I legitimately cannot see this question in the current context as anything but being made in bad faith.
Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Something like "high pay, interesting/difficult challenges and problems to work on, large scale rarely found elsewhere, and lots of learning opportunities (including loads of great engineers to learn from)" never crossed your mind?
Not saying that those were the reasons OP used to make their choice, could have been plenty others. But given there are so many obvious possible reasons, the question in the context of the original comment feels just off.
P.S. I am neither current nor a former Meta employee. It is just jarring to see reddit-tier flamebait discourse in HN threads.
> Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta?
Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta. People usually don't land there because of a desperate need for money, which would probably be one of the very few acceptable reasons for joining that company.
And why should my question be in good faith? Why should we not call out people who cheerfully join organizations that pose a threat to our future, and show no civic responsibility?
> I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta
WhatsApp is an extremely useful product in my life. Instagram is nice for keeping up to date with some friends I don't get a chance to hangout in-person with often, as well as following some small local artist and museum pages. I dont care for FB as a product anymore, but pre-pandemic it was great for helping organize events with my friends. Oculus Quest 2 is a product I use daily and enjoy.
Most people outside of a subset of HN boiling in their own echochamber consider a lot of those products as useful in their lives, and will just give you the look of "huh, sounds interesting, i will look into it later. Oh, just remembered I had an appointment in an hour, welp gotta go, see ya later" if you try to give them that "harmful" spiel.
> And why should my question be in good faith?
Because that's what people come to HN for. If I wanted bad faith takes galore, I would need to go no further than reddit.
> Why should we not call out people who cheerfully join organizations that pose a threat to our future, and show no civic responsibility?
Because that's just your opinion. And it is sliding into QAnon-level justifications for using arguments like "why should we wear masks, when they pose a threat to our freedoms and the way of life!" and "why should we not storm the capitol, it is a civic responsibility to free ourselves from the shadow cabal's tyrrany and threat to our future!".
I don't agree with those QAnon takes, so I hope you realize that not everyone universally agrees with your takes either. And not because they are being paid by Meta or were "brainwashed".
I see a lot more negativity towards Facebook IRL than I do here on HN. If anything, the correlation seems to be that those closest to the tech industry are the ones most positive about it, while casual users are extremely negative.
> Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta.
It seems you also struggle to understand that the majority of the world does not consider them to be a harmful company, and do not agree with your assessment of it.
Anti-disclaimer: I do not work for FAANG, nor have I. I also never had a FB/Instagram account. I'm not fond of Facebook, but I can see other people's perspectives.
> Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta.
Then you aren't actually asking to learn. Instead you are judging the poster. That's a thing you can do, but couching it in a question is terrible forum etiquette.
> it's surprising that a person would share this publicly at this point in the company's history.
This is the part that tells me that maybe you are a bit out of touch with the general public.
Go to any college campus or talk to any student in a good CS program in the US. Meta is going to be on the list of some of the most sought after companies to get an internship or a fresh grad offer at. People post glowing humblebrag posts on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/LinkedIn/etc. when they get a job offer from Meta, for their friends and followers to see. I see it on my own feeds not that rarely, and often from people I went to college with a while ago.
I cannot really feel the same level of excitement about a job like that to share it with others in a similar way. But you finding it "surprising that a person would share [that they got a job at Meta] publicly at this point in the company's history", as if it was something they would be ashamed about and attempt hiding, is somewhat telling.
> Now if this warrants deplatforming in the eyes of a resonable person
What warrants deplatforming is your straight up admitance that you had nothing to contribute, were not acting in good faith, and were just asking a question to attack someone.
Just say it with your chest. That way people can judge for themselves what the heck it is you are doing.
I think you're the one who's attacking users here. Asking why someone would join a company is not an attack, even if I have my reservations about the company, and I had no plans to further interact with them, but probably continue to have my opinions about their choice, unless they make a compelling argument.
My question was not made in bad faith, but insinuated to be a bad faith question by a different user, though as I said, I do understand the people who directly call out Meta employees, which I did not do here.
It is you and your peer who attacked the question, brought up conspiracy theories and called for deplatforming. So if you continue perhaps I'll be the one to reach out to mods. I have every damn right to ask someone on HN why they would work for Meta, without expecting intimidation from other users.
And yes, I continue to be surprised by people who would join Meta given all the shady and illegal things they've been doing over the years. So maybe one of you could give an honest answer, one that does not involve an attack. Maybe they weren't fully aware of Meta's issues, or people there generally don't care about these problems? That is what I was trying to understand.
You know you basically already admitting to acting in bad faith right? You said this: "And why should my question be in good faith?".
This is you basically admitting that it was all in bad faith in the first place, because, it is an attempt to justify it, by effectively questioning why your question should be asked in good faith in the first place.
