
Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal - Despegar
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/16/facebook-has-struggled-to-recruit-since-cambridge-analytica-scandal.html
======
jfasi
I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I
haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from
Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies
with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of
our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but
literally no one was considering Facebook.

> Usually half of the close is done for recruiters with the brand Facebook has

I'm also finding that company brand plays a _huge_ role in closing candidates.
Our company's brand is generally pretty strong, and I've found one of the
things candidates respond to most is the story we tell about our company's
past, present, and future. Facebook's story has become "we were founded by a
jerk who didn't care about privacy, our not caring about privacy has had
massive consequences for American and global society, and our promises to
improve our approach to privacy in the future have proven to be disingenuous
smokescreens."

It's no wonder the substantial portion of people who care about their
employer's ethics are turned off.

~~~
clairity
> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to
> considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was
> considering Facebook."

intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal
liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging
negative press.

~~~
mrtksn
>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty

Big claim. Any proofs?

With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help
with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the
candidates are.

Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic
process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what
people want or how do they think through big data analysis but manufacturing
it.

Sure - provocations and lies are not new, it was always the case for politics
but with a social media everything is at scale and everything is happening
violently.

~~~
nathanlied
> With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help
> with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the
> candidates are.

(EU citizen here): I would prefer corporations (especially ones with such
depth of funds and breadth of influence) be kept entirely outside the
electoral process. If that's not feasible, then the second best option is,
indeed, that they provide the same service to all candidates, no matter who
those candidates are.

Am I getting it right that you'd prefer they pick some candidates to help in
detriment of others? Because that option does not sound very healthy to me,
personally.

~~~
arcticbull
My ideal system is to eliminate all private money from elections. You as a
candidate are given a stipend by the FEC at the beginning of the campaign
season, the same amount as any other candidate for the same office, and you
are free to spend it. You ran out? Tough. See you next election cycle.

Nobody is allowed to give you money or anything else of value (including free
airtime) -- not individuals, not companies, just the FEC. Anything else is
bribery, and a crime. That way, you're not going to do things just to please
your benefactors and get you an edge over your opponent next time, as your war
budget is already accounted for. Instead you can focus on doing what's best
for the people.

~~~
visarga
If you really want money out of politics then you replace all of them with
sortition (assemblies of the people). They are representative, being drawn at
random, for the whole population and they are not elected, so they don't need
to campaign. Similar to politicians, they need to be supported by experts and
advisors in the specific topic they are working on. I'd rather trust a group
of random people deliberating than a bunch of professional liars. Sortition is
a way for people to participate in democracy more than voting once every
couple of years and posting on FB.

~~~
noir_lord
My approach is different, two houses (assemblies) one elected and one via
sortition.

Elected can propose and pass but sortition house can block.

Basically the commons/lords setup but with the lord's replaced with random
people.

That way the politicians answer directly to the people (or a random sample) of
them.

~~~
brigandish
I have been thinking exactly the same. I now have to wonder if you work at
Facebook and have "read my mind" via my likes… ;-)

I been musing on whether there should be some small barriers to joining, as
there is in jury service - perhaps the elected get to oppose a certain number
of candidates, or they must pass a civics/governance test first so at least
they've some technical knowledge going in. I can see that being twisted into
something bad though.

Much as I dislike the Lords Spiritual in the current system, I wonder if the
sortition should embrace it and be a "tulip farm" of certain interest groups
e.g. 20 each for religion, business, justice, commoners etc, as then there's a
definite base of understanding in important areas.

However it would be arranged it'd be hard for it to be worse than having the
Lords full of lords though.

------
allthecybers
This is not a surprising headline. If you have values about privacy, decency,
civil discourse, honesty or integrity you wouldn’t want to work there. Also,
if you feel the company was collusive or willingly complicit in the
dissemination of fake news and Russian propaganda efforts during our
elections, it’d be a big fat “no” to working there. And it’s not just our
democracy that is undermined by FB. There’s a litany of abuses that they have
either been horribly naive too or downright negligent in addressing.

If you are bright-eyed optimistic about Facebook I'd be interested to hear
your counterpoint to all of the scandal. I don't think there is any company in
the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise but it isn't surprising that FB
would have a decline in hiring.

~~~
nostrademons
> I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic
> enterprise

I feel like Google started that way, and then lost its way sometime between
2009-2012.

