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Comment by MRD85 | Hacker News Reader

And tons that will be willing to replace them.

Anyone who says "but others will do it instead" to excuse something they're doing is those other people. And someone doing something evil that I chose to not do doesn't actually replace me -- I'm still me, and I'm still glad to have made that choice.

Indeed. People are morally responsible for what they actually do; not for their presumed actions in someone else's alternate reality.

I don't think anyone's using that excuse to justify working for Google, I think they're just saying that a small number of people quitting Google isn't nearly enough to stop them.

Google employs at least 20k engineers. I'd be shocked if 100 quit over this news.

Google could be murdering kittens to cool servers with their blood and you could probably find enough competent engineers to keep 10 Google's fully staffed. The vast majority of people do not give two shits.

An infinite number of people working for Google cannot stop me from not working for them. Which makes no difference to them and all the difference to me.

Everybody dies anyway, nobody is remembered, or gets to keep anything; we can build what we want, end result is the same. The only brief moment of reality is our experience of the universe and the kind of life we lead, and if what you claim true for "the vast majority of people" was true, IMO that would just mean the vast majority are deeply sick and probably frightened shitless of death. That'd no doubt be very important for them, but how would it matter for me? Should I jump into their pool, to drown alongside them and make them feel better?

Wonderfully put.

I'll take credit for stealing well from good people, but no more :)

https://pastebin.com/gPgy648A

You’re missing the point. It’s not about whether or not you can pat yourself on the back on your deathbed for not working for google. The point is that if we want to make a meaningful difference to stop google, it takes more action than inaction.

All it takes is for a few good people to do nothing...

It absolutely starts with not being complicit though, and not diminishing a moral decision as being valuable in and of itself.

By leaving Google, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, the engineers are lowering the mean moral compass of the engineering base.

Additionally, leaving a secure, well-paid role in political protest takes a certain amount of privilege. My father left an amazing job in protest over immoral actions and I can assure you that it had huge financial impacts on my life growing up. I respect him for his decision and I like to think I'd make the same one, however, I can understand how people even less fortunate aren't making political choices with their employment.

> By leaving Google, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, the engineers are lowering the mean moral compass of the engineering base.

Good.

It's not like a good, ethical developer is going to change things from the inside. Companies are not democracies, they are dictatorships.

So what if Google has no good and moral developers left? At least it will become more obvious what Google truly is while the 'good' developers can make a positive contribution elsewhere. It was clearly never going to happen at Google anyway, not with a incentives a publicly-traded company has.

I would much prefer Google to be manned entirely by the kinds of people I wouldn't dream of inviting into my home. I'm already against the company's existence, so Google having nobody left with a shred of integrity or backbone would make it a whole lot easier to argue for the company's demise, in whatever shape that may come.

It also means that, on average, the skill level of the engineers is decreasing. Which means quite a lot to how far reaching their products will be

I agree with you. I wouldn't work there. All I'm saying is that people aren't making as big a deal of a deal as they should be if they want it to change.

I'm also saying that people who are saying this will hurt Google or make it hard for them to hire new people are flat-out wrong.

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