I think you're reading the least charitable interpretation into my comments. The question was not asked in bad faith, but genuine surprise, while I'm also bothered by people acting as if a Meta employee could not be called out. You can be offended by the matter of an allegation being framed as something bad, and also not commit the alleged act.
For example an Amazon employee could be bothered by their union related question being perceived as critique, while also seeing no issue with someone condemning Amazon for their illegal union busting, and general disregard for the safety and well being of their warehouse staff.
Ok, so you agree that you should not ask questions in bad faith, and then when you later said "And why should my question be in good faith?", well that was a dumb question.
Glad I finally got you to the point of saying that we shouldn't ask people questions in bad faith, to attack them.
Just say what mean, and don't do this roundabout way of attacking people, with a flame-bait question.
And if you already agree that we should not ask people bad faith questions, then you saying "And why should my question be in good faith?" is bad faith itself, because you already know that we shouldn't do that.
No, I don't think any method of direct or indirect questioning is bad in this context, while you have a problem with both a roundabout and a direct critique of someone's employment choice, be it Meta or Amazon. You said it yourself that I should be direct in my critique so that I hopefully get deplatformed.
Find a less harmful employer instead of projecting your insecurities into someone's question, and trying to silence critique of any kind to ease your conscience.
Cool, so as I suspected, you support engaging in bad faith, and asking bad faith questions.
Just say that from the very beginning if that is your opinion. Not sure why you would do this song and dance of denial, if this is just what you believe.
I'm not sure what you're understanding from my comments at this point, but I said it early on that I see no problem with a bad faith question when it comes to questioning a Meta enginner's employment choice. I kept repeating the same thought over an over. You can be content with something in a specific case, and at the same time not engage in it. This also doesn't mean that someone will usually support a bad faith argument, or engage in it, as you seem to want to conclude.
> I said it early on that I see no problem with a bad faith question
Awesome! Got you to admit to it them! Now don't start crying when people accuse you of supporting asking questions in bad faith.
Just say "Yep, that is a totally valid thing to accuse me of supporting. I agree that you are correct in saying that I have no problem with asking questions in bad faith!".
You could have avoided all of this, if you just said that from the beginning.
I always think of the same question when I talk to someone who goes to work for Meta. High pay, sure, but that's available elsewhere.
Scale, by now, is surely an operations matter. If they're still having to innovate to perform at their current scale, what the hell have they been doing? In other words, aside from the VR distraction, what interesting challenges remain at Meta?
I know they have to rebuild their ad platform since Apple devastated it. But is "convincing people to look at advertisements" really still an interesting challenge? That's the point of view I don't understand, and would like to!
Not just pay, but also perks, people, and prestige. All of which will make your daily life as an engineer more pleasant and catapult your future career in ways the vast majority of other companies cannot.
Is it selfish? Perhaps. And maybe Meta will fall out of the pantheon of top tech companies at some point, but for now they’re still there.
The projects in their domain is definitely more interesting than slogging through yet another Generic Line of Business Project at Generic Tech Is A Cost Center Company where the vast majority of SWEs work.
Sorry, I must not have expressed my question clearly. Specifically which projects are interesting? They don't seem to be doing anything new, at least from the outside. I don't mean by that 'anything new for Facebook' but genuinely novel things, things you can't work on anywhere else.
Stipulated the rest of it -- what's the engineering challenge?
Fair question - and to be honest, since I’ve never worked there - I don’t know.
But to counter that, again, what’s the interesting or exciting engineering challenges at the various mundane companies where the vast majority of SWEs work at?
Having worked at such “boring” companies, but recently transferred to an “exciting” company in the same tier as Meta, I can say the fundamental concept of my projects or work hasn’t changed, but everything around it has. The people around you, the resources available, the respect, the culture.
It’s all a matter of context too. If you’re the type of elite SWE that can snap their fingers and land offers at any of the FAANGMULA+ companies, then sure it’s much easier to scoff at Meta and say there are many equivalently “interesting” places to work out there.
On the other hand if you’re someone that struggles with leetcode and Meta is the only company of its type that gives you an offer and the rest are cost center companies like the Wells Fargos and Home Depots of the world, then that’s another story.
I dislike Meta as much as the average person here, but it's easy to imagine challenging projects at their scale.
Say for example using advanced engineering techniques to optimize existing processes to achieve a 0.1% speedup. That alone could save a couple million dollars with Meta's scale. And it's only possible with the kind of scale they have.
And of course outsiders wouldn't even notice such a thing.
Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Something like "high pay, interesting/difficult challenges and problems to work on, large scale rarely found elsewhere, and lots of learning opportunities (including loads of great engineers to learn from)" never crossed your mind?
Not saying that those were the reasons OP used to make their choice, could have been plenty others. But given there are so many obvious possible reasons, the question in the context of the original comment feels just off.
P.S. I am neither current nor a former Meta employee. It is just jarring to see reddit-tier flamebait discourse in HN threads.