Like most state employees, I am in a union and while there are MANY things I do not like about my union, from its high dues, to its constant forays into politics, to the supine pose it takes to contract negotiations, there is one thing that it does very well, and that is stands up against BS like this in a very meaningful way. Tech workers need a union or some union-like organization that stands up for basic worker rights.
My union is excellent but we are the exception to the rules. Our contracts always net better pay and retirement benefits. Sometimes I’m in disbelief what they sometimes get on paper. It wasn’t always like that but the protection unions bring are a huge benefit. Like them or hate them this would be something that would be a line item in a contract with protections.
In my EU country tech(IT) union is useless because they are simply toothless. Unions of teachers, airport, road, rail, etc workers are strong and always get what they want regardless of economic performance, because they can grind the country to a halt by simply not showing up to work for a day, but tech workers are under constant pressure of outsourcing and offshoring due to the globally distributed nature of work, so the unions never manage to negotiate anything against employers because they just have no leverage, when their workload can be taken over by someone from another country if they go on strike.
Unions are only as powerful as their impact to the comfort of the citizens and to the votes of the politicians.
No. I am not paying $1,000s in dues for them to spend it on a rally to "End Child Poverty" (to use an example currently in my inbox; and it's a good cause, just not a good use of my dues). My union exists to represent and protect me and my coworkers. Nothing more, nothing less. ...at least thats the way in should be, IMO.
It shouldn't be. Of course I think sometimes it has to be. But it is supposed to represent the employees in a collective bargaining agreement. That is it.
You could argue they should be involved with some politics around labor laws.
This is really a "hoisted by your own petard" situation. I hope they don't think people are going to be sympathetic towards them when they're guilty of doing the same type of things (and far worse) to billions of people.
I'm sympathetic to this view, which has merit. I'm also happy to accept any new advocates for privacy and liberty. Purity tests are counterproductive to a movement's goals. Effort should be directed toward activities that advance the agenda of the movement, directly or indirectly.
Here's a better statement "I'm glad they're seeing the light, even if they had to become victimized themselves to finally care."
I will never blame the non-management workers in this situation. Most of us are forced by modern society to work for someone else and there are a limited number of jobs available.
Not everyone who works at Meta has a better, more ethical option.
This woukd be like saying the person scanning your ticket at the concert condones Ticketmaster as a monopoly. No, they’re just trying to feed their family.
Meta employees aren’t DoorDash gig workers trying to feed families. These are well compensated workers. It’s okay to have the opinion that most white collar jobs do some harm somewhere, but pretending these are poor souls forced to work for meta because of lack of options is not a great take.
Furthermore the guy scanning the tickets doesn’t work for Ticketmaster, Meta employees work for and are well compensated for that work, by Meta. Big difference.
That being said, I still empathize with workers. I think people need to be treated like people and not some resource to be exploited.
There are definitely Meta employees who are not making especially high salaries like SWEs. Think about departments like support, graphic design, marketing, etc.
Most white collar workers do not have any luxury to stop working even if they are well-compensated.
Also, it’s not like you have a wildly great choice of ethical companies to work for as an employee. What percentage of corporations are truly ethical? What companies that compete with Meta are highly ethical? If I quit Meta who am I working for that has no ethical issues?
Yes, all those people Meta just laid off due to whistleblowing on the Glass privacy violations, and their content moderators and data labelers and so on have my full support.
No sympathies for anyone doing SW engineering or similar. Anyone working there can definitely get a different programming gig. It likely doesn't pay as much but that's how it goes when you sell your soul.
I still have sympathies for any individual contributors even if they are high paid.
No, you can’t always just magically work somewhere else. Especially not in the current job market. This is especially true when Meta has a far higher employee count than most companies. If every Meta SWE decided to quit today, the market would be flooded with employees.
Then you’ve got the problem of other companies being equally unethical. Where are they gonna work, TikTok? Google? Oracle? Who gets the ethics gold star here?
Working at Facebook means you optimized ruthlessly for $$$$$ only, absolutely nothing else.
Working at Facebook means you are a leetcode monkey and could as well pass other interviews somewhere else and get paid 10% less. But to you, destroying democracy and killing teenager was worth those extra 10%
Working at Facebook means you became a millionaire, even if you joined mid-career a couple years ago because of the stock inflation.
