A little background: I was an intern at FB just before and during the whole CA thing unfolded and I'm returning back for another internship, hoping I'll join full-time one day.
I had multiple offers from other Big-N companies and unicorn startups(some of them paying more than FB). But here's why I choose to still work at FB:
1) The values and goals of the company and the people at the company are genuinely positive.
No PMs are going around wondering how can we profit off of innocent people. Goals for teams are oriented around the "impact", for eg. how many small businesses are effectively gaining customers due to the new feature X, or is feature Y actually making people happy or if it's good for them in long term etc. An example would be Facebook trying to make more "meaning-full interactions" on the platform while sacrificing on users spending more time on the platform looking at click-baits.
2) The company and the leadership accept blame and work on fixing the mistakes.
Unlike some other fruit company, Facebook has always(although sometimes not as soon as it should have), accepted the blame for the repercussions of being the disruptive platform it is. People in leadership personally take charge of the issue and work to make the platform better. I know a lot of people believe Zuck is pure evil from what they hear, but I don't think a CEO who’s apathetic would be willing to pull the platform out of countries if the laws there don't fit with the company's morals and values. (Read - https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...)
3) Every individual employee's voice is heard.
Anyone in any FB office around the world can personally ask the whole leadership any question every Friday in the company-wide Q&A. And most often than not, these questions are complicated. Misinformation on WhatsApp leading to lynchings, what are we doing about it? Foreign governments intentionally interfering in government, did we know about it and if yes what's our plan?
No question is a bad or stupid question. And yes, we get better answers than those PR statements. Knowing what happened in the technical gory details and what specific steps are being taken convinces us that necessary actions are being taken. I don’t know of any instance where the employees had to go on a strike and sign petitions to know why the company was working on some project which doesn’t align with the company’s morals.
4) Fb is doing something which has never done before, at a scale at which barely any company has ever reached.
All of us know how much responsibility we have working on such an impactful product. But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying new things. Those new things might not be good in the long run, but, there’s only one way to find out. If we think it’s gonna affect people’s lives positively, we’re gonna try it. Critique is expected and welcomed, even when it isn’t accurate. This may not morally align with everyone, but this is what I generally saw while working there and feel like it’s something I align myself with personally. Not being afraid to use the influence to try to launch something new and disruptive is not something everyone can agree with. And FB historically hasn’t done much research before launching products, but now seems to be taking the eventual possibilities seriously. It still doesn’t change the whole “hacking” culture of just trying out new stuff.
5) FB does care about privacy. Shocking, right?
From the limited 3 month view I have of the company, everyone is crazy about privacy. There are continuing discussions on how to deal with complicated situations, and teams dedicated to consulting other teams who might not have the necessary overview regarding the possible effects. Encryption is a hot topic, and research is being done on how bad actors can still be detected and reported based solely on the metadata, keeping the information private. And there’s no easy way to explain it, but media lately has been extremely biased against FB and reporting stories in a manner which distorts the reality of the events. Every small mistake(deliberate or not) will be exaggerated with click-baity headlines. I do believe that FB is completely responsible for whatever happened with CambridgeAnalytica, but reading some of the articles detailing it just made aware of the lack of technical knowledge and the intention to find out the bigger picture in most of the mainstream media.
6) We see the positive impact happening real time.
No newspaper will publish on the front-page about the FB communities which allowed LGBTQ people to connect in a country where’s it’s a crime. Or the fundraisers saving kids who got separated from their parents. Or the relationships which only came to existence because of the platform. Or the small businesses flourishing who previously didn’t have a chance to compete with the big dogs. Don’t get me wrong, bad things still do happen. There are instances of bullying, misinformation, stalking and a lot more. And people at FB are genuinely trying to limit that. But in the big picture, most of us do believe that we’re having a positive impact on the world. And if it’s not, we’re willing to change it, regardless of the company’s profitability.
TL;DR: Obviously I’m biased, I like that FB isn’t afraid to make mistakes and own then, genuinely think FB is doing good in the world and believe that it’s moving in the right direction.