Projects like Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Summer of Code, Google
Reader, Google Open Source, Google.org, and pulling out of China didn't really
have much of a business justification, but were simply something good that
they could do. Unfortunately they're a public company, and when you start
struggling to meet analysts' (perpetually inflating) estimates, being good -
or at least not evil - is usually the first thing on the chopping block.

~~~
hinkley
Google never figured out how to make serious bank outside of the marketing
department.

The fact that they kept the wheels on as long as they did, I gotta give them
some respect for that. But they were always destined to end up being amoral at
best and a cesspool at worst.

If you are starting a company and think you want to be proud of it for the
rest of your life, sell a real product, not your users.

~~~
randomsearch
Not true: they make billions from cloud services.

Re: “you are the product” meme. I guess it’s a mechanism for raising awareness
of privacy violation, but I really don’t like it. If you were literally the
product, you would be a slave. You’re not. What they sell is your attention.

A big reason for not liking “you are the product” memes is it misses the key
aspect of manipulation, which phrases like “the attention economy” capture.
You are being manipulated into giving up more of your time and attention.

~~~
JohnFen
Honestly, that seems like splitting hairs to me.

------
bwasti
I'm not sure how the journalist fact checked this, but in 2016 CMU sent 12
people to Facebook[1]. In 2018 CMU sent 27 people to Facebook[2].

[1]
[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/scs/scs-
ba.pdf) [2]
[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-P...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/scs/1-Pager_SCS%20BS%202018%20rev%202.1.19.kc.pdf)

~~~
niceonedude
Those are just SCS numbers. The CNBC article cites all of CMU. Facebook
recruits from the math, engineering (EE), and info systems programs as well.

~~~
bwasti
fair point,

2016 - 1 total from math and engineering

[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/cit/ece.pdf)

[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mat...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2016_one_pagers/mcs/mathematical%20sciences.pdf)

2018 - 4 total from math and engineering

[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/cit/ECE%20BS%20one-
pager%202018.pdf)

[https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-P...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2018_one_pagers/mcs/1-Pager_Math_B.S.%202018.pdf)

If you're curious to do some more research, here's the link
[https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-
us/salaries_and_destination...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/about-
us/salaries_and_destinations/2016.html)

~~~
niceonedude
Huh, those numbers are lower than I expected. Perhaps CNBC counted grad
students as well, which is half the CMU population I think.

------
redwards510
As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are
suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook
simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.

~~~
drugme
And the root cause of its suddenly "not being considering cool or exciting
anymore" would be?

~~~
return1
... not really innovating? its main product is still centered in social
signaling and gossip ... just like day 1. Also the social craze is not so
crazy anymore (I wonder, how are the other social apps doing?)

------
freedomben
I've known several people that would no longer work for Facebook, but the
Cambridge Analytica isn't the biggest concern. It's the fact that they are
censoring people, even within private groups.

I have a friend that jokingly said (in a private group) that men are vile
pigs. We knew she was joking - it was good natured. Yet, Facebook issued her a
warning and removed her post and threatened her with a ban. First they came
for Alex Jones and I said nothing because I don't like Alex Jones (and think
he's insane), but now that the precedent is set that Facebook is the speech
police, it will expand to us all (especially with their machine learning
advancements that are here and yet to come).

The EFF has a _really_ important article about this that I implore everyone to
read[1].

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-
not...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/private-censorship-not-best-way-
fight-hate-or-defend-democracy-here-are-some)

~~~
fossuser
For a detailed nuanced piece about how FB handles some of this complexity
check this out: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-
inside-...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-
facebook-war-on-hate-
speech?fbclid=IwAR1eOECZtrjNHo7QJmwhlgk_mGKSpur5tWWEXi8Cc2eqRU29EZfxNh_Cr9Y)

FB has its problems, but I generally find the negative press overstated and
wonder if Zuck's approach to interact with the press and congress actually
backfires (compare to the other companies which largely ignore them). I
appreciate how often he talks to the press to explain what they're trying to
do though.

I also see the Cambridge Analytica scandal as what it is - permissive APIs
that were abused and then locked down. Cambridge Analytica is to blame in this
for abusing TOS and behaving badly, FB is arguably negligent - but I think the
reaction is extreme.

Plus from people I know inside FB there really is a huge funded effort to stop
abuse and manipulation via 'integrity' teams. It'll be interesting to see how
they modify things given Zuck's recent pivot towards focusing on privacy as a
core feature.