No they are not just trying to feed their family. 99% of them are ruthlessly optimizing to make the most money possible to live in the top 1%, while completely dismissing all the bad Facebook, Meta and Instagram do in the world. No sympathy.
And please don't compare someone making 800k$ with someone scanning a ticket for Ticketmaster for minimum wage.
At those income levels, who you work for DOES matter.
> Not everyone who works at Meta has a better, more ethical option.
Come on now. Software engineers at Meta are not trapped with Meta on their resume (whatever you may think of the company itself). Most of the FAANG, for engineering, just having that name on your resume, opens up doors.
You might get less than $700K TC as an E6 but that's also not "trapped" unless you've chosen to outspend your income.
Exactly. Working at Meta means you studied for 4 weeks for the leetcode interviews. That type of dedication means you could very easily get any job anywhere else.
And please don't compare someone making 800k$ with someone scanning a ticket for Ticketmaster.
How am I doing that? I'm talking about people who have very valid options elsewhere.
"I'm stuck at Meta, making $800K, I have no other options". We're talking about software engineers who created much of the things they're complaining about.
I'm not talking about say, cafeteria or custodial staff.
And I despise Meta, and you can say whatever you want about Leetcode (and I tend to agree) but don't pretend that there are many many rungs of "software engineering calibers" in jobs that wouldn't see Meta, or Netflix and say "we have to interview this person".
People here are making some warranted snarky comments. I ended working at Meta for a few quarters and quit. I will say many employees are so abstracted away that you sort of forget that you work for Facebook to some extent. I also noticed that people really believe that what Facebook works on is a net good. I don't agree and maybe we don't agree, but saying "haha now it's happening to you" isn't the gotcha you think it is to those people if those people believe the products are a net good.
I disagree that the products are a net good, to be clear. But working there lots of people drink the koolaid
Yup. I worked for Flock for a bit. During recruitment and onboarding, it was all big on ethics and morality and slippery slopes and responsible data stewardship.
After HR pats you on the back and you met with your team and org? Mask off.
"No, we won't build controls that allow us to block [data sharing that is illegal for agencies in state] for those agencies. That's not our concern. Oh, they want training on how to do that data sharing? Sure."
Garrett would talk regularly at all hands about a very Minority Report-esque future that was driven and made possible by Flock, and he was very clear it wasn't exaggerated for example or aspirational but an organizational goal.
Anyone who stayed there more than a few months knows exactly what they're doing.
hopefully they push back successfully. even if the most nefarious use is "we're training computer use AI", they should shell out for dedicated labs, not piggyback off the employees. gross.
sidebar but I've never aspired to work for faang and as the years go on it seems more and more like the right choice. vampire culture.
Seriously. This goes for all kinds of analytics. We've normalized surveillance, and if you dare suggest opt-in analytics rather than forced or opt-out you get hit with "but then we won't get enough data to improve our product." That's your problem. Do a UX study, interview people, make a focused effort to make good software. That's how we got the best interface design of all time. Now we're drowning in data and our software is fucking garbage that constantly frustrates and confuses its users. Clearly the issue is not a lack of usage data. It may even do you some good to fly blind if this is your alternative.
Really you should do the lab, though. Take this field seriously and cut out the live A/B testing.
The employees were all fine with tracking the entire globe and surveilling on Meta's family of apps, but when that is used against them by tracking their own mouse movements and their computers, it is now all too much?
Why are you still at Meta then? Clearly Zuckerberg does not care and can easily (and will) lay them off.
Why not protest the mouse tracking they do for the rest of the world? Oh wait because they only give a shit about themselves, that is why they still work for facebook.
They should be supported, but they did choose to work for a boss whose entire career has followed the path of collecting sensitive personal data from people for personal gain.
Unions are only as powerful as their impact to the comfort of the citizens and to the votes of the politicians.
This is a political issue. Your rights as a worker only make sense within a countries political apparatus.
Here's a better statement "I'm glad they're seeing the light, even if they had to become victimized themselves to finally care."
Not everyone who works at Meta has a better, more ethical option.
This woukd be like saying the person scanning your ticket at the concert condones Ticketmaster as a monopoly. No, they’re just trying to feed their family.
