Off the top of my head, working at Meta seems like the kind of opportunity that would be foolish to pass up on. The prestige, the resources, and the scale of impact are hard to ignore. But reading Section 5.2 on Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations made me think harder about what my choice of working at the company would actually mean. The Facebook Papers showed the questionable history of past harms to teens, as well as privacy violations that were ignored (at least for a while). As the reading points out, when your role is very close to the harm and you lack the power to change it, you risk becoming complicit.
My past experiences at Tesla and in startups also shaped how I see this. I’ve seen how good organization are able to prioritize both growth and performance metrics, but also keep ethical priorities in mind. Section 5.1 reminds us that meaningful work should be part of our decision, and for me that matters more than prestige. If I had a role at Meta with real authority to improve safety and privacy, or a role that simply has no connection to some of the issues pointed out in the readings, I could make the case for staying and trying to change things from within. Conversely if I had a role that would make me complicit in something questionable, I’d pass. The distance is too close, and I’d rather build something I can stand behind.
Honestly, I recognize why the vast (overwhelming) majority of people would take the job. The financial security or the chance to build a strong résumé is extraordinarily compelling, particularly in today’s job market. That argument is real, and I’ve felt the same pull at different points in my own career. Ultimately, I would make the choice depending on what the role would actually be. In a company with many tens of thousands of employees, that is the key decision factor.