~~~
finnthehuman
>For a detailed nuanced piece [...]

I don't see any nuance, I see invented complexity masquerading as something
sophisticated.

This article is written as if they're trying to suss out the perfect
boundaries along which to apply censorship. That frame of thinking is a con.
They will never have a perfect censorship implementation because there is no
win state.

Let me back up: As you read this, facebook has a censorship policy. What would
it take for facebook to be know they're done arguing over what does or doesn't
get deleted? How do they know when the censorship policy isn't good enough?
Advertiser pressure, press pressure and political pressure. i.e. fashion.

It should have been obvious to everyone present at (or read about) the meeting
in this article where Facebook attempted to invent a principled stance that
allows casual misandry while banning similarly-tempered casual misogyny. But
I'm perfectly willing to believe Facebook can't see it. I can explain.

Facebook's stance towards nudity has a very clever property (that is almost
certainly unintentional). It allows users to lie to themselves. Facebook could
automatically hide nudity to everyone who isn't an opted-in adult, and still
throw it behind a twitter-style click gate so there is no accidental NSFW at
W. But they don't. They'd have to add an "I'm not a prude" checkbox. And
THERE'S the rub. The lack of such an option lets people uncomfortable with
nudity tell themselves that they're not the kind of person that's
uncomfortable with nudity. The want to think they're sex-positive enough to
have nudity, and just a reasonable person who doesn't mind if it happens to be
banned. Even more importantly, it lets people them avoid thinking about the
question "am I so uncomfortable with nudity that the idea of other people -
the WRONG PEOPLE - seeing it makes me uncomfortable?"

~~~
fossuser
They're not a government and it's reasonable for them to have some editorial
control over what's posted to their platform (in the interest of keeping it a
place their users want to be).

A lot of this is detailed in the article, it's helpful to read it.

~~~
finnthehuman
> They're not a government

I'm not saying they are.

>it's reasonable for them to have some editorial control over what's posted to
their platform

I'm not saying it's not.

I'm saying that their editorial policy is (in part) driven by fashion instead
of principle. And complexity is used to obscure that rather than reveal it. My
attempt to use Occam's razor to explain the obfuscation leads me to conclude
there must be some utility that caused the system to evolve in such a way that
it's possible to avoid seeing/acknowledging that.

------
baoha
Recently I think the scandals haven't been the single biggest factor when
deciding between Facebook and other firms.

The common reason I heard from most of my friends who turned down FB, or
quitted FB was that the working culture is too demanding and kind of pressure.
Google on the other hand is more laid back and family friendly. So people who
started building a family will prefer Google over FB. The nice thing is FB
tends to offer higher level than Google, so in some cases, if you get matched,
it works out pretty well.

I have a friend who worked at FB, after he came back from paternity leave, his
manager told him he has been slacking (his reviews were always "meet
all"/"exceeding" before), it's time to put in more work, he quitted after a
month.

------
bognition
Honestly I think its more than just that, Facebook is no longer the cool start
up building the world's favorite website. They're a multi-national advertising
mega corp, and TBH most people just don't want to work there.

~~~
tobtoh
But Apple, Google, Microsoft aren't the cool start-ups either and they are
mega-corps, yet people still want to work there. So I don't believe that line
of reasoning holds up.

~~~
adjkant
In terms of cool tech, Apple/Google absolutely are a cut above Facebook now in
my experience. Microsoft used to be below, now they rose as they embraced more
open source and modern tech, I'd probably put Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon even
in the cool category these days while Facebook was stereotypically above
Microsoft before. Amazon, depends who you ask for a definition of "cool" from
more so.

~~~
freetime2
I would wager that at all of these companies, how “cool” your job is depends
heavily on your specific team and role. I’m sure there are thousands of people
with very uncool jobs at Google, and thousands of people with very cool jobs
at FB. Comparing two companies of that size and saying one is cooler than the
other is probably an oversimplification.

That being said, I share your perception that Google and Apple are cooler than
FB. :)

~~~
dodobirdlord
I think your wager is completely accurate. With Amazon as an example,
depending on your team you could find yourself doing high-performance work in
cutting edge languages on a globally distributed high-availability FaaS
platform, or you could be using Perl 5.8 to make tweaks to a website that will
only be displayed in certain parts of India.

