Feynman's own country, though, was at war; when he was recruited into the team that would eventually work on the Manhattan project, the Pearl Harbour attack had already taken place and irrevocably wounded and scarred the American public consciousness. Many other members of the Manhattan project were from countries or communities that had suffered tremendously at the hands of the Axis' power. War in Europe had been raging for more than two years. Fun or no fun, you can find motivation for working on weapons in a lot of things: the next Pearl Harbour attack could be against your home town, the next ones to be sent to labour camps back at home could be your only surviving relatives, the next casualties of war could be your high school friends.

Barring a couple of teams that work on interesting projects, Facebook has little other than money and reputation to throw at people. The former isn't that hard to find in our field, though, and the latter is kindda fickly. Facebook may well keep its talent pool constant, but largely by having people for whom the latter (or, more generally, what they work on and what impact it has) is important replaced by people for whom it is not.

Fortunately (for most of us, at least), the kind of talent that money, disregard for ethics and public doublespeak attracts is pretty self-destructive in the long run.