Why working on Google and Facebook is the worst thing that can happen to you now

Some even claim that working on Google and Facebook is the worst thing that can happen to you.

Photo: facebook.com/Mark Zuckerberg

Jobs on Facebook look very welcome. Interns earn about $ 8 thousand per month, and an entry-level software engineer earns $ 140 thousand per year. Food is free. There is a walking path with local plants and a fresh bar.

But the attitude to the social network from the sought-after developers is changing. Recently, an evening was held at the University of California at Berkeley, where young engineers demonstrated their technological skills, and many of them said that they were not attracted to working on Facebook.

"I heard that many of the employees who work there do not even use the product itself," said Niki Arora, an 19-year-old engineering student who was recently invited to an employment event at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California. “I just don’t believe in it, because the basis of everything Facebook is doing is to show people more advertising.”

Emily Zhong, 20, agrees. “Surprisingly, a lot of my friends are now saying, ‘I really don’t want to work at Facebook,’” she says, explaining that it’s because of “privacy issues, fake news, personal data—that’s all.”

“Before, working there was something amazing, magical,” says 18-year-old Jazz Singh, who also studies computer science. “Now this work seems to give you what you want, but this does not mean at all that it is good.”

As Facebook shakes the scandal behind the scandal, some young engineers turn away from the company. Many still work there, but they are already without this enthusiasm, telling friends that they are left to change the company from the inside, or that they have developed certain ethical rules for working in the company - its reputation has become toxic.

Facebook, which employs more than 30 thousands of employees worldwide, says: “In 2018, we hired more engineers than ever before. We continue to observe strong interest and enthusiasm in the engineering community in connection with the prospect of joining our company. ”

Photo: facebook.com/Mark Zuckerberg

Views change outside of Facebook. Career coaches say that workers in the technology sector are turning to them for advice on how to eliminate moral difficulties. The questions are: “How to avoid working in a project with which I disagree?” Or “How can I remind my management of the company's mission?”.

“Employees see a mission voiced on the company's website, and it weakly correlates with how new products are created or decisions are made,” said David Chi, head of the recruiting firm Palo Alto Staffing. “Everyone has a similar conversation.”

Now engineers are choosing a job differently.

“They have become much more circumspect,” says Heather Johnston, head of the technology employment agency for Robert Half. - Previously, candidates said: “Oh, I do not want to participate in group interviews. I want one on one. Now, applicants "want to get acquainted with the team."

“They no longer want to blindly go to the company just because of the brand,” she stresses.

Although changes in public opinion have affected many large technology companies, it is Facebook that seems to cause the most rejection among young workers.

“I recently had a few customers who said they’re not too enthusiastic about Facebook because they don’t like what’s happening from a political or social point of view,” said Paul Freiberger, president of the consulting group in California Shimmering Careers. “These are confidentiality and political events, as well as anxiety that these things will be difficult to fix from the inside.”

Chad Hurst, a leadership and career coach from 2008 working in San Francisco, said that now for the first time he had clients who would like to avoid working on major social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

“They’re worried about what’s happening with democracy, that social media polarize us, and they don’t want to participate in it,” Hurst says. “People really think about the company's mission and that companies are trying to achieve something more.”

He told how one of his clients, a middle manager on Facebook, wanted to get advice on how to change the work of the group in order to encourage users to communicate offline. But she faced resistance.

“She was trying to figure out, ‘How do I present this? What can I say?” says Hirst. “And I told her to cite some of Mark Zuckerberg’s past statements about bringing people together.”

Photo: facebook.com/Mark Zuckerberg

At a recent evening at the University of California at Berkeley, about 2200 engineering students from all over the country gathered at Cal Hacks 5.0 - a competition to create the best applications. The event took all weekends, so the participants brought with them a pillow. The organizers distributed 2 thousands of burritos to registered students.

In parallel, held events for hire. Facebook and Alphabet recruiters set up stands (free sunglasses from Facebook, $ 200 to the Google Cloud platform account from Alphabet).

In the audience, the head of the startup incubator Y Combinator gave a speech in which he recommended that young people avoid working in technological giants.

“You can program your life on a completely different scale,” said Michael Sabel, who heads the Y Combinator. “Working at Google is the worst thing that can happen to you.” He means that people can get used to a good salary and avoid any risk.

Then the word passed to the sponsor of Microsoft, which was represented by the recruiter Justin Garrett. Garrett, who calls himself a high-tech tech evangelist, went on stage with a laugh.

“It’s hard to speak after Michael, especially when you work for one of these big companies,” Garrett said. “But there are tremendous opportunities here.”

Then the students went to the stadium filled with long tables with computers, where the competitions took place. In the middle of a fight, three friends laughed. They poked fun at 21-year-old Caleb Thomas because he was accepted for an internship on Facebook.

“C'mon, boys,” said Thomas.

“This is the reality of how things work in business,” said 20-year-old Samuel Resendez, a computer science student from the University of Southern California.

It turned out that Resendez himself became a Facebook intern in the summer. 20-year-old Olivia Brown, head of the Stanford Computer Science and Social Good club and an iOS trainee at Mozilla, caught him at it. “But you also work on Facebook,” she said.

“Well, at least I signed the contract before Cambridge Analytica,” said Resendez, a little embarrassed by the scandal over personal data and manipulation in the elections that shook the company this year. “95% of Facebook’s work is creating memes.”

According to Brown, many students criticize Facebook and say they will not work there, but will eventually join the company. “Everyone is worried about ethics until they get a contract,” she says.

Brown believes this may change soon, as the social stigma of working for Facebook has outweighed the financial benefits.

“Defense companies have had such a reputation for a long time,” she says. “Social networks just follow the same path.”

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