------
gambler
_> Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s
approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters._

This narrative is highly suspicious.

Zukerberg openly and repeatedly said that he doesn't care about anyone's
privacy for _well over a decade_ [1]. The whole company is built around
collecting and selling private information. Why would people who care about
privacy interview with Facebook in the first place?

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-
privacy)

~~~
quantumsequoia
The whole Facebook sells data thing is something I see said a lot, but haven't
seen anything show. Is there any evidence of this?

Wouldn't selling data be detrimental to their business model of being the
golden goose for showing ads to people interested in your product? If people
get user data, they can better target people themselves rather than paying
Facebook to do it

~~~
JohnFen
People often use "selling data" as shorthand for "providing access to groups
of people based on what the company knows about them". The two are very
similar.

------
_hardwaregeek
As a current student, I'm actually surprised by this. Maybe I just hang out
with evil people, but I don't get the impression most young programmers care
that much about ethics. Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary,
cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. Perhaps there's other
reasons?

I do joke with my friend who works at Bloomberg that the "evil" finance view
has now flipped completely. Bloomberg is a pretty ethical company compared to
Facebook, Google, etc.

~~~
gspetr
Age is a proxy for putting value into such concepts as "ethics". When you're
more or less senior and have your basic needs met, then you can afford to be
picky on what you work. Fresh grads might not care because it takes to know
evil to know good (see the story of the original sin and Tree of the knowledge
of good and evil), and work experience is like a separate life experience.

Heck, I've heard a theory that you should only be counting programming years
as life years, i.e. if they haven't been programming for 18 years, then they
aren't adults in the world of software. And the funny thing is, once you're at
least a teenager by this definition, then you start thinking that they might
actually be onto something...

~~~
zestyping
> When you're more or less senior and have your basic needs met, then you can
> afford to be picky on what you work.

If you start from there, it follows that countries with poor social support
systems will tend to generate less ethical workers and less ethical companies.

I grew up in Canada. When I came to California, I had zero debt. That made it
relatively easy for me to choose ethical (even altruistic!) places to work
starting from very early in my career.

Imagine how different the entire technology landscape would be if most
American computer science grads had the same flexibility.

------
zippzom
Personal anecdote: I had a job offer from Facebook and a couple other big tech
companies. The Facebook offer was substantially better fiscally than the other
ones and it was clear to me that they were having trouble hiring. Their
initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive for
somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck.

However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about working
there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job choice.
I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable (and I do,
although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to explain
myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked. Just my
two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who turned down the
job.

~~~
Panini_Jones
> Their initial equity grant has no cliff and the signing bonus was massive
> for somebody two years out of school: $75,000 cash in first paycheck.

* Google got rid of the cliff too. * The $75K sign-on bonus is nothing new. These are not signals that we're having trouble hiring now.

> However I ultimately turned it down because of ethical concerns about
> working there combined with a sense that people would not approve of my job
> choice. I.e. even if I don't find what they're doing ethically questionable
> (and I do, although I don't think they're so bad), I didn't want to have to
> explain myself or defend them to everybody when I mentioned where I worked.
> Just my two cents as somebody who was one of the 50% of candidates who
> turned down the job.

Honestly, working at FB as a SWE is awesome. Like beyond awesome. If
impressing other people is what you're optimizing for, you do you, but just
know that you're missing out big time.

~~~
blub
A timely commit, because at this rate Fb will soon be just as cool to work for
as big tobacco and bragging about all the awesome "cancer-causing" projects
will be kinda awkward.

------
karthikb
I have seen cold emails from Facebook and Instagram recruiters recently and
they all start on the defensive about privacy, how it's "Zuck's" big thing and
how he's taking it seriously. Seems a little desperate.

~~~
dylan604
Does anyone actually believe Zuck's new found interest in privacy? His entire
company is built on the sharing of data (even in ways users don't understand).

------
5trokerac3
Facebook's brand is tainted enough now that smart engineers don't want any of
the bleedover into their personal brand that would come from working there.

How many engineers, in hiring positions, do you know that have a _positive_
opinion of FB?

