I've held a short list of organizations I wouldn't ever work for, for a long while. Meta is on that list, but so are most of the big tech companies you see in the various anagrams.

It's getting to the point where selling my soul to the highest bidder is going to be absolutely required for any big tech job going forward.

As I learned while burning through all my savings in the 2023-2024 timeframe: You are free to have principles, but principles aren't free.

I am ashamed I worked there.

Truth be told, the Meta engineering organization created PyTorch and React.

I won't color any large entity uniformly bad at all times and aspects.

If you were remote and LCOL or MCOL you've also made significant inroads towards retirement after just a couple years at Meta.

Like, you can go be a middle school teacher and probably be fine if you stuffed the sack while the stuffing was good.

I think it says more about Metas inability to create new products or make investments.

Look at their big growth areas. They acquired instagram and WhatsApp. Threads seems successful(?) but is an extension of instagram.

Mostly they’ve just gotten better at weaponizing rage bait. Which I’d argue, long term, will be a losing strategy.

If this were a healthy culture, with all the people working there, Zuck would have promoted far more interesting internal experiment to full blown products. That just doesn’t seem to happen there.

You mean like React?

Agreed, what a damage to the world.

you shouldnt feel bad for them because they are smart and could get a job at meta (unlike you)

As someone who quit their corporate tech job to focus on community building work, I don't think finding better job is that simple.

Nowadays, when I look at job listings, practically all of them are for companies that are ethically compromised in some way. They are overusing generative AI or building products that are having a negative impact on society.

One of the worst examples I saw was a software engineer job posting from my previous employeer that builds cloud-based physical security systems for buildings.The job requires the use of AI. I wouldn't trust a security system that randomly decides to unlock the front door to my house because of a hallucination.

Sorry, but your rant comes from a place of naive privilege when you assume meta engineers all had options.

I know a number of people that accepted roles with companies they vowed never to work for after being laid off and unemployed for a year. The reality is that when you look at tech in abroad context, there really are very few ethical and/or noble companies.

Id honestly wager that at you and most of the people who are agreeing with you in the comments don't make the meta SDE salary, and if offered the 300k/year positions at Meta, even for a limited time, you would absolutely take it

And you would be stupid not to.

One one hand, you can be that guy that says you declined a Meta job, and be stuck at your current salary level, watching people make more money around you, and realize that even people who are make less than you truly absolutely just DGAF that you declined a Meta job - sure, they will tell you its a good thing, but its not like you get rewarded for it with having more friends or social support, in the end you are just still another person to them.

On another hand, you can make enough money to secure a good life for yourself, create new accounts on social media websites if you want to talk about Meta in a more positive light, and find new friend groups that are easily accessible with having more salaries (just buy a BMW a show up to any BMW meetup and bam, new friends right out of the gate).

The 2024 election should be a clear indicator that people just simply DGAF about each other as much as people think.

They won't reflect, these people literally have no morales. The only thing they value is money and giving teenage girls depression.

edit: sorry but if you purposely to chose to work at Meta after 2016 you clearly have zero morals and are fine with working at a company that not only willingly exacerbated a genocide but knowingly profited off of it too.

These workers can't be condemned enough, some of these devs should be in prison too.

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I am completely willing to forgive Meta (and Palantir etc) employees who quit their job and donate their blood money (all wages above some low multiplier of median US SWE salary, adjusted for cost of living) to a reputable charity of their choice. Preferably one focused on repairing the incredible harm inflicted on other humans to which they have been a proactive and willing accomplice. Anything less than that does not constitute genuine remorse; we do not let millionaire criminals keep their illicit earnings because they apologized on the stand.

That nearly none will do this (I suspect most would be irritated at even the suggestion) tells you all you need to know about them.

edit: The disagreement is unsurprising, but I'd like to hear the reasoning against this. If you truly believed you'd wronged humanity at a job you voluntarily took for its high pay over all the others you could have easily gotten, keeping the exorbitant excesses of money should be unpalatable to you. That's how having a conscience works. Anything else is just a vacuous attempt to regain social standing.

> You undoubtedly had other options, yet you chose to work for one of the most well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organizations on the planet.

One day, when there is no job for you, you will look back on this moment and chide your past self.

There is no organisation that has their hands clean. Not even the one you work for.

The idea that facebook is this "well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organization" that has caused "damage to the world" is a perfect example of scape-goating.

When you step back and try to explain exactly what the company has done that's so bad, there's nothing there.