Furthermore the guy scanning the tickets doesn’t work for Ticketmaster, Meta employees work for and are well compensated for that work, by Meta. Big difference.
That being said, I still empathize with workers. I think people need to be treated like people and not some resource to be exploited.
Most white collar workers do not have any luxury to stop working even if they are well-compensated.
Also, it’s not like you have a wildly great choice of ethical companies to work for as an employee. What percentage of corporations are truly ethical? What companies that compete with Meta are highly ethical? If I quit Meta who am I working for that has no ethical issues?
No sympathies for anyone doing SW engineering or similar. Anyone working there can definitely get a different programming gig. It likely doesn't pay as much but that's how it goes when you sell your soul.
No, you can’t always just magically work somewhere else. Especially not in the current job market. This is especially true when Meta has a far higher employee count than most companies. If every Meta SWE decided to quit today, the market would be flooded with employees.
Then you’ve got the problem of other companies being equally unethical. Where are they gonna work, TikTok? Google? Oracle? Who gets the ethics gold star here?
Working at Facebook means you optimized ruthlessly for $$$$$ only, absolutely nothing else.
Working at Facebook means you are a leetcode monkey and could as well pass other interviews somewhere else and get paid 10% less. But to you, destroying democracy and killing teenager was worth those extra 10%
Working at Facebook means you became a millionaire, even if you joined mid-career a couple years ago because of the stock inflation.
No they are not just trying to feed their family. 99% of them are ruthlessly optimizing to make the most money possible to live in the top 1%, while completely dismissing all the bad Facebook, Meta and Instagram do in the world. No sympathy.
And please don't compare someone making 800k$ with someone scanning a ticket for Ticketmaster for minimum wage. At those income levels, who you work for DOES matter.
Come on now. Software engineers at Meta are not trapped with Meta on their resume (whatever you may think of the company itself). Most of the FAANG, for engineering, just having that name on your resume, opens up doors.
You might get less than $700K TC as an E6 but that's also not "trapped" unless you've chosen to outspend your income.
And please don't compare someone making 800k$ with someone scanning a ticket for Ticketmaster.
"I'm stuck at Meta, making $800K, I have no other options". We're talking about software engineers who created much of the things they're complaining about.
I'm not talking about say, cafeteria or custodial staff.
And I despise Meta, and you can say whatever you want about Leetcode (and I tend to agree) but don't pretend that there are many many rungs of "software engineering calibers" in jobs that wouldn't see Meta, or Netflix and say "we have to interview this person".
If you hire someone you trust them. Otherwise don't.
I fail to see how treating everyone like a miserable inmate at a Siberian gulag is going to help innovation.
I disagree that the products are a net good, to be clear. But working there lots of people drink the koolaid
After HR pats you on the back and you met with your team and org? Mask off.
"No, we won't build controls that allow us to block [data sharing that is illegal for agencies in state] for those agencies. That's not our concern. Oh, they want training on how to do that data sharing? Sure."
Garrett would talk regularly at all hands about a very Minority Report-esque future that was driven and made possible by Flock, and he was very clear it wasn't exaggerated for example or aspirational but an organizational goal.
Anyone who stayed there more than a few months knows exactly what they're doing.
sidebar but I've never aspired to work for faang and as the years go on it seems more and more like the right choice. vampire culture.
Seriously. This goes for all kinds of analytics. We've normalized surveillance, and if you dare suggest opt-in analytics rather than forced or opt-out you get hit with "but then we won't get enough data to improve our product." That's your problem. Do a UX study, interview people, make a focused effort to make good software. That's how we got the best interface design of all time. Now we're drowning in data and our software is fucking garbage that constantly frustrates and confuses its users. Clearly the issue is not a lack of usage data. It may even do you some good to fly blind if this is your alternative.
Really you should do the lab, though. Take this field seriously and cut out the live A/B testing.
The employees were all fine with tracking the entire globe and surveilling on Meta's family of apps, but when that is used against them by tracking their own mouse movements and their computers, it is now all too much?
Why are you still at Meta then? Clearly Zuckerberg does not care and can easily (and will) lay them off.
Just leave.
They should unionize. Then, replacing the individual employees doesn’t work.
(Much easier said than done of course)