~~~
camjohnson26
Ok but how many engineers use React, yarn, or graphql? Facebook is still
leading the way in front end development and it’s still a net positive to have
that name on your resume. Their brand isn’t any more tainted than Google,
Microsoft, or Amazon.

~~~
subparwheat
Facebook is not lacking on the problem in their web tech either. Like how
terrible it's maintaining (or the lack of) flow. It's buggy as hell and I wish
I didn't choose it couple years ago in my projects

And for React, the head of React left FB because of the hostile working
environment earlier this year. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/17/facebook-
manager-quits-after...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/17/facebook-manager-
quits-after-being-harassed-over-views-on-diversity.html)

Facebook led the way in frontend. But for future candidate, the important
question is, if they have faith that FB will continue to lead that way.

~~~
camjohnson26
Sure but no company is going to be perfect and I’d say their track record of
maintaining tech is better than Google’s right now.

------
jasaloo
"In general, Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the
company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters."

That made me smile <3

------
warp_factor
The general feel I get from most of my engineer friends is that Facebook's
product is definitely not inspiring and doesn't "make the world a better
place" (whatever that means).

But the consensus is that given the right amount of money, they would all
accept an offer from them. And Facebook is known to pay very well.

~~~
subparwheat
It's pretty true that the pay trumps them all. But Google is generally pretty
good at matching Facebook's offer. So when choosing between FB and Google, or
any of FAANG, the pay is usually less of a concern. So being considered "not
inspiring" and "evil" is definitively not helping FB to close on the
candidates.

~~~
sidlls
FAANG's hiring processes are so arbitrary and non-repeatable that it's
entirely possible (even likely, I suspect) for a person to have offers from
just one of these. Other than Amazon, an offer from these companies is
practically a lottery ticket.

------
neilv
This is the most encouraging thing I've heard recently. We might be doing
better culturally, and more resilient, than it sometimes seems.

------
JohnFen
Wow! Every so often, I see something that makes me feel hopeful about the
future. This is one of those times.

~~~
bloopernova
I feel bad for the Facebook employees below middle management level, but I
also really would like some harsh penalties directed at Zuckerberg et al.

I hate that huge corporations can just kind of shrug and say "oops" to
egregious crimes, without any meaningful consequences. Same with corporations
not paying tax while still benefiting from the stable society created by those
taxes.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There are real signs of a moral change in this upcoming generation. I suspect
a lot of people are going to be very surprised when that wave comes in and
breaks.

~~~
humanrebar
It's a double edged sword. They seem to live in thicker bubbles. They don't
seem particularly tolerant or forgiving.

------
mark_l_watson
Great discussion here, both about FB and G! There are trade offs between
getting valuable services in exchange for user data vs. not wanted to live in
a dystopian future (or, are we already almost there?)

It seems like an almost impossible optimization problem (for me) to balance
wanting my country to be competitive in developing useful future AI and other
tech to solve health, climate, resource, etc. problems, and, protecting
people’s private information.

I am positively biased in favor of FB and G for personal reasons: I have been
working in the field of AI and ML since 1982 and my recent work has been
spectacularly helped by frameworks and pre-trained models released by G and
FB.

I want a future world of combined privacy and tech-fueled hyper productivity.
I just don’t know how to get there. I act consistently for these two goals but
I have no control over how other people act, nor do I want to dictate what
other people do. I think the best we can all hope for is some large degree of
personal sovereignty over our own individual lives.

------
wnmurphy
They pay well, it's a good brand name to have on your resume, but on
principle, I ignore any recruiter from Facebook.

It's glorified MySpace that exists to build de facto detailed psychological
profiles on unsuspecting participants, and it's specifically engineered to
manipulate their behavior. No thanks.

~~~
robertAngst
Same feeling about the recruiters from Tesla.

It sounds horrible to work there, there are lots of companies that make cars.

------
holoduke
I believe (strong personal assumption) that this is something not only for
Facebook, but also for Google and Apple. Back 3 years ago, a lot of people
from my network had dreams to work for Google or Facebook . Today it's no
longer the case. They demand a company who is serious about things like
privacy, environment. Things like career possibilities are still important,
but so many companies these days offer similar work experience. Surprisingly I
hear more and more positive news coming from old evil: Microsoft.

~~~
pat2man
Isn't Apple serious about privacy and the environment?

~~~
_lpa_
I always had the impression that the incentive alignment between Apple and
it's users was far better than any of the other big tech companies.

------
pan_peter
So has AOL, friendster and MySpace I heard. Different DNA than Google and
based on the foundation of voyeurism with text entry boxes cut and pasted from
MySpace, who cut and pasted them from friendster and the list goes on. You
don't cut and paste algorithmic search technology.

------
Glyptodon
My career is and has always been defined by a refusal to work for companies
I'm not ethically comfortable with. Hopefully it becomes more of a norm.

