zlacker

I agree with your premise, that many Facebook employeees would give society a better return on its investment if they were employed elsewhere, but that’s hardly Facebook’s fault.

>>acdang+(OP)
I didn't pin the blame on them. I place it as a cultural issue.

>>acdang+(OP)
It's tempting to think that without Facebook they would get involved in cancer research or interplanetary travel, but given the Silicon Valley's funding cycles, they would be more likely to end up building yet another food delivery startup or revolutionizing something by putting it on blockchain.

Also, a bunch of recruiting venues exploited by Facebook are not that accessible to smaller startups.

E.g. one of the top previous employers for Facebook employees was Google (or some other outfit within Alphabet group, like YouTube). Most likely those people would've stayed at Google.

Another hiring source was university recruiting, which involves participating at job fairs at various universities, exhaustive days of back-to-back interviews, flying candidates for on-campus interviews, and eventually covering relocation costs (and potentially visas and immigration paperwork) for someone moving from Pittsburgh, Waterloo or Romania.

Would a smaller startup have the financial oomph to run a similar recruiting pipeline?