
Engineers Say 'No Thanks' to Silicon Valley Recruiters, Citing Ethical Concerns - dredmorbius
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/engineers-say-no-thanks-to-silicon-valley-recruiters-citing-ethical-concerns
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mikestew
Not a single hard number in the whole article. Here's what I'm picturing:

<Recruiter>: "wanna work for Evil Corp.?"

<Candidate>: (long, multi-paragraph rant; something something ethics.)

<Recruiter>: (reads first sentence) "I'll just put you down as a 'no'.
Next..."

Not a quote from an Amazon or Google recruiter saying, "man, numbers are down,
hiring has been hard." Nope, not a word. Just anecdata like "I rejected Uber
so hard, so many times". Oh, yeah, I'm sure Uber is feeling so burned over
there they are having discussions _right now_ about what to do about it. Or
maybe it went down like my first paragraph.

Don't get me wrong, I turn down my fair share of companies, too, and sometimes
for ethical reasons. But let's not kid ourselves, there's someone right behind
you eager to get to work on Evil Corp.'s "interesting problems". Hell,
Intellectual Ventures (you know, the big-time patent troll?) here in Bellevue,
WA is hiring. You and I might say "hell, no", but they're still in business,
so you know _someone_ is hiring on there. Say "no" so that you can sleep at
night, not because you think someone gives a shit as to why.

~~~
lithos
If that recruiting agency gets in trouble for not getting numbers or similar.
They will look for reasons why, to toss it at their client to turn down the
heat and to better know what to change about their tactics.

~~~
mikestew
Yeah, that _could_ happen. Or not. Maybe, I dunno. Someone should go ask tech
recruiters about that and write an article.

There were a lot of missed opportunities such as this one in this article, and
that's what I'm getting at. As written, it's just a few personal stories from
self-important tech workers.

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r_smart
That feeling when an article published by one of the largest professional
engineering organizations in the world has no data to support its claims.

Also, what does this even mean:

>It’s likely no accident that women, underrepresented minorities, LGBTQ
people, and other underrepresented groups in the tech industry are among the
more prominent voices speaking out through recruitment channels, Luo says.

Why is that no accident? Is there some different moral matrix people who
belong to these groups judges the world by? Is there any evidence to support
_that_ claim (or whatever claim they're trying to make).

So glad I dropped my IEEE membership (I used to get this trash mailed to me).

And for the record, the claims could very well be true, but the article does
nothing to prove it, other than using two people as an example. And I wouldn't
be surprised to learn they were invented (or friends of the author).

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mrguyorama
I was flown out to California for an interview at Google, and while I didn't
get the job, it shattered any desire I had to work there. I previously wanted
to work "for the giants" because, well, money, and prestige, and "cool
problems" etc.

Then I noticed every single person I met was involved with Advertising and
tracking and tracking advertising. It was disgusting. I don't want to work on
those kinds of "cool" problems.

~~~
jiveturkey
Well you must have accepted an interview for that kind of team (perhaps
unknowlingly; this kind of thing can be quite opaque to the candidate a
company like Google). Obviously not everyone at Google is working on ads and
tracking. In fact, I would bet the farm that it's a minority under 5% if not
under 1%.

I think yours is a good story -- it worked out for you. But, honestly, you
didn't know Google's business was an advertising and tracking business? Don't
know the exact number but I think it's still over 90% of their revenue is from
ads. Come on.

~~~
mrguyorama
I was just getting ready to graduate from college at the time. I understood
google did a significant amount of advertising, but my introduction to google
as a business was reading the initial search whitepaper from the 90s. I had
assumed they at least had some remnant of "interesting sciency" search based
stuff going on.

>Well you must have accepted an interview for that kind of team

No. My interview was as an infrastructure and internal software engineer.

The big thing that hit me was that every single person I talked to emphasized
how you could switch projects/teams/orgs every year or so, so they had a wide
range of experiences under their belt. Except to the man, every last one was
about supporting Google's advertising

The only hint that google did something other than advertising on the entire
campus was a statue of the Android mascot

------
raincom
It is like asking prospective students to boycott applying to elite schools
like Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Even if you convince a majority of people,
say 60%, there are 40% others who want to apply to elite schools, or work at
elite companies.

In the end, what matters is money. Subordinating money to ethics works well
for those who are reasonably well off financially; for others, it is a way to
become reasonably well off financially.

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null000
Pretty much. I've told amazon in particular I have no interest in working for
their company because of how they treat their employees.

Of course, that hasn't stopped me from getting hit up by at least 7 more
recruiters from Amazon since, including one lovely person who decided cold
calling me was a totally reasonable thing to do.

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gumby
Not like this is new; I'm in my 50s and since I was in my 20s there were
people who wouldn't work for one company or another because of the products,
working environment etc. Sites like Glassdoor exist because people care about
working conditions (whether GD can be gamed is a different matter).

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throw2016
Having a discussion on surveillance and ethics here is nearly pointless and
merely dilutes the discussion with denial, apologism and hand waving. Its just
going through the motions of debate when reality already confirms the choices
made.

Google, Facebook and others are SV darlings and large employers and they have
no shortage of fawning prospects who barely stop to think about niceties like
ethics unless they need to posture, or expect it of others as if we live in a
magical world where we can sellout but others have to behave ethically.

Articles like this and endless debate is not going to work. Regulations may -
personalized advertising especially social or political is unethical and
destructive. But these debates will happen in other places where the focus is
more on ethics and society and not startups and making money.

------
sonofblah
(Booted from the front page already?)

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mesozoic
Cool this will drive up our salaries.

~~~
prolikewh0a
Is money all you care about?

What happened to solidarity?

~~~
drharby
Solidarity went out the window when noone would touch me for over a year after
10 yrs of service as an engineer in the armed forces.

Don't appeal to my emotions

~~~
prolikewh0a
>Solidarity went out the window when noone would touch me for over a year
after 10 yrs of service as an engineer in the armed forces.

Why wouldn't they 'touch you'? This should in fact bring on more solidarity
but instead you've seemed to turn it into some sort of anger. You should be
able to relate with the rest of the workforce, see their challenges &
struggles, and have solidarity as others have for you.

