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Depends on what "something" is. When I was at FB, they were very clear that you can request account help internally only for your immediate family (and maybe closest friends, I forget) - you are, in essence, vouching for them with your employment as collateral. Helping random strangers or even acquaintances was out of the question. In the early days it was possible, but the team responsible for this stuff got overwhelmed.

On the other hand, after I left, I once needed help with a developer-facing page that was broken. For the life of me I could not figure out how to get in touch with a human, so reached out to an ex-colleague and the issue was resolved within a few days. I don't love having to resort to this for many reasons.



Meta provides employees with a dedicated support line called Oops@ to address requests from friends and family, they are not allowed to deal with the issues directly:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/14/facebook-oops-special-employ...

Accessing anyone other than yourself's personal data, including immediate family, is also grounds for immediate dismissal. After all, stalking and domestic abuse occur primarily within the family.


'Fix it for me and those after me' seems like a positive version of this.

I.e. improving documentation, drawing attention to edge cases, etc.




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