~~~
wnmurphy
This is a luxury and a privilege many people can't afford, and I am right
there with you in exercising it consciously.

~~~
Glyptodon
I agree, but there are many people who are in positions to exercise this kind
of discretion who refuse or who only do so after they've extracted tainted
benefits.

------
randyrand
Wahoo! This is great for people who are interested in working for FB who can
now have more bargaining room.

------
decebalus1
Hmm... the headline is in direct contradiction with what I read on Blind.
People are still flocking at Facebook's gate for an offer.

~~~
mrkstu
The difference being, the very best, with multiple offers, are choosing
another path.

Its like the very best high school students with offers from Harvard,
Princeton and Yale- but suddenly Facebook is being treated as if it's
Dartmouth or Cornell instead of Princeton and being left with the leavings of
the very best instead of having its pick. Still very talented people to be
sure, but not the 'best.'

~~~
malandrew
how do we know that the ones no longer seeking employment are the very best
and not just the ones that are most woke?

> Among top schools, such as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ivy League
> universities, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to
> new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school
> year to between 35% and 55% as of December, according to former Facebook
> recruiters. The biggest decline came from Carnegie Mellon University, where
> the acceptance rate for new recruits dropped to 35%.

It's entirely possible that the 35-55% of those that are still accepting
offers at FB are the most talented of the people that have interviewed at FB
and gotten offers.

I know a lot of great engineers, woke and politically indifferent. The most
effective ones that I've worked with are the least politically engaged because
they are more heavily engaged with building things than politics.

------
kerng
What I know from friends at Facebook is that there is a mass exodus at the
moment, at the same time mass hiring to compensate. Overall pretty
uncomfortable so most of them consider leaving to other places.

------
uerobert
Correction: Facebook has struggled to hire talent [from top universities]
since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Everyone knows if you didn’t go to a top school you don’t matter /s.

Anecdotally nobody who went to my undergrad got a new grad offer and then
declined it at FB. Because most of them just can’t get offers there, and if
they do they can’t get equivalent ones.

------
jarjoura
FWIW, I think this past year everyone has been expecting Uber, Lyft, Airbnb
and Pintrest to unlock a flood of money. Anecdotally, a researcher friend of
mine turned down FB to work in Snap Inc, research and someone else's wife also
turned down FB to work at Lyft went to get in before the IPO specifically and
no other real reason. So as much as it makes a good story about ethics or
privacy concerns, I think it's lots of things, but probably very little about
Cambridge Analytica.

~~~
robertAngst
If US "Defense" is any indicator, just pay more money.

Someone is willing to kill people for more money.

------
azangru
An anecdotal piece of evidence.

There’s this senior engineer, by name of Jafar Husain. Used to work at
Microsoft, where he learned RxJS (from Matt Podwysocki, I shouldn’t wonder).
Then he moved to Netflix and brought his RxJS know-how there. Worked there as
a senior software engineer for about 7 years. Authored the Falcor library (a
graphql competitor in the early days of graphql). Then, in October 2018, he
joined Facebook.

And he is a very talented engineer :-)

~~~
throwaway_9168
So he worked at MSFT till ~2011 (before they became open source friendly), and
joined Netflix ~2011 (when they announced Qwikster [1]) and joined Facebook
just a short while after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out? He may be
talented, but boy does he have to work on his timing.

[1]
[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix)

------
natrik
Facebook has began scaling back on hiring since the Cambridge Analytica
scandal.

Alternative possible headline working just as well. People are still applying
en masse to work at Facebook.

 _Among top schools, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions
offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018
school year to between 35% and 55% as of December._

A fall in acceptance rates may mean saturation in needed roles at Facebook.

~~~
lallysingh
Then Facebook shouldn't be giving out offers or interviewing so many people?

I think these are primarily offers given to interns. Otherwise, why go through
the interview process if you don't want to work there? It may be a better
place to go for internship than for full time.

Then again, maybe their compensation packages may no longer be competitive.
It's possible.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _their compensation packages may no longer be competitive_

They're competitive cash-wise. But the career hit is unmistakable.

