d*********p
发帖数: 1531 | 1 Facebook从大陆招了很多程序员，但是他们每天都在看墙内新闻，被洗脑严重，跟不上
扎克伯格的节奏
【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: newIdRobot (新器人), 信区: Military
标 题: Re: 扎克伯格反华言论引起Facebook中国籍员工极度不满
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Tue Nov 19 21:05:11 2019, 美东)
By Wayne Ma
Nov. 19, 2019 7:01 AM PST
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Georgetown address about free speech last
month drew skeptical commentary from many quarters. But for one group of
Facebook workers—its community of Chinese employees—his comments touched a
particularly sensitive nerve. Zuckerberg’s criticism of Chinese video app
TikTok and China’s censorship of the internet renewed long-standing
complaints that Facebook’s management is biased against China, according to
one employee who saw messages in Facebook’s internal discussion groups.
Tensions between Facebook management and its large community of Chinese
employees have been on the upswing over the past year or so, since
Zuckerberg abandoned efforts to get Facebook allowed back into China and
instead became more critical of Beijing. Many of the company’s newer
Chinese employees were hired from mainland China and are unapologetically
supportive of the Chinese government.
THE TAKEAWAY
Facebook is grappling with its large community of Chinese employees, some of
whom are becoming more vocal and critical in internal company forums over
what they claim is a bias against mainland China.
But in the past couple of months complaints of anti-China bias have
overlapped with unhappiness about working conditions at Facebook,
crystallized by the suicide of a Chinese employee at Facebook headquarters.
Employees complained that management didn’t allow an open discussion of the
episode, including whether the company’s work culture contributed to it.
The increasingly vocal criticism by Chinese employees is the latest example
of how workers at big tech companies such as Google and Amazon have turned
activist, protesting their employers’ business dealings with the federal
government and complaining about gender inequality, sexual harassment and
other issues. But in this case, Zuckerberg has to walk a fine line, trying
to keep a vocal group of employees happy while not alienating Facebook’s
many critics in Washington, D.C. If he upsets employees, Zuckerberg risks
cutting off a source of talent. But if he goes too far to appease the
Chinese employees, he could hand his critics in Washington more ammunition.
“We’re seeing tech employees emerge as a separate force from tech
companies,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Paulson Institute whose
research focuses on the relationship between Silicon Valley and China. “
Civil societies are emerging at these tech companies and because a large
portion of these employees are Chinese, they are going to be an actor in
this dynamic,” he said.
At the same time, some senior managers are concerned that growing divisions
and personal attacks within the Chinese employee community, and the strains
between the community and management, are undermining the company’s ability
to maintain its prized culture of openness and transparency, a person
familiar with management’s thinking said. They fret that the situation
could further damage Facebook’s reputation, which is already under attack
over privacy breaches and investigations for antitrust violations.
Further complicating the challenges facing Zuckerberg are comments by
longtime Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who accused Google of working
with China’s military and that its leadership has been “infiltrated” by
Chinese spies. Thiel, without offering any evidence to support his
accusations, said Google was behaving in a “seemingly treasonous” manner.
A Large Community
The ranks of Chinese workers at Facebook—the vast majority of whom are
software engineers and data and research scientists—have been increasing in
recent years, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and
former employees.
The total number couldn’t be learned, although it likely numbers in the
thousands (Facebook employed nearly 36,000 people as of Dec. 31). Facebook
has more Asians as a share of its U.S. workforce than Apple, Google or
Microsoft, according to an analysis of federal filings. Some 42% of its U.S.
employees were Asian in 2018, up from about a third in 2014, the filings
show. At Google, the percentage in 2018 was 37% and at Apple it was 23%.
Facebook’s share of green card sponsorships for Chinese employees also has
been growing annually since 2013, rising from 25% to 44% of sponsorships in
the nine months ending in June.
The internal group [email protected], which Facebook hosts for its Chinese
employees, counts more than 6,000 members and is the largest of its kind at
the company, current and former employees say.
One former Chinese employee, who worked at Facebook between 2015 and 2019,
said there were so many Chinese employees that he sometimes could get away
with speaking only Chinese at work. Other former Chinese employees recounted
being asked by their managers to be mindful of non-Chinese speakers after
holding work conversations in Chinese.
Some Chinese workers said they were drawn to Facebook’s results-focused
culture and by what they said was its willingness to quickly sponsor
employees for permanent residency in the U.S. Many Chinese employees hired a
decade or so ago rose through the ranks to become directors and vice
presidents, which has led to even more hiring of Chinese workers, according
to current and former employees.
