as much as he wanted but it wouldn't change my desire to have his name next to mine.

I'd think most people who get major comp from FB could also get it from a lot of the other big players.

Facebook is known for being a little more profligate with their spending, especially for senior and up. On the other hand, they will fire you faster. I have heard that Netflix is even more in that direction, if "excitement" is something you desire in the domain of "whether you will be employed tomorrow or not."

I think if the most important aspect is compensation, then the company is arbitrary. Not to suggest that compensation is an invalid priority, but I don't think it's the same as wanting to be associated with a company for an inherent quality.

I flirted with it briefly, had a few phone interviews, then realised that there's few things I want to do with my working life less than help to progress facebook.

I wouldn't know either. The reason your cite, status in tech, however, could be a real thing. FB was innovative in some areas like infrastructure and PHP.

If your career goal is to set yourself up as a PHP guru, some FB credentials could be useful. If you think about it, a guy who wouldn't mind his career being about PHP is exactly the type who wouldn't get why ('zuckerberg-couldn't-get-laid(a-busines-carries-founder-DNA)).

I also remember a time when FB was seen as cool compared to MySpace, because it hinted a higher social value because you supposedly needed to be an Ivy league student to have one.

> If you think about it, a guy who wouldn't mind his career being about PHP is exactly the type who wouldn't get why ('zuckerberg-couldn't-get-laid(a-busines-carries-founder-DNA)).

I don't see how the opinion you're promoting here is any more mature than what you're criticizing.

What I am trying to do is to give an explanation to the question posed by the grandparent.

My explanation is relying heavily on a sociological observation. I don't see how that is immature.

Let me put it another way.

People who tend to not to value specific elements of fashion and style, do so for many reasons, one of them being that the subtler elements of these matters elude them. Or if they catch them, the do not pose high value on them.

This is what also predisposes to be comfortable with life choices that completely ignore certain elements of fashion and style. One example of such a life choice would be to make PHP the cornerstone of your career.

This comment coupled with your original is a fine explanation.

As an adjacent point, I think the same reasoning can be applied to professional-cultural disparities in general. Such as my gradual distancing from swathes of career software developers in that I'm no longer able to construct a scenario where I wouldn't care about things like well-being, culture, why and what I'm putting out into the world.

Perhaps not more mature, but I laughed.