I think you misunderstand the real purpose of these major companies fighting to hire as much talent as possible. Anyone in the Bay Area that cannot afford FAANG total comp knows how hard it is to hire top engineering talent. This is the end goal of these companies hiring policies: to remove talent from the market.

Before these companies where FAANG most of them were small, crazy startups that were able to easily acquire talent because tech was pretty boring at the time. You could pay market rates, but give someone an exciting project and they'd join you. That allowed all of these companies to completely disrupt the market. Having disrupted the market they are no longer interested in this happening again.

The current hiring practices are to basically drain talent from the startup pool. Paying an engineer 500k is much cheaper than acquiring the new darling startup they ended up creating (DeepMind), which is much cheaper than acquiring the now large company that is threatening you (instagram), which is still much cheaper than allowing existential threats to you to eventually IPO.

There's the added benefit that you now have a bunch of great engineers on your team, but this isn't the real purpose. The tech giants of the past, IBM, Oracle etc all failed to realize how important it was not only to have good engineers, but to also remove great engineers from the market.

It is an authoritarian mentality fundamentally of "social order" - that they are beneath them so it is the "proper order" to obey. Above profitability even. You can see that bit of outright sadism with retail in particular but the pathology exists elsewhere. Rivals of Costco are angry with them for paying their employees more to get better motivated ones and less shrinkage - when if they think it is a waste of money be happy about it. Instead irrational rage because they transgress their precious social order.

It is part of the norm but the norm is horrifying and stupid yet you are the crazy one for suggesting something different like actually listening to the people you pay to think.

> Rivals of Costco are angry with them for paying their employees more to get better motivated ones and less shrinkage - when if they think it is a waste of money be happy about it

Do you have a citation for this claim?

I don't have a citation, but I have read repeatedly that stock analysts cite "overpaying" their workers as a place where they could cut costs and boost short term profits.

Stock analysts is not the same thing as rivals, though. If people think it's needlessly costly, competitors would cheer because their competitor is pricing themselves out of the market. As for stock analysts, if it turns out Costco gets more efficiency out of their better-paid employees because they're better, more motivated and less likely to leave, then that will eventually reflect in profits and stock price.

Amazon is know for a large capital investment and their stock has gone up even though they could cut costs and increase their margins.

Capital investment != labor costs

That's exactly why they spend that much money. They know you can be submitted. They want tech talent. Not revolutionists. It's a rough world out there and it's better to get in line than lose your pot of gold.

Doesn't make it right at all. But if you were that engineer, it's easier to say to yourself that you'll work your way up and change things the day you are in charge.

It's not revolutionary to say that asking for user passwords is stupid and dangerous. Nothing good will come from giving your email account password to Facebook (or any company). It's also a basic human rights violation. We all have a right to our passwords. We do not have to share them with organizations seeking to exploit us and our information. It's just basic common sense, not revolutionary.

> Nothing good will come from giving your email account password to Facebook (or any company).

To clarify: nothing good for you. Ignoring ethical issues, Facebook certainly benefits.

It's "revolutionary" to try and defy your bosses who tell you what code to write. Get back to your keyboard, serf.

When someone still works for such a company after an announcement this, they are part of the problem!

There's a book about the process by which this happens: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/558867.Disciplined_Minds

> Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference.

Companies are not democracies. Is it a contradiction that we both praise democracy and spend our working time in dictatorships? Probably but we usually don't even notice it.

I feel like you may share the same interest I have in this crazy giant federation of worker cooperatives (mondragon). I'm curious of many things in regards to it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I think large corporations are a threat to both democracy and to capitalism. Excessive concentrations of wealth and power are dangerous. Clearly they can be leveraged for money and power, which is why they exist, but we might be better off with smaller scale enterprises and more equal co-operations.

This is such an astute observation, yet remarkably simple.

I'd never stopped to think about it, but I think the world would be a much better place if more people did.

The book Moral Mazes also deals with this topic.

It is kinda funny when you tell their headhunters you will never work for them because they don't meet your ethical standards. I highly recommend the experience.

I told them a couple days ago that my belief in privacy as a fundamental right would make me a bad culture fit. They didn't reply.

