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Comment by jondwillis | Hacker News Reader

All of the FAANGs are various levels of unethical, or a net negative for society in my estimation. No more interviewing there for me.

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Definitely agree with unethical, although net negative seems a lot harder to quantify. Amazon has a lot of bad practices I disagree with, but are they net negative? I find it difficult to assess. And even if they aren't net negative now, is the 10 year trajectory clearly downward?

Soloing out Netflix, is there anything particularly wrong with them? I have significant gripes with all the others but no specifics about Netflix.

Netflix: exploitative true crime docs and algorithmic recommendations with no way to opt out, auto-play, reality TV.

> is the 10 year trajectory clearly downward?

I think so, yes. It's been that way for a good while.

The writers who are currently striking have a lot of things to say about Netflix being negative.

Grinding leetcode for a month or two to get a 400k+ TC is definitely worth the effort up front. It's probably the easiest way to earn that much money short of going to medical school or getting your JD.

>> All of the FAANGs are various levels of unethical, or a net negative for society in my estimation. No more interviewing there for me.

Feel the same way, until you realize you've cut out half the jobs in the process. Also, wait till you see how much it sucks when loser startups offer you 90kbase + XYZ illiquid options.

I would gladly take a $350K/yr paycheck for a decade, then retire and do social work for free.

You and tens of thousands of other smart people who could be doing something other than maximizing attention and shilling trash products. Good luck undoing 3.5MM of damage with social work.

I mean stick with math for everything. Value of a human life is ~10M [1] so it's pretty easy to undo 3.5M of damage if you spend decades helping people.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843310123/how-government-agen...

Do you work for a non profit?

you might net 200K a year if you're lucky, and assuming you live like a miser and save/invest 150K a year, that's really not enough to retire on

Doesn't the depend on where you live and how old you are?

In my part of the US, you can live like a king on $200k/yr and such jobs aren't rare. You can live better than 90% of the people here on $100k, and putting 100k/yr away for retirement is genuinely more than enough unless you're in your 40s or so.

But I know there are other parts of the US where what you say is 100% true.

and OP was saying that he'd like to work for 10 years and retire. it's not really retirement if you only stop working for 10 years.

I just mean that you need far higher incomes than 350K for 10 years (gross) to be able to stop working entirely

Oh, I missed that part. Yes, if you want to shoot for that goal, it requires a huge sacrifice and a lot of misery.

I have to disagree.

In the Bay/Seattle/NYC, 200k is new grad range for most FAANGs. If the parent commenter does well, they can easily hit the 350k within a few years of work.

If they job hop and optimize, 500k+ is attainable at Senior(L5/L6 at AMZN). That will cut down your retirement estimates heavily especially if you're willing to relocate to LCOL down the line.

Is the company you are working for using any of the cloud providers? Are you using computers built by low wage workers? Do you use Amazon? Google? Microsoft?

Or does it make you feel better that you aren’t working for them directly?

Yeah, of course I use them. It’s practically impossible to use the internet without them. No ethical consumption and all.

It makes me feel better that I am not directly working for them in the same way that putting plastic in my recycling bin makes me feel better about having no choice but to have plastic waste follow me around everywhere.

edit) have you tried eating food without having plastic involved?

I find it difficult to take people seriously who continuously clutch their pearls about the evil of BigTech yet and still benefit from it.

I bet you dollars to donuts that you’re making a higher than median wage working in tech instead of being a teacher, working at a non profit etc.

The tech industry is a net negative on society. Yet it’s a net positive for you. It’s the other people that it hurts.

> in the same way that putting plastic in my recycling bin makes me feel better about having no choice but to have plastic waste follow me around everywhere.

I bet most Mormons use very little plastic when they eat - they have the courage of their convictions.

I hate to break it to you. But most things you separate for recycling isn’t actually recycled.

that’s the point i was making

So it’s all theatrics just to make you feel good even though you know it doesn’t do any good?

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