um, what? meta does not have an easy interview process to say the least. Ignoring recent job market madness…engineers at meta, historically, could have easily found another job that was not as sleazy. EASY. So why didn’t they?
As another commenter mentioned, it “says a lot”.
But don't ask me why. I'm a troublemaker. I bring up this stuff, I talk to the CEO, I refuse to do stuff that breaks the GDPR or other laws, I got people to scream at me for being stubborn. Other people aren't like that.
I suppose $400k comp instead of $350k (making up numbers here) is worth selling your soul for these days? These are people with options, that’s ill i’m saying.
i’ll never understand…
This is obnoxious.
The internet will be a remarkably combative place if that is the standard you set for when someone calls you stupid - it'd be a lot better to only read that into a statement if it actually gets explicitly said.
But you can comprehend them, we all can. So it's just abrasive and annoying. You can express a conversational tone without being an asshole. You don't need to act like your conversational opponents are super far out there or crazy or whatever.
Apologies if it came across as obnoxious.
If Pavlov's dog gets a big fat steak everytime it bites someone ...
Marketing/advertising is an industry dead set on convincing everyone that that (Pavlovian conditioning) is actually all there is to how it works though. I can only hope enough people wake up and grow a spine sufficient for us to start severely ostracizing and impacting those of us that keep making it easier for our fellow man to be targeted by immoral, power hungry autocrats.
If that's all you can do, then I might as well go apply at Meta right now.
>You could also stop participating in the attention economy, rewarding advertisers and paying people who show you ads. But that? That's tough. It's much easier to hope that Meta realizes what a bad, bad boy they've been and judges all of humanity like the Third Impact.
Perhaps you think I haven't sworn off that bullshit? Perhaps you think you're talking to someone who hasn't snapped the Golden Handcuffs, and drawn a line in the sand that, goddamnit, this world may be eating itself, but I. Will. Not. Be. Complicit. Nor will I make life easy or fun for anyone who is.
You ultimately decide what your legacy is going to be, and if you're willing to let yourself be bribed into the damnation of your fellow men by building machines for those unworthy or completely untrustworthy in their use of them, that's on your soul. Not mine.
I'll starve and die to ensure what I could make, that could shackle everyone, does not get made. I'll suffer privation, hardship, and pain, that those who come after me, whether descended from me or not, can at least not have to retread the exact same ground, or suffer in bondage to some tech empowered autocrat.
Sleep well, sir, in your appeasement of the Golden Calf of our generation. But know well, that the smell of it will pervade everything you do, and your cruelty and callousness, and disconcern for your fellows will come around and be repayed sevenfold. The bank account ultimately changes nothing. The world has it's way of slamming down and humbling the high just as much as the low.
Or listen to the voice inside you desperately calling out that something is wrong about all this and start doing the hard and painful, yet right thing. Make the world hurt for these bastards. Stop taking the easy way out. Set your own bars lower, and chain your avarice. Refuse their baccanal call.
Sometimes, what we don't do matters more than what we do.
You hate ads? Surveillance drives you nuts? This is the consequence of a dysfunctional government. You can protest the businesses all you want, it's their job to be apathetic. Make a big show of it, take off your flair and tell your AWS or Apple manager exactly how much all it sucks. They'll nod, write it all down on a legal pad, put it in a folder and refer to it when your next employer calls asking for cross-references. It would all make for a very touching scene of career suicide, and then your replacement can have a technical interview scheduled in by the end of the week. That is the sum of damages you can enjoy as the fruit of your protesting this company.
It's funny how much Americans care about their legacy while doing nothing worth remembering. A Microsoft employee who donates their disproportionate wage to an animal shelter is doing more to benefit the world than some shmuck who got mad at capitalism for the fly in his soup. John Carmack worked for Meta, and still has more of a legacy than every "hacker" on this site combined. If your identity is so shallow that it's defined by nothing other than the person who pays you, you have more serious issues than finding an ethical employer.
(I know this wasn't your main point.)
If understanding that it’s wrong to invade people’s privacy is incompatible with keeping your job, you probably won’t understand it.
Pretty sure this is illegal, and probably a liability e.g. if it came up in court.
I'm pretty sure if the debt itself ever goes to court, the debtor can argue that they can't even enter the website. On the other hand this company is a bit of a shitshow so good luck having the website work haha.
What they see is dollars now but not dollars later. Often these data issues can rise to the level that it could destroy the entire business. You might be called a party pooper, but truth is people like this want to keep the party going. It's hard to understand that sometimes keeping the party going means saying no. But it's just the same dealing with drunk people, say no by saying yes to something else. Like presenting another solution. Though that's way easier said than done...
Just remember, everyone is on the same team. People don't say "no" because they don't want to make more money. A good engineer says "no" a lot because your job is to find solutions. It usually sounds like "I don't think that'll work but we might be about to...". If you stop listening without hearing the "but" you can't solve problems, you can only ignore them. Which *that* is not being a team player.
We're always rushing and the truth is that doing good is much harder than doing bad or "evil". I put it in quotes because it's very easy to do things that are obviously evil post hoc but was done by someone trying hard to do good. So I find this language to be a problem because it is easy to dismiss with "I'm not a bad person" and "I'm trying to do good". Truth is that's not enough. Truth is mistakes happen. We work with asymmetric information. It only becomes your fault when you recognize and don't take steps to fix it (or active ignorance).
Sometimes things take nuance. Sometimes it takes more than a few sentences to convey. But who reads longer anyways?
For employees it gets normalized at the first signal that your livelihood might be affected if you don't comply.
As someone who's privacy conscious, it's an uphill battle to convince co-workers to actually follow laws instead of trying to find loopholes.
I've worked at places who collect every possible data point and distributes it willy nilly in Excel spreadsheets posted in Slack. I raised it to a CISO and the response was "all that information is available for everyone anyway via the interface". I know a German company requires you to "accept" data collection and processing in order to settle a debt. I reported this to their legal department which I personally knew a person and they said they'd "look into it ASAP" two years ago.
In the end people just roll along with it. I know this is unpopular, but the only forward I see way to prevent this from happening seems to be using courts and tightened legislation.