Ask HN: Are you in a morally or ethically compromised situation at work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you in a morally or ethically compromised situation at work?

8 pointso-o-o12 comments

If so, what are you doing or not doing about it?

I teach in an art program in higher education in the U.S. The debt burden graduates face vs. the income they will make does not make sense to me.

The only viable action I can think of is to quit and not participate.

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Yes. Basically this is why I went away from a very successful career in tech sales to Fortune 500 companies and became software dev. Being a dev enables me to work in a much broader group of companies, so I can at least abandon those I'm going to find not in line with my moral values.

Look, buddy, this is a very serious problem. The more you're going to work on your personal philosophy, the more problems you're going to have with moral compromises like the one you've mentioned. Please, do yourself a favor and try to deal with that problem BEFORE it's going to be a much bigger issue.

I'm kind of proud of you because of your "The only viable action I can think of is to quit and not participate". If more people could be like that, most of the evil in this world would be long time gone.

Are the only options to opt out or ignore? Doesn’t this make this somebody else’s problem?

This is how I see it: the only reliable / stable model in which our civilization has a chance is the one in which everyone auto-regulates himself. In other words everyone must take responsibility over one's life.

You start with yourself. Make yourself resourceful, healthy, etc. Then you can have a solid chance to do something for others. The other way around - immersing oneself in helping others combined with sacrificing yourself is a big pathology. Ayn Rand has been writing about that her whole life. Besides, it's easy to do virtue signaling coming down to presenting oneself as an altruist. Building a life that works and has meaning is much harder. Don't go the easy route.

Whether you opt out or join doesn't matter. What matters is if at the end of your existence you can look at yourself with peace in mind. Start with small things. That's not a shame at all!

We're not in a complete control of reality, but every one of us with sufficient effort can master his own life. This is how we can produce something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. So, the starting point is very simple: contribute to stuff that matters, refuse to cooperate on harmful enterprises. Neither of them has the "ignore" part in it. Only ignore those things that don't matter.

Disclaimer: I'm an amateur artist that at one point almost went to art school. Some professional artists talked me out of it and 20 years later I am still thankful.

Its such a well-known meme that attempting to become a professional artist by dropping $250k on a BFA is a fool's errand that I wouldn't feel bad about being an art teacher.

Now, if they make you lie about it and repeatedly tell students they are gonna be making 6 figures upon graduation that's a different story. That would be kind of unethical.

The advice that I got was basically this: If you live and breathe art, you will be a professional artist and a degree isn't going to have much of an impact on that. Make a portfolio, apply to jobs, and maybe some day you might want to take a few classes that seem interesting. There are no shortcuts to being a competent artist. Anyone CAN learn to draw/paint/sculpt incredibly well. Almost nobody will because it requires 1000s of hours of practice. Art school can't give you that passion. If you haven't already spent thousands of hours honing your craft, maybe you aren't passionate enough.

They were totally right. I like to draw once in a while, but I have other obsessions that I was passionate about, and I got incredibly good at those (good enough to land my dream job without a degree) while I merely liked the idea of being an artist.

Another critical bit of advice: Art is not like many other professions, the 80 year old painter is usually at the peak of his performance. Not only is he probably better than you, he's probably also much much faster at being good. If you do freelance work, he will be your competition.

That doesn't mean you can't make it, but you gotta find a niche that works for you and you it has to truly be something you are passionate about.

I used to tell my customers that most custom web sites are expensive to create and it's unlikely for them to recoup their cost. Most customers would back out and a few would actually move forward. I felt it was the only way to proceed.

I found out later that many of the customers that backed out would go somewhere else to get the work done and most were happy with what they paid for.

I decided to change my approach. Now I give, as close as possible, an estimate, where I make sure to be as accurate as possible, and let them decide for themselves, if it's worth the cost. Each customer has their reasons why they do what they do. I don't have all the answers.

A once did some contract work for a company that provided software for Car retailers. Their old software would present some information - comparing the price of cigarettes verse some insurance policy (against a car load), and try to convince people that finance through the dealer was the best. On examining it I realized the original version was not doing the math correctly. On fixing to be accurate, the dealer items were not the obvious best choice. I refused to change it, I was let go. Which was fine by me.

I tried for years to deal with the lies that employers wanted me to put as answers to questions in customer information security questionnaires. Most of these questionnaires are shit and so are most answers. Finally, I got sick of it and essentially got fired. There is no perfect security. Customers and vendors need to understand that.

I work for a government funded organisation, and a large amount of our 'output' is work that I don't believe the government should have any role in providing, as it competes directly with private businesses.

Why can't the government compete with private business? Competition is good. And certainly a better use of taxpayer money than just massively funding private corporations (vide Lockheed, Boeing)

Governments doesn't have to make a profit, so they can undercut private business and distort markets. Governments should not intervene in the market except in cases of market failure (and they shouldn't be funding private corporations at all).

That depends on the market. There are valid reasons for states to get involved in business:

* some markets can never be free due to their nature (their services are not negotiable): e.g. medical care, pharmaceuticals

* some markets just create monopolies or else are horribly inefficient: e.g. metropolitan transportation, railways

* sometimes it's better that the government-funded service doesn't need to make a profit, because that way it can serve more of the government's people better: e.g. housing, education, public transport in general

* even stronger influence can be exerted on other states if you control powerful companies operating there: e.g. PRC's approach

Well I think that some of that falls generally under market 'failure', so I don't necessarily disagree. But when the market is working the government should butt out.

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