This may change in the future, but if I was offered a position in the near future, I would say no — on the condition that I had another career opportunity that allowed me to provide for myself / my household / my family.
I do believe that Facebook/Meta is an unethical organization, particularly in the the Business Ethics categories of exploitation of consumers and ethically dubious missions and connections. The fact that the majority of Facebook users don’t have a clue about the algorithms going into the content they digest every day — the content that shapes and molds and cements the way they think — makes me feel uneasy in general and also worried about my own feeds. They bring up questions such as, “Do I actually think what I think, or am I just being fed what to think?” or “How can we ever change people’s views if they’re fed the same point of view when they open their phone every day?”
And, of course, Facebook is no stranger to huge public scandals regarding ethically dubious connections. Even though I likely (possibly?) wouldn’t be dealing with these connections first-hand, I’d always be curious what was happening behind the scenes, in the bigger picture of the work I was doing.
Section 5.2 of Business Ethics addresses the question: to what extent am I personally responsible for the things my company does? And as a junior employee, I don’t think I’d feel personally responsible for my company’s Big Actions because I’d have such a small scope of work. However, I feel like that’d be a problem in itself: how come I’d just be working away while my company keeps their dubious underlyings a secret from me? Even though I’m a tiny piece of the giant machinery, shouldn’t I know what’s going on with my company? I would feel suspicious or at least curious and frustrated that I wasn’t able to understand what I was actually doing or working toward.
And ethics aside, I want to work at a place that prioritizes growth and mentorship for their young employees, and I haven’t heard the most positive reviews on either of these elements as a new grad employee at Facebook.
