zlacker

>>colone+(OP)
Is it wrong to be glad FB's reputation has tarnished (and stock price sideways) over the past year or so? For so long they've monopolized the talent pool in the Bay Area. If more people decide 1) they don't want to work at FB and 2) FB employees are itching to leave then I see any stain on FB's employment brand as a net positive to the greater tech + startup ecosystem.

>>dawhiz+N1
they havent monopolized talent, they pay for talent. Facebook paying high salaries has increased all of our pay, equity etc, whether you work there or not. The only thing this may be bad for is founders who are in a zero sum competition with FB for talent and now need to spend more money and equity to get it.

>>tmh79+r4
This is a very short-sighted view. Yes it has some immediate benefit in terms of pay, but you have to consider the long-term societal tradeoff of not developing addictive mental candy for people or developing societally useful technologies (or vice-versa, as it now stands). We can focussed on getting paid a lot now, or improving the wealth of everyone and generative the value we can all enjoy later.

>>chalka+J5
> the long-term societal tradeoff of not developing addictive mental candy

Along with React, GraphQL and a bunch of other technologies with various degrees of popularity https://opensource.fb.com

Along with various startups building around the projects incubated at Facebook - Asana, Interana, Phacility, Qubole, etc.

>>prosto+7d
Ok so React, GraphQL, and good pay. Definitely not short-sighted.

You don't think those technologies could have been developed by people at ethical companies, or even by the same people at ethical companies?

>>tobr+kl
So why haven't they been developed by the time Facebook came around?

>>prosto+Hm
Why would it be remarkable that a few popular technologies come out of a big, rich technology company? People who create such technologies work at places like that. But there’s nothing about React or GraphQL that makes them only possible at Facebook.

>>tobr+Br
A big, rich technology company has the resources to put people on the project full time and a revenue stream to justify such broad architectural project.

There's also financial support for building a community around improving the tech, by encouraging outside contributions via meetups, conferences, social events, better technical documentation, etc.

At smaller scale startup an engineer is surely welcome to work on his skunkworks project, but justifying expensive large-scale architectural undertakings on company's dime is problematic. Especially if a quicker fix is available and buys the company a chance to kick the problem down the road.

With that said, it's not impossible to build a major popular piece of technology within a small company (Joyent and Node.js being a good example), it's just harder.