The people working on the political and PR areas at Facebook are badass. They come from places like the Obama administration. They now have a front-row seat in the negotiations for how governments around the world are negotiating with Facebook.
After the dust settles, these people will start charging $1k/hour to consult on "political or PR" sensitive business areas.
I frequently see people try this when their employers start burning in political and criminal crosshairs. It’s a tough and treacherous strategy. It is likely just an easier thing to tell oneself than “I need this job for the pay cheque, the next 10 years be damned.”
Unless you leverage the crisis into deep relationships with regulators and politicos who remain relevant afterwards, you walk away weaker. Low-touch Facebook PR folks saw their best days when they worked in the last administration.
I can understand it if you're in a situation where the bottom can kind of dictate the company direction in a "hey, with this data, we could make the company a killing, our shareholders happy, etc." sort of way. Perhaps avoid the upper level employees, but engineering talent is probably safe.
Depends on what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want a former Facebook employee near anything remotely customer data related, or anything with political or PR sensitivity.