often these companies will not hire their own janitors, but contract a another company that doesn’t give them the same expensive benefits as the regular employees

That is true in the legal framework. In practical terms the Janitor however will say "I work at Facebook" (as long as they are proud of the brand) not "i work at sublease janitorial management corp" in a social situation as Facebook is where they are. And going back to the original article: Even such contractors sometimes get corporate swag at such places.

True, they go even further like most large tech companies, security(physical), IT, food chefs/preparers, even alot of recruiters are all permanent contractors.

> They not only have other choices

This is the problem with tech interviewing - it's so incredibly fickle that even someone with a senior job at a prestigious place doing practical work may not be able to pass an abstract problem-solving whiteboard interview somewhere else.

Not even less than a week ago, there was a thread about how to "nail the Facebook interview" and how it is kind of expected to cram and prep for these "abstract problem-solving whiteboard interview"

If there is one thing that Facebook developers should not have an issue with, it's in passing these kind of processes.

I'd worry about the opposite: if the typical image of a Facebook employee is of a drone suited at "studying to the test", working at a company with zero ethical principles and justifying it by the good money, then how will they be able to adapt to a more value-based job?

> it is kind of expected to cram and prep for these "abstract problem-solving whiteboard

Well exactly - they may now have family commitments such as caring for people that make cramming impossible even if it was possible before.

> If there is one thing that Facebook developers should not have an issue with, it's in passing these kind of processes.

But they may have passed their interview a decade ago at this point. They may have also come in via an acquisition and so not formally interviewed at all if they come from an early startup.

You can take someone who passes an interview at Google but fails at Facebook, and vice-versa. These interviews are so incredibly astronomically tough and so subtle and fickle that it's no guarantee to be able to move.

You are missing the point. I am trying to argue that these people self-select. If they are at Facebook occupying a white-collar job, it is very likely that they share the ethics of the company. The challenge for those (rare) people that want to leave Facebook (or any FAANG, really) due to a realignment of personal values will be in finding a place where they can prove that they are not just a mindless robotic drone like Zuck, not their technical chops.

That senior developer at a "prestigious place" can find a job that'll pay the bills, though, without working at A Name You've Heard Of. They have other choices; they just might not be choices that are as cool. (Darn?)

If they consider Facebook cool, they don't seem to have an ethics issue with Facebook in the first place ...

(And yeah, some of the Tech they do is cool and there are only few places with such demand for technical solutions for that large scale of operation, but there's cool tech elsewhere as well)

Exactly. It's funny how you can "/s/Facebook/RedTube" and the principle still works.

Not just the IRL jannies, but the ones who police the platform too. They are contractors who make minimum wage and are exposed to horrors every single day with little psychological support.