Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook?

There are plenty of reasons, beyond ideological ones, not to want to work there. I don’t think I have any ideological objections to Facebook, but the product itself doesn’t interest me and I’m not a user.

> I don’t think I have any ideological objections to Facebook, but the product itself doesn’t interest me and I’m not a user.

I don't work at FB but I'm sure for a product of that scale even if you don't use or care about the product itself, there may be interesting projects for you to work on.

I also don't think I'd care to work on FB the product, but I'm sure it'd be interesting to get to use Haskell to fight spam and work with Simon Marlow. They also use OCaml for some compiler stuff that I'm sure would be interesting.

Just because you work on something interesting does not absolve you of the moral responsibility you have to yourself. And just because your project doesn’t seem like it will be used in one way today doesn’t mean it won’t be used to censor people the next.

> Just because you work on something interesting does not absolve you of the moral responsibility you have to yourself.

I agree and am not sure why you think I thought otherwise.

The person I was replying to said "I don't think I have any ideological objections to Facebook" which I assumed to mean they don't see any moral problems with Facebook.

I was merely disagreeing with the idea that someone's lack of interest in the exterior facing product implies there are no interesting projects for that person in the entire company.

I don't work at Facebook... I'm probably not smart enough, to be honest, and also don't have much interest in the product either. I just bought their stock after the IPO.

>Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook?

It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.

Sorry, but yes, they probably are smart enough to get in. Or capable enough, which is the real thing that the wise amongst us actually measure rather than how smart one is.

Of the dozen or so folks I know at Facebook, I'd be excited to work with about two of them again. The others are...fine. Much like the folks Google hires now. They're fine.

Once you hit a certain point, you start hiring ditch-diggers just like everybody else. Because you've got ditches to dig.

Their standards for senior hires seem to be as high as ever. They seem to be unwilling to engage in the aggressive downleveling Google does, though.

I'm sincerely happy for your success, but a self-gratifying condescension on 19 year old students isn't a good look.

I found this comment to be really distasteful. Nothing about your "signature" proves you're any smarter than engineers that choose not to work at Facebook. It just makes you appear to be mean-spirited.

Not everyone wants to min/max their life, despite what tech striver lifehacker culture wants you to believe.

Assuming that money is all you give a shit about. That seems like an empty life to me.

You're making the assumption that all smart students would want to go and make money (if smart is even a good proxy for skills among college grads).

Some are motivated by other considerations, such as impact of work and work/life balance.

People can want things other than money, like the satisfaction that their work is going towards doing something positive for the world.

What do you think you'll be remembered for after you pass?

Ask my 3 adopted children.

I hope you don’t consider your children to be some twisted karmic balance for working at Facebook.

Like I said, I never worked at Facebook. I only bought the stock!

So you've financially supported Facebook. I don't see how that's much different.

Not directly. Since I didn't buy IPO shares, Facebook never got my money, though other investors did when they sold.