
What I learned from losing my Facebook internship - Garbage
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-learned-from-losing-my-facebook-internship-2015-8?IR=T
======
tsunamifury
Facebook made a grievous PR error taking back the internship. Regardless of
who he is, my peers are thinking twice about joining Facebook now due to what
looks like a petty and vindictive administration.

Those who made this decision probably won't see the bad fruits of it directly,
but I know of two people who are very talented who turned down offers they
were about to accept due to the news.

Those of us who have worked at Google or apple or other top firms know what
vindictive and short sighted administration looks like and what a bad sign it
is for the environment.

And that's aside from the fact that what the kid did embodies the "hacker way"
held up by Mark. Signs of a backwards company having an identity crisis.

~~~
ckdarby
This individual bypassed the whitehat policies that Facebook have. He publicly
announced an exploit to the world.

If you're going to mention a company as a reference to another and you happen
to work at that company please disclaimer it...

~~~
lowpro
It was hardly an exploit when the data was publicly available... It was a lack
of privacy control by Facebook which the public recognition forced them to
fix.

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FBisNotSoGood
FB is a shitty company on certain levels... I was let go for being "too
social" (Really? WTF!?)

I also inadvertently caught a VP lying about the status of a project. I was
doing weekly status reports on certain projects, and one project VP wanted me
to get my status from him only... as opposed to me going to the other
contributors like I was on all other projects.

After he was not responding to my questions, I went to the direct contributors
for status and found out the schedule was behind and things that were said
were done were not.

I reported this, true status, along with my others.

Within hours of doing so, my manager and the rest of my team (we sat in one
row) got up and left... then I got a call telling me I had to leave the
building immediately.

This was just hours after having a meeting with several people telling me how
happy they were I had joined and what a great job I was doing.

FUCK FB.

The internal culture is a set of ambiguous bullshit rules enforced ruthlessly.
It seems that there are a lot of people jockeying to be the bid swinging dick
in each area.

There are thousands of cool employees, and a ton of assholes.

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epalmer
Facebook's response seems predictable if the intern had just thought about it
a bit. I'm not arguing that FB did the right thing, only that they took a
predictable action.

~~~
xtrumanx
Predictable for a typical large corp. Not particularly predictable for
companies projecting a cool hacker company persona.

~~~
mildbow
Everybody loves a cool hacker persona. Except when it's directed against you
:) And, facebook, imo, is more of "get shit done", rather than "break shit".
This was more of the latter.

But really, if you work for a company, even if just as an intern, you really
should be looking out for their interests. If you aren't, then why would they
keep you?

~~~
amirmc
> _" And, facebook, imo, is more of "get shit done", rather than "break shit".
> This was more of the latter."_

He didn't 'break' anything.

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jongraehl
"As a rising [University student / whatever]," \- have people really started
saying this? "Rising" as a self-descriptor sounds ridiculous. I feel like this
is at least the second time I've seen that opener.

~~~
verteu
A student is considered a "rising senior" during the summer between junior and
senior year.

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andor
How about: I learned that responsible disclosure can both improve user privacy
and prevent bad publicity for _my company_?

~~~
CydeWeys
Yup. He seems too young and idealistic. Of course you don't publicly release
anything that is damaging to your employer. That should never even have
occurred to him. Companies have these kinds of training all the time. Maybe if
he'd lasted long enough to actually get to the internship he would've learned
it.

I'm glad that he noticed the privacy flaw, but someone who is about to become
an employee of Facebook is the worst person to publicly release it. Maybe the
notoriety he's gained from this will be worth it in the end, but I know a lot
of companies probably won't want anything to do with him given the (lack of)
judgment he's demonstrated from this.

~~~
ivraatiems
> Of course you don't publicly release anything that is damaging to your
> employer.

I think that is a really, really dangerous line of thinking. Sometimes,
employers do bad things. Sometimes (perhaps often), there is not a
satisfactory way to rectify those bad things within the company. Sometimes,
what's good for the public outweighs what's good for your employer. It is
absolutely reasonable to have a conscience and say "wait, this isn't something
I can let slide."

Now, did that happen here? I'm not sure. This individual made a judgment call,
as you said. I don't know if I would have made the same call. But I simply
don't feel that loyalty to one's employer is as important a value as privacy
or safety. If that makes me unhireable in Silicon Valley, I guess I don't want
to work in Silicon Valley.

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twd
This is how i imagine his meeting went with the HR
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bahX2rrT1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bahX2rrT1I)

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myNXTact
Can someone give me an idea of how difficult it would be to change the default
on the software from sharing location to not sharing location? Is it more
complicated that simply changing a variable value somewhere in the code?

~~~
markbnj
It's always difficult to answer questions like this, because code can be
structured in so many different ways, good and bad, to do the same things.
It's probably safe to say in this case that for a well-written body of code
this would be a simple change: likely changing the default value of a flag, or
the boolean expression in a branch. However the code could be written to make
it much more difficult, and there is just no way to get a sense of that
without understanding how it is put together.

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spdionis
I remember the post that demonstrated the privacy issue. Back then I thought
it was really weird he wrote that without being scared of losing his
internship. If it were my company I would do the same.

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ioto
This is why I'm always wary on commenting on any potential companies I would
work at on social media unless it's positive.

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cx201
Are articles on BI not proof-read before publishing?

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TechnicalVault
I would be a lot less sympathetic to the intern if Facebook itself was not
infamous for having first been built on scraped content. I am not sure I would
want an internship with them anyway, they seem to have lost freshness and with
it a lot of their young user base.

