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Comment by DHolzer | Hacker News Reader

250k per year would make me reconfigure my internal right/wrong classifier real fast...

Really, that little? Don't feel even slightly embarrassed about your morals being so cheap? You'd hurt your neighbors and acquaintances for 20K a month?

Given you probably don't earn that today, say you got paid that now instead of whatever you earn, what would you spend that money on in reality?

if you're literally anywhere in the west other than bay area or NYC this is good to amazing money

Sure, but what about all the other aspects of your life, those contributing more to your happiness? Corrupted people have money as their top goal in life, everyone else is trying to live a good life once they have enough, but there seemingly is no "enough" for quite a large part of the population, and in some places of the world this obsession seems worse than in others.

Hate the game, not the players. Somebody is supposed to be regulating this stuff. If you're in a poor city or country having a shot at such compensation would be life changing for the whole family, not just you and game-theoretically someone else will take that job anyway, for similar reasons, too.

No, no and no.

First of all we have to make our minds. Do we need regulation or not. Many people cry from top of their lungs for less regulation, and now are we saying "if it's so damaging why we are not regulating it?" this is double-distilled, barrel-aged hypocrisy at its finest. You can bottle it and sell it as a limited reserve single malt.

Changing your life for a single generation while setting every pillar of a civilized society, moral imperative and human values and everything related on fire is again a monumental example of shortsightedness.

Trying to beat your conscience with the bat of "if I didn't do it, somebody else would do the same" will only make your heart and soul ache more and more over the years.

I (and many others) would live a peaceful life trying their best to leave the world a little bit better than they found rather than being slave of the money they earn and being bickered by their conscience because they betrayed to the essence and foundation of humanity just for a few {thousand, million, billion, trillion} bucks.

I have rejected much more lucrative offers because I value my family, people I love and personal life more than a shiny car which will rust in two decades anyway.

So, I'll hate the game and the players while trying to make our world a better place. At least I'll die peacefully.

Thanks.

> Hate the game, not the players.

No, I'm sorry, but fuck that. I've been one of the players, and it's definitively possible to not play the game, especially when you see what's going on around you, and still live a perfectly fine life that is above the living standards of most others in your country, if you're working as a software engineer. And I'm saying this as someone who never came close to FAANG salaries yet was lucky enough to paid enough to live better than I thought I'd ever do, but initially had really shit living situation and have had to steal at one point to feed myself. I've had chances that could mean I'd live a life of luxury earlier than what it ended up being, but I couldn't live with myself if I did those things, when I had anything resembling of a choice.

There is almost always a choice, and "hate the game not the player" is such a bullshit excuse for people to just participate because everyone else is. It's spineless and the answer of a chicken who doesn't want to consider the consequences of their actions.

Hate the players and the game.

Write your elected representative, even if you did earlier. This place for all good it brings to tech is a viper's nest of all you hate.

Anytime anything comes up, I do talk with them, thank you for asking. However, they're an ocean away from where the really bad stuff happen, where seemingly all people think about is how to maximize their salaries and then deploy their services for everyone else in the world to get addicted, my representatives can't do a lot about that except what they're already doing.

I would feel embarrassed, yes. But that's 5 times my current salary for a 'similar' position. I am not sure it'd be 5 times worse in terms of societal effect. And even if it were, I am not sure I would be 5 times as embarrassed, if we are considering a linear conversion rate.

What I am trying to say is that I am on your side - as of this moment it is incredibly unlikely that I would ever see this kind of money. That makes it an easy position to take in a online conversation. But I have seen decent people throw out morals for a 100th of what we are talking about.

I've left jobs paying that much over ethical concerns. My soul is not for sale, and neither should yours be.

> My soul is not for sale, ...

This makes two of us. Nice to see a similar-minded person. Cheers to you!

look, i dont want to work at any of those companies anyway. I am with you - i was trying to say that money can break most of us. I appreciate you being so farsighted by leaving such a position, but for many other people that would be unthinkable - And that does not make them monsters.

At this point I would be more worried about working for a US company, than which one exactly - (not totally serious of course, but also not entirely inaccurate)

I had no safety net and nearly became homeless after draining my savings helping a family member in the months after this happened. I come from a very poor background and have no family to rely on. I spent several years as a teenager and in my early 20s homeless, without parents or anyone to help me financially. I starved and was very ill.

I say this to make it clear that I didn't make this decision free of consequences, and it was unthinkable at the time for many from better backgrounds than I. I have experienced worse conditions than most of my peers ever will and my soul is still not for sale. There is no excuse. Selling heroin on a street corner is more ethical than what is going on at Google and Meta.

I did not mean to imply that you did not face any consequences. Sorry if that came across that way. But my point stands. While I heavily disagree with almost everything Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, etc. stand for, I cannot hold the developers in these companies to the same level of judgment as I would politicians, lobbyists, and managers. You may compare selling heroin on the street to whatever stuff is going on at these companies, and I might agree or disagree. But the fact is — selling heroin on the street is illegal, while training a recommendation model is not. Quite the opposite. And the complacency and failure to put reins on this situation 15 years ago is a deep failure of our civilization. As long as we train people at university for these positions and pull them in with such incredibly high salaries, I can't not forgive them to a large degree. I do not forgive the policymakers that enable this madness, however. I understand that's just moving the blame to a higher level — that's not the intention. It's a systemic failure, and it needs systemic change.

That's a shame, but don't feel sad. While not everybody is on your side, certainly you're not alone in this.

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