But as the number of Chinese hires has increased, Facebook has had to rely
more on mainland China as a source of new talent. A decade ago, many of
Facebook’s Chinese hires were employees with graduate degrees from American
universities who had spent years getting used to the country’s culture. In
contrast, many of these newer hires haven’t spent as much time in the U.S.
and still get their news from China’s state-controlled media and use
Chinese social media to keep in touch with friends and family back home,
several current and former Chinese employees said. Some of them don’t share
the U.S. view of the internet as a haven for free speech and open debate.
These employees added that China’s rise as an economic, technological and
political power in recent years has made Chinese nationals more assertive
about their country’s place in the world.
“Ten years ago, if you got out of China’s tech industry and got a dream
job at a prestigious Silicon Valley company, there was very little chance
you would go back and very little to be proud of in your home country in
terms of technology,” Sheehan said. “Now many of the friends and
classmates of these Chinese tech workers have founded companies that are
very successful and you take a certain amount of pride in their work.”
Growing Vocal
‘Civil societies are emerging at these tech companies and because a large
portion of these employees are Chinese, they are going to be an actor in
this dynamic.’
Facebook has taken a number of steps in the past year that have been
interpreted by its Chinese employees as hostile to the Chinese government.
Last year Facebook invited Taiwan’s president to a Facebook-sponsored event
in Taipei promoting the territory’s economy and e-commerce industry.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen posed for photos with Facebook Vice President
for Asia-Pacific Dan Neary and gave a speech highlighting Taiwan’s strong
ties with Facebook.
Some Chinese employees said in internal groups that the meeting legitimized
Taiwan’s claim to self-rule and jeopardized Facebook’s chances of entering
China. Simon Milner, Facebook vice president of public policy for Asia-
Pacific, was forced to defend the event in the messaging groups, according
to employees who saw the messages.
Zuckerberg’s public comments have also turned more critical of mainland
China. In March, for instance, Zuckerberg said Facebook would never host
data in countries with a track record of violating human rights and last
month he said it was never able to reach an agreement with Chinese
authorities over how to operate its services free from censorship.
Also this year, Facebook’s Milner visited Hong Kong where he met with a
number of local lawmakers and government officials, according to two people
familiar with the meetings, which were announced in Facebook’s internal
groups. The meeting sparked online complaints after Milner met with Alvin
Yeung, a Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator, saying the meeting could be
viewed as legitimizing pro-democracy demonstrators’ claims to self-autonomy
, the people said.
The divisions within the Chinese employee community, and the criticisms of
the company they sometimes spark, have alarmed some senior Facebook
executives, said a person who is familiar with management’s thinking. Some
executives, including David Wei, a Facebook vice president of engineering
many Chinese Facebook employees said acts as an informal liaison between
senior management and Chinese employees, are closely monitoring the internal
message groups and have moved to clamp down on discussions when they get
heated, the person said. For instance, in September, Wei weighed in, urging
calm.
“I would encourage everyone in the discussion to try your best to
understand each other’s point of view,” he wrote in a post on [email protected]
“When a discussion gets heated, consider having a tea time in person. Our
respectful communication policy ask is that we don’t attempt to convert
people’s political views.”
Suicide Protests
Feelings turned more raw in late September, after a Chinese worker jumped
off a building at Facebook headquarters. Days later, dozens of people,
including Facebook employees and local residents, gathered at the edge of
the company’s campus to honor the Chinese colleague. They were also
protesting the company’s handling of the incident’s aftermath. A photo on
a local news site showed people holding up signs that read “We deserve the
truth.” Another placard pictured an upside-down “Like” thumbs-up.
After the suicide, Wei wrote on the [email protected] internal discussion group
that the company cares “deeply about our Chinese community at Facebook”
and that it was providing support to the employee’s family and colleagues,
according to employees who saw the message. Facebook asked employees to
refrain from speculating about the reasons for the suicide, citing employee
privacy.
Some employees said the response suggested Facebook was trying to dodge a
meaningful discussion of the tragedy.
Shan Huang, a Chinese software engineer who worked at Facebook between 2016
and 2018, criticized Facebook’s handling of the suicide in a public post on
a popular Chinese question-and-answer site. “What is lacking from the
company's announcement? Sincerity, humanity and the company’s self-
reflection,” he wrote in Chinese. “People are speculating that the suicide
had something to do with his work. Whether or not this is the case…
Facebook should reflect on itself from different perspectives, including its
work culture.” Huang told The Information he wrote the post and declined
to comment further.
Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment about these specific
incidents with Chinese employees. In an earlier response to broader
questions about tensions among Facebook’s Chinese workforce, a spokeswoman
said the company works hard to make the company a welcoming and respectful
workplace where employees feel supported.
“Facebook’s culture is built on openness, so we appreciate our employees
voicing their thoughts on important topics as long as it’s respectful,”
the spokeswoman wrote in an email. | d*******n
发帖数: 43 | 2 妈的老子不干了
下个月面狗
今天在家工作 再刷10个题！ |
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