(My friends who had other options eventually got tired of carrying around
reputation that comes with that place. If you have no other options, that's
one thing. But not everyone loves broadcasting that fact.)

~~~
esoterica
There is no career hit associated with Facebook. That’s just ludicrous wishful
thinking. People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still
looks good on a resume.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _There is no career hit associated with Facebook_

Having witnessed it personally, yes there is. It's not evenly distributed. And
if you do something amazing later on, people will look past it. But it's there
in a way it isn't for _e.g._ Apple or Google or Amazon.

> _People love to complain about Goldman Sachs too, but that still looks good
> on a resume_

Goldman is universally respected within finance. Facebook is not universally
respected within tech.

(Neither Goldman nor Facebook care about public opinion, outside of managing
political risk, since neither sells its product to the mass market [1].)

[1] Goldman recently started doing this, though

~~~
Pils
Is there a scenario similar to Facebook's in finance, right now or
historically?

~~~
lallysingh
Like Wells Fargo, or any of the folks in this list:
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/101515/3-big...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/101515/3-biggest-
hedge-fund-scandals.asp)

I'd be hesitant about someone who'd work for Madoff.

------
bogomipz
I can't help but think of Zuckerberg's famous quote "young people are just
smarter."[1]

I guess they are Mark.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-
sili...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-
valley-ageist-or-just-smart/#6484f18ed659)

~~~
imsofuture
The older I get, the funnier that quote gets.

------
fune_fr
Most companies go through this transition as they fill their niche, the raw
eng talent starts to get hidden under an empire-building layer of middle
management.

They've been able to hire some middle management to mind what remains.
Replacing change-makers with reject managers from Netflix, etc. Not
necessarily bad folks, just not going to be doing a lot of work.

------
mooneater
A manager from fb reached out about a position, I told him to take a good look
at what he is supporting with his work, and that I might reconsider if the
leadership ever sees the light.

------
newscracker
If this is true, then it would be good for humankind!

My position on this has always been that people still working at Facebook and
its other properties don't think much about what affects millions of other
people negatively (they got their money and some interesting work though).

I wish that sometime in the next few years, a past job at Facebook is seen as
a personal blemish and a question of character and conduct.

------
option
in a current climate of talent shortage in tech and especially in machine
learning/deep learning there is really no excuse for going to FB

------
skybrian
If there will be fewer people who go to work at Facebook who care about
privacy, that seems like bad news?

~~~
JohnFen
I don't think that people who care about privacy could possibly affect what
Facebook does by working there.

~~~
skybrian
Why not? Tech firms work collaboratively and even new employees participate in
(some) decision-making.

~~~
silversconfused
Making a decision that limits the growth of the core product means that you
are a negatively impacting revenue... IE, career suicide. This isn't a
government (ideally) trying to prevent conflict and unrest, this is just a
company making money.

------
pm24601
I will believe this story when the stock price actually goes down. Until then
it is wishful schadenfreude.

As a point of reference Boeing's stock price hasn't really gone down, and
Boeing's action killed people.

If the stock price doesn't go down Zuck will not care.

------
pacetherace
While many people may not care about a company's morals, they definitely will
care about the reputation of a company in terms of how the company is
perceived by the general population and others in the industry.

------
dblock
I’ve recently left a CTO job and am going to a large software thing. Facebook
was the one company I didn’t consider.

Facebook being “the past” played an equal role to “Facebook being evil” in my
decision.

------
gigatexal
Good. Maybe the scarce resource is good talent and this being harder to find
for FB they’ll quit being so creepy and too hopped on their own greatness.

------
enibundo
Let's let facebook die peacefully.

Talents have many more options to work for.

Be that for money (in finance), or passion (in other fields where their
consciousness will be cleaner).

------
axaxs
I tell everyone I can to avoid them, just based on my own personal experience.
It was by far the worst process of any company I interviewed with.

------
rb666
It's certainly no longer cool to mention you work for Facebook in my area.
Google is still a very strong and popular brand.

------
jonthepirate
Last time FB recruiters wrote to me on LinkedIn I told them I'm not interested
in working for a scandal factory.

------
asynchrony
I interviewed at Facebook with the intention of getting an offer letter I
could use as a bargaining chip with my first choices. I was rejected, but
fortunately got into my first choice anyway. Despite all the perks and
compensation, I would never want to work for Facebook.

------
julianozen
[deleted]

~~~
Basketb926
source?

