Zuckerberg is widely despised on HN, but he should get some credit for standing up to the Silicon Valley wage cartel. As your example shows, it put potentially life-changing compensation within the reach of a much larger group of software engineers.
Previously you pretty much had to get lucky as an early engineer through IPO, but in the past decade it's been possible to save millions by working at FAANGs. And those millions trickle down into the ecosystem: people can afford to start their own companies, do angel investments, etc.
Zuckerberg doesn't seem that despicable to me. Certainly not in the company of companies like Google. What's the worst thing you can say about him or Facebook?
I think most of the bad press just comes from media clickbait. Mainstream news identifies Facebook as a competitor and threat on ideological model, see people complaining about conservative news sources topping most shared on Facebook lists, and on a business model basis (Facebook controls a large stream of traffic).
I mean a good argument against Facebook (and by proxy Zuckerberg) is that Facebook designs the product in a way that benefits them rather than the psychological well being of their users.
Do companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Google, etc prioritize their customers over their own interests? Other companies in tech or outside of tech?
I don't think Facebook is some well run charity doing philanthropy - I just don't think they are meaningfully worse than their peers. I do think there is a concerted media campaign to malign Facebook and I think this is where the differential in how people think of Facebook versus these other companies comes from.
…is this statement not true for any, say, Fortune 100 company?
Does P&G put the psychological health of their customers over their own profits? Does Walmart? Apple? Exxon?
One might be able to make the slightly stronger argument is that the average user’s psychological health is more at odds with Facebook’s interests/profits than most other companies — putting it in the same category as, perhaps, Phillip Morris — but even that is not an argument against Facebook or Zuckerberg; any company in the same position would likely be doing the same kind of thing.
Previously you pretty much had to get lucky as an early engineer through IPO, but in the past decade it's been possible to save millions by working at FAANGs. And those millions trickle down into the ecosystem: people can afford to start their own companies, do angel investments, etc.