“Would you accept a job at Facebook?”
As the reading, Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations, suggests, there are many tensions at play when considering working for a company that may be engaging in unethical practices. But, the main tension that I am personally balancing when I am applying for a job is the knowledge I have about these unethical practices and the potential knowledge that is out there in the ether (from internet, from current/past employees, etc.). Even if I have my own personal convictions given what I know about a company, there’s inevitably someone out there who knows even more than I do about the unethical practices of said company. My first strategy to make a sound decision would be to collect as much information as possible by talking to past or current employees (or reading on the internet) to test how much I am willing to tolerate ethically if I accept this job.
However, my strategy is not fool proof. Past/current employees, reddit posters, internet goers, etc. will all have their own moral convictions that either side or conflict with the actions of the company. Some people may say it’s fine that “Mobile traffic is 3-4 times more likely to be from social sources” and “social traffic is more likely to be Facebook”, but someone who works for X (formerly Twitter) may not like the sound of that (The Facebook Papers). To be honest, I don’t like the sound of Facebook monopolizing mobile traffic because the exploitation of consumers can seem quite easy if you control all of the traffic. But regardless, I need to take in account where my information is coming from and be open to the moral convictions of others.
Once I have collected as much information as I can and considered all of the convictions, this is where I can make my decision about Facebook. There’s a chance that my personal duty to my family and loved ones is so strong that it overrides my convictions, as suggested in the reading. I might want to take the job to boost my resume so that I can get an “improved job further down the line.” But, this is where I disagree slightly with the reading because I personally believe that means to the end matter. I don’t just want some random Facebook job to get to what I want. Maybe it’s the smarter move to do that and I totally respect people who take it. But, if I have the privilege to accept another job that feels more sound, I will do it.
My answer: No deal. There are too many unknowns with accepting a position at Facebook (now Meta) for me. Too large of a gap between my knowledge of their unethical practices and the knowledge that is potentially out there. I could close that gap by doing research, but working at Facebook was never my goal to begin with; and even if I try to close the gap, I think there’s more ugly (unethical) out there than I can tolerate.