------
zeristor
So is Facebook going the way of MySpace?

If so what will replace it?

------
return1
The self-righteous people should be alarmed by this: this means facebook will
be hiring even worse scum and do more evil things. Save the world from evil
facebook, go work for them.

~~~
50656E6973
Let it die, this accelerates the process

------
jjuhl
The sooner FB just dries up and dies, the better (IMHO). What do we need that
junk for?

~~~
asciident
I get a lot of value from Facebook, and it greatly improves my life, even just
this past week. I found out about some career opportunities through friends'
posts. I saw photos of old friends that made me happy. I got answers to
questions I had about a specific uncommon musical instrument I had via a
Facebook group. I searched for people who would be in a city I was visiting,
to message them to meet up while I was there. I learned news about
acquaintences having kids or moving between cities. I read some backstory
about a city hall decision that made me more informed about what particular
politicians have been focused on and why. I bet I'm in the majority actually,
and people who get nothing from it are probably already not using it.

~~~
silversconfused
Literally none of those things depend on facebook though. Mastodon, reddit,
IRC, or just sitting in your aunt's kitchen for an afternoon could substitute
nicely. They have no niche.

~~~
jeromegv
You forget about the network effect. None of our friends are on IRC. Reddit is
great for some niche groups, but there are tons of facebook groups specific to
a niche that really have no equivalent anywhere else.

~~~
silversconfused
The value being in the network means the value is subject to social whims.
That's not a secure place to do business long term. All other places I listed
have networks as well. You have chosen to think this network is better for
you, but if/when people move then you might need to re-evaluate that as well.

~~~
compiler-guy
No one is claiming that it is the best place forever and ever and that can
never change.

But today, facebook rules from network effects. Someday it won't (just like
myspace doesn't anymore).

------
qbaqbaqba
They are still php based business.

------
dymk
> After the publication of this story, Harrison contacted CNBC to say “these
> numbers are totally wrong.”

> “Facebook regularly ranks high on industry lists of most attractive
> employers,” Harrison said in a statement. “For example, in the last year we
> were rated as #1 on Indeed’s Top Rated Workplaces, #2 on LinkedIn’s Top
> Companies, and #7 on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work. Our annual intern
> survey showed exceptionally strong sentiment and intent to return and we
> continue to see strong acceptance rates across University Recruiting.”

Perhaps it's best not to take a couple ex-recruiters word as blanket truth
about company wide trends.

Of course, the article simply mentions this then goes straight back to
asserting company wide morale problems, which is an interesting narrative to
pursue, when that's not really what the majority of employees are feeling
(which is further reflected by strong hiring numbers and low engineer
attrition).

~~~
JohnFen
Also, every one of the metrics he cites there are of dubious value in terms of
real-world meaning.

------
mtgx
Forget Cambridge Analytica. There have been several reports about how badly
they've been treating their executives. Why would anyone else trust them after
those reports?

~~~
decebalus1
do you think the rank-and-file employees give a damn about how they're
treating the executives?

~~~
stebann
Haha So true!

------
ykhoury
I deleted my Facebook profile 2 months ago. Best decision ever, but now I'm
just wasting more time on Twitter haha.

~~~
silversconfused
Why stop at facebook? Nuke twitter and join mastodon!

------
algaeontoast
I actively turned down a facebook offer out of college, however, boy does
facebook throw money at people who seem to turn a blind eye to online
ethics...

$$$

~~~
Kinnard
Is it possible that ppl who work at facebook have ethics that merely differ
from yours?

~~~
badrequest
As possible as it is they have no morality at all.

~~~
matz1
Everyone has moral, it's just might be different than you.

------
nabla9
They have to pay more. Median monthly pay for intern: $8,000

[https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-
doub...](https://www.vox.com/2019/5/15/18564801/facebook-interns-double-us-
salary-glassdoor)

~~~
what_ever
That's been the common intern pay for a while at FAANG companies. Heck I got
paid more than $8k at a non-FAANG company back in 2012.

------
HillaryBriss
As a business, this is not a big problem for FB. FB will still find plenty of
talent.

What they will find less abundant is "top talent," whatever that means. I
doubt FB actually needs that much "top talent" to continue successfully,
anyway. They're not performing brain surgery on a rocket.