I had multiple offers from other Big-N companies and unicorn startups(some of them paying more than FB). But here's why I choose to still work at FB:
1) The values and goals of the company and the people at the company are genuinely positive.
No PMs are going around wondering how can we profit off of innocent people. Goals for teams are oriented around the "impact", for eg. how many small businesses are effectively gaining customers due to the new feature X, or is feature Y actually making people happy or if it's good for them in long term etc. An example would be Facebook trying to make more "meaning-full interactions" on the platform while sacrificing on users spending more time on the platform looking at click-baits.
2) The company and the leadership accept blame and work on fixing the mistakes.
Unlike some other fruit company, Facebook has always(although sometimes not as soon as it should have), accepted the blame for the repercussions of being the disruptive platform it is. People in leadership personally take charge of the issue and work to make the platform better. I know a lot of people believe Zuck is pure evil from what they hear, but I don't think a CEO who’s apathetic would be willing to pull the platform out of countries if the laws there don't fit with the company's morals and values. (Read - https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...)
3) Every individual employee's voice is heard.
Anyone in any FB office around the world can personally ask the whole leadership any question every Friday in the company-wide Q&A. And most often than not, these questions are complicated. Misinformation on WhatsApp leading to lynchings, what are we doing about it? Foreign governments intentionally interfering in government, did we know about it and if yes what's our plan?
No question is a bad or stupid question. And yes, we get better answers than those PR statements. Knowing what happened in the technical gory details and what specific steps are being taken convinces us that necessary actions are being taken. I don’t know of any instance where the employees had to go on a strike and sign petitions to know why the company was working on some project which doesn’t align with the company’s morals.
4) Fb is doing something which has never done before, at a scale at which barely any company has ever reached.
All of us know how much responsibility we have working on such an impactful product. But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying new things. Those new things might not be good in the long run, but, there’s only one way to find out. If we think it’s gonna affect people’s lives positively, we’re gonna try it. Critique is expected and welcomed, even when it isn’t accurate. This may not morally align with everyone, but this is what I generally saw while working there and feel like it’s something I align myself with personally. Not being afraid to use the influence to try to launch something new and disruptive is not something everyone can agree with. And FB historically hasn’t done much research before launching products, but now seems to be taking the eventual possibilities seriously. It still doesn’t change the whole “hacking” culture of just trying out new stuff.
5) FB does care about privacy. Shocking, right?
From the limited 3 month view I have of the company, everyone is crazy about privacy. There are continuing discussions on how to deal with complicated situations, and teams dedicated to consulting other teams who might not have the necessary overview regarding the possible effects. Encryption is a hot topic, and research is being done on how bad actors can still be detected and reported based solely on the metadata, keeping the information private. And there’s no easy way to explain it, but media lately has been extremely biased against FB and reporting stories in a manner which distorts the reality of the events. Every small mistake(deliberate or not) will be exaggerated with click-baity headlines. I do believe that FB is completely responsible for whatever happened with CambridgeAnalytica, but reading some of the articles detailing it just made aware of the lack of technical knowledge and the intention to find out the bigger picture in most of the mainstream media.
6) We see the positive impact happening real time.
No newspaper will publish on the front-page about the FB communities which allowed LGBTQ people to connect in a country where’s it’s a crime. Or the fundraisers saving kids who got separated from their parents. Or the relationships which only came to existence because of the platform. Or the small businesses flourishing who previously didn’t have a chance to compete with the big dogs. Don’t get me wrong, bad things still do happen. There are instances of bullying, misinformation, stalking and a lot more. And people at FB are genuinely trying to limit that. But in the big picture, most of us do believe that we’re having a positive impact on the world. And if it’s not, we’re willing to change it, regardless of the company’s profitability.
TL;DR: Obviously I’m biased, I like that FB isn’t afraid to make mistakes and own then, genuinely think FB is doing good in the world and believe that it’s moving in the right direction.