"They paid me $400k a year when similar companies for similar positions paid me $320k" is a very different story.

$80k a year is still a big raise even from $320k. But the bigger issue is that in most cases it wouldn't be easy to establish high confidence that the company offering the $320k salary is significantly less bad for the world than Facebook is (for whatever one's own definitions may be for "bad").

I’d be interested in what tech companies pay $320k and aren’t ethically dubious

Ethically I felt pretty good working at Rubrik (data backup company), as my first job out of university my total comp was >50% of that, I'm sure the senior people (who would be making $400k at facebook) are making that much.

people who believe drugs should be legal will work as guards at prisons locking up non-violent drug offenders for a lot less money. As a misanthrope I think you expect too much of your fellow humans if you expect a good grasp of ethics.

Those guards can have their cake and eat it too: help smuggle drugs into the prison, charge a premium handling fee.

Software devs, on average, have many more choices for where to work than prison guards do.

the vast majority of people are not knowledgeable about where a facebook employee could or couldn't work and for how much.

The only people that will judge are other swe

If you make 400k at fb you can make 300-350k at other tech giants, who are not perfect but not as comically evil as fb

The criticisms towards FB are definitely warranted, but I'd argue that other tech giants are on the same level. Facebook was just the only one that openly picked a fight with the entirety of traditional media who have massive resources and experience in manipulating public opinion, so bad or gray area things that Facebook does get amplified more than they would were it another company.

In what way are e.g. Netflix and MS evil on a level even close to Facebook?

Netflix has to be some saint in comparison. MS just now is starting to be a wanna-be Googlesque spy and has a history of screwing competitors over, not the people in general.

Netflix is a saint, I'll agree with you. Microsoft less so. They had market dominance in the 90's and got hit with antitrust for, e.g. preventing users from uninstalling and replacing internet explorer. I remember reading that the only thing this changed about their behavior was they started donating more to political campaigns.

The real offense is that it's been 20 years since then and congress hasn't trust busted any of these companies that have committed way more egregious sins. Apple has your device locked down such that you can't get an app on your own phone unless it's been approved by them. The charger changes every few years so you need to buy a new one, and iphone screens crack notoriously easily. Google and Facebook are competing for who can collect more data on users, but Google's more entrenched by providing services that people need to use like email, search, internet browsers, maps, a phone. Facebook's trying to have a monopoly over your online social life.

Microsoft's brand is strongly B2B, which is lucky for them because businesses 1. have a lot of money to spend on your service, and 2. are unlikely to make very public critical statements about you the way an average Joe consumer would. It's a great position so they're doing everything they can stay entrenched. It makes sense that their biggest sins are in being anticompetitive; they hit the jackpot and are trying not to share it.

Other tech giants are definitely not on the same level. Facebook is the only one which directly profits from manipulating people.

It's subjective. I don't love Facebook but I appreciate that it's easy* to live without it. Can't say the same for Google's ecosystem when my gmail is increasingly tied to my identity. Can't say the same for Amazon when they have so much monopoly over supply chain that some things you literally can't obtain if you don't purchase through them. There's also Disney silently monopolizing creativity. Facebook manipulates people to keep them on their site to increase data collection and drive up ad revenue. Google put adsense everywhere on the internet, so they don't need to do anything manipulative to keep you on Google because they earn ad revenue and get your data wherever you go**.

Everyone I know who works at one of these companies is a great, smart, kind, talented person -- including those at Facebook. We need better consumer protections and to break up their monopolies.

* Hard to escape Facebook's online tracking but adding this to your host file should do it https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...

** Sorry for this hyperbole, it's only sites using adsense that are guilty and adblockers work wonders.

By manipulation, I meant profiting from dissemination of fake news or other harmful content. I don't think other tech giants come close. Though, I would agree that all of them abuse their dominant position against their users' interest in some form.

Yeah, no one ever looks down at people, or companies, that put their own personal interests (money) above that of society.

I mean people might do look down on it, but they're hypocritics: pretty much everyone puts their own interests ahead of other people/society.

I don't mean this to be snarky, but this sounds like someone who has no family, no kids, never been in a serious relationship. Once you're committed to one or more other people, you're pretty much putting their interests ahead of yours most of the day. If my friends who are parents are to be trusted, their kids are their priority in every substantial decision they make.

Also, it's surprisingly cynical to say that people don't put their interests above society -- most of the people I know have taken on work and hobbies that don't maximize their personal gain, because they'd rather improve society somewhat.

I just don't think that's true. Some people scrupulously pay taxes, but others don't and push the line as hard as possible. There's real variation in people's willingness to 'defect' from the public good.

30k is not the median income in the U.S. and there are plenty of ways to make a decent living without working for FaceBook. You can make a very nice living as a developer working for non-tech companies. Or, if you prefer not working in front of a computer, you can make quite a bit driving a forklift or working as a plumber.

“The U.S. Census Bureau lists the annual real median personal income at $35,977 in 2019”

Calling it $30k is wrong, but not very wrong.

Also note: “The U.S. Census Bureau also reports the median income for each family. In 2019, it was $86,011.”

(Note I didn’t double check numbers above, they were just the first I found from Google results).

Note that “family” for income statistics means a household of two or more people who have relations from specified set between members, so that median family income is kind of like median household income, except that it excludes all single-member households as well as multimember non-family households (who are typically living together to save money), so it is biased strongly upward compared to similar household stats.

$35k includes children, retirees and other people who don't work for whatever reason.

Are you sure children are included? “The Census calculates per capita income by taking the total income for the previous year for everyone 15 years and older.” - https://www.thebalance.com/income-per-capita-calculation-and...

The census specifically doesn’t ask for income for children below 15, so perhaps that is the meaning of the sentence above, and per capita calculation does include kids as $0 income for calculating median - although that would be weird IMHO. Unclear, and I got bored looking for exact details, so gave up quickly!

Median full-time worker weekly pay projected on an annual (52 week) basis for Q3 2021 is $52,156 (52 × $1,003).

Until you tell them that there's other companies willing to match or nearly match that compensation for seniors...

https://www.levels.fyi/