While I agree with the sentiment, sometimes people just need jobs to survive. I don't think the burden for keeping tech companies ethical should be placed on young people who just want to eat
I applaud Mozilla for suggesting that people should consider where they draw their personal red lines, and encouraging them not to cross it for any amount of cash.
Have you done anything to act on that preference? Did you send a resume out this week? Are you networking?
Prioritizing your/your families wellbeing over an abstract evil might make sense the day you take that job, but that circumstance must be re-evaluated regularly.
Too often folks talk themselves into thinking what they are doing today is ok because they didn’t have a choice yesterday.
If you are in your mid 30's and you are an established and experienced person in your field of work, finding a new job should be the least of your problems. If you truly cared about the ethics of your work, you would have left your current job already.
When was the last time you had an interview with another employer? When was the last time you sent out resumes? When was the last time you networked with people from other companies that you find interesting? When was the last time you reached out to someone at company X for a cup of coffee? Have you considered starting your own business?
You do not remember or you have not done it at all since you started at your current job? Well in that case, there is your problem. You might think that you actually care about ethics but your efforts of trying to find somewhere else to work says otherwise.
I get it. You have probably convinced yourself that you are not doing anything wrong or unethical so you should not feel bad about it. Besides, the job probably pays well and it keeps you and your family fed and gives your family a roof over your heads and that is the most important thing afterall.
That is fine and all but it is still a weak excuse if you truly cared about ethics in your work. Most people do not care if the paycheck is good enough.
I wonder how the career programmers who worked at these organizations and still need the paycheck will feel about a new director or architect from google who is now "giving back".
Why would you seek out a job at a company in that business if you didn't believe in that business? Unlike Google (or Facebook) it's not a large enough choice to be a "default" employment option.
Palantir bites. In fact, Palantir is the first one to bite. You make it through the interview process and get an honest-to-goodness offer, few other companies are talking to you, and of those few, they're just now doing their initial phone screen. What do you do: take the offer or see if one of those phone screens pans out? Oh, and in most states if you decline a job offer, you lose your unemployment. If you decide to gamble and wait, you're gambling that you'll get an offer from someone else before rent comes due. Are you really willing to take that risk?
Now let's throw in another twist: you've got a family. And let's even be generous here and say you've got a few other leads at or very close to the offer stage, so it's not like you're going to end up on the streets for nonpayment of rent. But all of your other leads pay so much less that your children's lives will be noticeably affected. You may not like what Palantir does... but are you willing to tell your kids that Christmas is cancelled and you have to move to a much smaller house in a different part of town thus ripping them away from all their friends at school?
Ethics is on everybody. These “kids” are grown adults.
If you look for excuse, you'll always find one.
So far I haven't heard of anyone who was forced to code the next behavioural analytics platform because they got nothing to eat otherwise.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/netflix-settles-ex...
One could make the argument that advertising at and subsequently locking someone into the walled-garden ecosystem is unethical because you are artificially inflating the consumers' opportunity costs. Some would look at that and call it a milder form of price-gouging.
It's a really weak argument compared to literal human rights abuses, but we're talking about ethics here, which is necessarily broad.
Some of it might be because of information compression of things that are less relevant or taken for granted like "Don't work for the Mob, Blackwater, or the NSA." are essentially a given."
I hate it when people say "I'm only doing my job" when asked if they're doing something unethical. You can always take another job.
But if he had to take a job as a slave trader because there was nothing else available and he needed the money to survive...who are we to judge him in this hypothetical world where slavery is once again legal?
I fervently hope that I would as well. Unfortunately I think most of us, including me, have a breaking point at which hunger and desperation would win over principles.
I've met normally good-natured people that, once they became a lawyer/salesmen/financial "advisor", they started doing utterly despicable, wicked behavior and justifying it as "I'm only doing my job". And then they would go on to church, or whatever, all the while thinking of themselves as "good people". Even more interesting, they would rally against "evil corporate behavior" as if they had no role in it.
We're capable of such amazing reasoning and creativity, and moral courage. But the very same minds can sustain sets of beliefs that are clearly (to others) internally contradictory or irrational, or that rationalize behavior that's clearly violates one's own ideals.
However, yeah, I have to agree that it is difficult to judge people for decisions they make while staring death in the face when I'm sitting comfortably at a desk.
Maslow’s hierarchy holds true. Morality is a luxury for many.
There's nothing worse to me, than the "Champagne Socialist" who hand-waves about the righteousness of socialism, but fails to tip the uber driver. I hate that.
I'm with Taleb in that it's best to judge people when they have "skin in the game". No, I've turned down real-world jobs or gigs or deals where deception was involved and was not in the client's best interests. Sadly, "tactics" and dirty tricks are extremely common in the real world, particularly in sales and law area (sometimes tech). You would be amazed at the number of people that would use dirty tricks if:
- "money can be made"
- "I can get away with it"
- "my co-workers are doing it"
- (or) "my boss told me to"
But I agree with the statement most people would do unethical things if their jobs required it. And I think that's sad to say.
People who say they would just starve to death instead of do something immoral don't know what it's like to actually starve.