Unless they are being held hostage in some way, I truly do not understand people who willingly choose to work at Meta/Facebook. I mean, could be worse, could be Oracle, I suppose?
@codinghorror Wealth and power are a helluva drug.
@codinghorror plus if I was there I'd refuse to call it anything but Facebook. Twitter is still Twitter. Google is still Google. etc
@codinghorror or google or microsoft or.....
@codinghorror There are many people in this world who couldn't care less about the big picture. They will tell you that they alone can't make a difference and if they don't grab the opportunity, someone else will, so they'd rather ride the gravy train.
@codinghorror I read the book by Sarah Wynn-Williams recently.
tl;dr - I realised quite early how evil everyone was, but money. Then they fired me anyway, the monsters.
@codinghorror I think there are three main types:
- People who use Meta / Facebook / Insta, think that the product to consumers offers good ROP ("return on privacy")
- People ambivalent to Meta / Facebook, but don't have a moral or ethical problem with working for something that lots of people love.
- Bounty hunters that will do whatever for money
@codinghorror Palantir
@codinghorror Same as working for ICE, the State Department in your country, your country's armed forces while deployed overseas,... your will is always conditioned by your context.
@codinghorror pay is good, presumably?
@codinghorror Existential nihilism, seems very popular now.
@codinghorror bills to pay, mouths to feed...
@codinghorror Or palantir ...
@codinghorror
Ehm... Feeding your family is much more immediate and important to most people than the vague masses of other people. It's not inhumane, it's practical. I dislike these companies and I have never entertained an option to work for them, but I also had (past tense) other options. I chose a company that had values I believed in and then they were acquired by a big faceless uncaring multinational profit cruncher. At some point, there aren't many options.
@ghosttie
@infosec812 @ghosttie highly debatable; these companies (Meta, for example) have VERY difficult, extremely strict, intensive interview processes.. if you have the skills to get past that, you likely could get hired at a lot of other tech companies or startups.
@codinghorror @infosec812 @ghosttie 100% this. The people working at companies like Meta are not the ones who have no alternatives. They’re decidedly not the ones with three low-paying jobs full of daily abuse and no healthcare, trying to survive. Many could literally choose where to work. It might result in a mild inconvenience at worst. They chose the likes of Meta. That’s what’s confounding. The wilful ignorance.
@herrbischoff @infosec812 @ghosttie yes this is accurate.
@deepfryed it's wildly overrated in my experience, also not very fun
These people have none to share. Life is a 0-sum fuck or be fucked experience.
Humanity, society, a common shared future, you say?
Nah.
Can't loose what you never had. If the Walking Dead was an allegory for the rapid dissolution of western society these Meta/Palintir/FB/Google cube jockies would be the faceless hordes between you and the Neegans in the board room.
@codinghorror yeah, I get the point. I wouldn’t.
@OvertonDoors @Philip treat them like people who work for tobacco companies, or alcohol companies, or.. the sackler family
@alfabravoteam exactly the same? how much the same? Everything is exactly the same?
@codinghorror mostly yes, I guess. We're not that complex as humans. We are conditioned by our context and we are taught to work it out from within.
Impoverished people (read as lacking options) choose the park of least resistance. Lacking options is also investing in a career and finding out your way to get money to pay debts includes ethical dilemmas. As with ice offering to pay student debt, etc
Give options to people and that will change. Real options
@Thebratdragon number one question: how monstrous is the leadership? I think Zuck and Ellison are WILDLY more evil than the others. Like, it isn't even close.
thiel, he is by far the worst of the lot.
@Thebratdragon oh god Thiel is an absolute monster. Yes.
@majorlinux "this is your brain on drugs"

