I think that feeling is the group narrative talking. It's a thing we (HN, reddit, etc) choose to do together, rather than a specific fact that's true or false.
Former Facebook employee here: One thing that you don't appreciate from the outside, is that FB employees hear more FB criticism than you do. (This is just true of anyone working for any company.) And one of the side effects of hearing more, is that you hear a lot of very wrong, very poorly thought out stuff. So it does get easier to sit out from a group narrative like this, because the parts that are wrong or misleading jump out at you.
Morale is high because paychecks are high. How much you get paid is the key indicator of how much you are worth as a human being. That’s the game we play.
I'm curious what your experience is with this? I've worked at Google and AWS and I don't think I've met a single person who thought they were "changing the world".
The closest it ever got to that was when I once remarked to my lead that I wish I felt like the work I do mattered to which he replied something along the lines of, "We play but a small part in the grand movement that is the progress of technology, but don't forget we do play a part."
Pretty much everyone I know just does their job because they want to retire or support their families. This is also the same for almost every employee I've seen in other sized companies.
> How much you get paid is the key indicator of how much you are worth as a human being. That’s the game we play.
Some people may think this way but it's a choice to surround yourself with those kinds of people.
> How much you get paid is the key indicator of how much you are worth as a human being. That’s the game we play.
You can look at an ape in the jungle as getting the most food. Is that the worth of that ape? To the apes, maybe so. To us, it's just an ape.
In your view, are there ways of "extracting value" that are not "some kind of exploitation". Is "changing the world for the better" incompatible with "extracting value" somehow?
> It's almost comic villainy - like, everything they say, do, propose, etc. is always evil in some way.
The problem I have with it is that you can replace the meaning of "they", and have this comment "work" for any number of biased echo chambers. Go ahead and replace "they" with Facebook, Google, Obama, Trump, Exxon-Mobil, scientists, billionaires, politicians, Internet trolls, the media, ad nauseam.
If this sentence can work for any of these scenarios, verbatim, then what's the point of uttering it?
To bring this back to the issue at hand: is there anything Zuckerberg could say that would make you not respond this way? And if you can't come up with anything, are you sure you aren't completely biased against Facebook such that nothing they can do will ameliorate you?
That said, let me try to answer why you're seeing this pattern.
Facebook has a business model that works for certain strategic choices, and doesn't work for others. A big one is they don't charge a subscription fee to users. That puts hard constraints on how they generate revenue.
> is there anything Zuckerberg could say that would make you not respond this way?
That's why it's nigh impossible that Zuckerberg will come along and announce, "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."
Personally, this was one of the reasons I've been happy to work at firms that sell specific products and services. It doesn't guarantee they'll behave well, but the fact that customers can take their money elsewhere does tend to keep them grounded in the long run.
I think most social media, for that reason and others, has a bad business model. I'd like those businesses to fail to clear out space for alternatives to be built. (And they're not villains working there, so I'd also hope they all land on their feet and find new jobs.)
There's practically zero chance that will happen - either that the existing companies will "clear out" or that the same role would be filled by anything with a different business model. In the real world where Facebook will continue to exist, is there anything that the company or its employees could do that would meet with your approval?
Are you going to justify that claim? It's been made repeatedly about prior companies that were too big to fail, especially tech giants, and they all fall or become obsolete.
> In the real world where Facebook will continue to exist, is there anything that the company or its employees could do that would meet with your approval?
I gave an example: "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product." You're repeating this rhetorical question without addressing any of the points I made or adding anything new.
I was in this industry through all of that. It takes a long time for a company to fall that far. Yes, given enough time anything can happen, but I'm not interested in tautologies. In any time span relevant to this conversation, it's not going to happen. If you want to claim otherwise, that's your burden not mine.
> "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."
OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility. Even if Facebook moved to a subscription model, "treating users as the product" is not a phrase they'd use for what came before. So you still haven't indicated that you'd be satisfied by anything that could actually happen.
> You're repeating this rhetorical question
It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers, and repeating a question is still better than repeating statements based on counterfactual assumptions. If you want to play "high school debate champion" you'll have to try harder.
If they made that promise to investors, they could go to prison.
> OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility.
You're demanding that everyone else has to show that they're ready to abandon their principles, lest you judge them instransigent and unreasonable. What changes have you made to your worldview, without seeing something significant change?
Probably never: your views are shaped by observations of concrete realities and reflections on the consequences of those. And unless those realities change or you get new information, you couldn't come up with a coherent set of new views if you wanted to.
> It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers
It's still a question intended for rhetorical effect. I wasn't saying that makes it invalid, it's just annoying if you're repeating it while dismissing the answer given.
It’s like being a henchman, only you’ve managed to convince yourself it’s honest work. And maybe now it actually is.
Take some responsibility. Are you evil for signing on? No, but let's not pretend they're welcoming you because you're going to shine a light on unethical practices. Are you evil for staying? That's a judgment call you have to make in your own heart-of-hearts, measuring what you've enabled and contributed, who you've enriched--against the moral influence you've exerted (not to mention the questionable influence you've empowered.)
> I and literally thousands of others are here, solving technical problems, trying to influence the non-technical ones, and if you think we shouldn't be than that's just counterproductive by any standard.
There is a standard. I offer you a baseline: if you're solving technical problems and you're systematically failing to influence the non-technical ones, you shouldn't be there. I give you the benefit of the doubt. Your failure is likely measurably less than systematic.
But enough so? Bear in mind the alternative is not yelling at Facebook from the outside, it's building a better world, a better product, a better community...elsewhere.
And how many of the critics are doing that? How many are making a positive moral difference at their own companies, however good or bad those companies already are? I posit that moving forward at a "bad" company is more valuable than standing still at a "good" one. In my group at Red Hat, generally regarded as a "good" company, our project plans were influenced by demands from some pretty shady customers - big banks, government agencies, even a Russian propaganda agency. At Facebook, my work supports data scientists who are detecting and eliminating that same kind of propaganda. But I'm supposed to feel worse about myself now?
You talk trash about freshman ethics, but that's exactly the kind you yourself are engaging in. I was in fact a philosophy major long ago (though more logic and metaphysics than ethics) so I should know. ;) It has been over thirty years since I found such simplistic arguments even slightly amusing.
Can anyone on the inside give some insight into current morale? Is the constant deluge of negative press cutting through the indoctrination or nah?