Now you got me curious. Was the response ... a bit unethical ?

We're they confused, angry or both?

Confused at first, and then eager to get off the phone.

Steve Jobs understood the problem.

https://youtu.be/fuZ6ypueK8M

I was looking for the Steve Jobs quote in this thread, thought this was going to be "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

Yeah, if there's one thing Steve Jobs is known for, it's listening to other opinions.

Ain't that the truth, but he said so at least the once, and now I guess that's how we remember him!

Much more succinct message. Thanks.

> enormous sums of money seeking out the top tech talent

Still less than what they spend on management.

Part of getting all the top talent is that you can deny it to potential competitors.

Top tech talent generally have no idea how businesses make money. So of course you’d ignore them.

Where's the greater RoI in this case, what shady shit were they doing once they gained access to users email passwords??

Realistically, probably just logging into the email account once to prove ownership. Not dissimilar to how LDAP authentication works.

Is it a worst practice in our industry right now? Yep. Is it nefariously evil, probably not.

The industry standard appears to be "click on a link in an email", I think that's what FB did for me. So the question still remains what the RoI is that makes getting users passwords better. The only answers I can give are very bad, I can't see a legitimate reason to change to do it that way.

I'm not even sure if that is even true about mediocre tech talent, most people have some inkling of how their company makes money or at least how it intends to (some startups may obfuscate this information however, or not actually know).

Tech talent of all sorts generally don't know how the business manages money and what rules might apply to that management however.

on edit: added even, removed extra letter at end.

This.

I studied Electrical Engineering and in my experience, the only thing my classmates cared about was the technical aspects of the field, and often they couldn't see the big picture. Great talents of course, but more like robots, not even capable of understanding the humanitarian aspects of life. Such a waste.

Disclaimer: It's just my experience, not necessarily true for all engineers and engineering schools.

That's one part of it, I'm sure. Another part is that if you pipe up, you risk getting shunned: loss of income, loss of status, loss of being "part of the cool kids". Sure, you can get another job (that pays less) but you'll probably not work at the same cutting edge technology, and when you tell relatives or friends who you work for, their eyes don't light up.

If somebody offered me five to eight times as much as I make today with a huge boost in status and other positive side effects, and all they ask is to quiet down those silly principles, I'm not so sure I'd say no. "You can still do good in 5 years when you've made enough money to be set for life", I'd probably tell myself.

<quote>If somebody offered me five to eight times as much as I make today with a huge boost in status and other positive side effects, and all they ask is to quiet down those silly principles, I'm not so sure I'd say no. "You can still do good in 5 years when you've made enough money to be set for life", I'd probably tell myself. </quote>

The worst thing is, sticking to those principles just means someone else will take the job.

Coming out of university, I had one job offer (it was a bad down market at the time). My principles made me say no. I didn't want to work on guidance systems for military applications, thank you very much. That choice has cost me a great deal in earning potential. Even so, I would find it hard to blame someone for compromising their principles.

Did they not pay any attention during the humanities portion of their education? That's part of why it's there.

Disclaimers: I'm not an engineer, but my CS degree is ABET accredited. I also took a few more Archaeology, Cog Sci, and Philosophy classes than strictly necessary.

Another personal data point.

When I was in college I did have to take philosophy 101. It and all of the other core classes such as biology and English were nothing more than annoying hurdles. I do enjoy learning about philosophy and such, but that is not at all what happened while I was trying to get my degree.

Though to be totally honest, to a large extent I considered the entire degree earning process to be little more than an about hurdle to entering the job market. I spent practically zero time reflecting in any of it during the process.

Personal data point:

Did a Bachelor's + Master's degree in CS in Europe. Only around 5% of my coursework had (and could!) be outside CS. And you could fill that with things like Game Theory 102 or Copyright Law 101 or something without issue.

That's more like the typical engineering school format. I went to a Liberal Arts university, nearly half my classes were general humanities and sciences. The rest were in my major (also required an additional 18-21 credits for the ABET accredited degree option).

This makes sense, as you get your broad education before university. School focusses on a well-rounded education, whereas universities let you specialise. I realise this is a bit of a contrast to the US education system, with majors and minors, etc.