How do you feel about the ethics of working at major companies?

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Morazma@reddit

I think a lot of people would change their mind if they were offered a high enough TC.

It's easy to claim you wouldn't do something until you actually have to make a decision. For example I was offered $250k tax free at a company in the middle East. Previously I had shat on anybody who does anything like this. Suddenly I was instead thinking about my family, how much good I could do etc.

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boring_pants@reddit

Eh, the problem is that for all the "good I could do", $250k is not sufficient. Offer me a few billion and we can talk about it.

Sure, I'd work for some scummy company if you paid me enough that I could singlehandedly fund hospitals or build an offshore wind farm.

$250k though? That's "yay, we get to travel around the world and buy an excessively big house" money. Not "do so much good that it negates the harm I do through my job" money.

I already live pretty comfortably. Doubling or tripling my salary would not make a huge difference in my day-to-day life. So if you want me to do unethical work I'd need to be paid enough that I honestly believed I was able to fully counteract the impact of my work.

And I don't think $250k would come near enabling that.

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Morazma@reddit

I guess you also have to consider that somebody is going to do this role regardless. So it's either you getting paid this much or somebody else, and maybe you'd do better with it.

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boring_pants@reddit

I guess you also have to consider that somebody is going to do this role regardless. So it's either you getting paid this much or somebody else, and maybe you'd do better with it.

Yes, and if I don't build this oil rig, someone else will.

If I don't buy and burn all that oil produced by your oil rig, someone else will.

If I don't build weapons for use in genocide someone else will.

If I don't produce a resource, someone else will. If someone else produces a reasource and I don't consume it, someone else will.

If I don't do harm, someone else will.

That's really not a coherent ethical stance.

But you do you. At least the money is good. I just wish people would be more honest about it.

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Artistic-Border7880@reddit

If you have to live in the Middle East though that’s quite a problem and their culture in general is very different.

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Few_Doctor8963@reddit

money talks, ethis walk.. sometimes

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Podgietaru@reddit

I am conflicted. I worked at AWS. And ultimately the reason I quit was around the time of the Washington Post refusing to advocate for Kamala, and later them donating $1m to the Inauguration fund.

I was always aware who Amazon was. But I had convinced myself that AWS was a different beast. I saw my view whilst working there shattered. The absolute lack of empathy of that company to it's workers was outstanding.

That said, we worked in a capitalistic system. And I rarely begrudge people for doing what they need to to make it in that system. I don't begrudge my former colleagues for continuing to work there. Some had misguided views about trying to course correct the company from the inside, which I find naive.

I am working at a company less morally reprehensible, but they still work in an industry with less than positive climate impacts. I have to live with that. As we all have to live with the million cuts that capitalism puts on us. We can only try to do better. And where you draw the line is up to you.

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Famous-Test-4795@reddit

Does your company focus on building datacenters for AI? Your statement is so vague, it makes me wonder.

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Podgietaru@reddit

No, it's plants. Literally plants.

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kosmos1209@reddit

Totally agree with this. I’ve had various kinds of moral qualms and various companies, and it’s up to the individual on where to draw the line.

I’ve also worked a huge morally reprehensible defense contractor in my 20s as I’ve started my career during the dot com bust and I had a lot of loan to pay off. I did what I had to, but I can’t defend where I worked and what it did.

In my 40s now with my finance somewhat secured, I work at a health tech startup for less than what I can make at a big corp. Not everyone has the privilege of working at a lesser morally reprehensible companies. At the same time, I think anyone actually being proud to do so does deserve side eyes.

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Independent-Fun815@reddit

That's classic self delusional. Every person especially when they get squeezed out says the line: I went into "tech/finance/etc" to secure the bag and now that I'm financially secure I can do good...blah blah blah. It's such a trodden down phrase does anyone even believe it anymore?

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MountaintopCoder@reddit

I work at Meta and my job is to help build features for MBS. It's pretty banal stuff. As long as I'm not building features that I consider harmful, I don't really care.

They pay me $420k and that number can get into the millions depending on how long I stay around. There is infinite demand to work here, so it's not like I'm impeding any progress by abstaining from working here.

It feels very morally ambiguous to me, unless you're actively promoting evil.

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ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit

Rule 3: No General Career Advice

This sub is for discussing issues specific to experienced developers.

Any career advice thread must contain questions and/or discussions that notably benefit from the participation of experienced developers. Career advice threads may be removed at the moderators discretion based on response to the thread."

General rule of thumb: If the advice you are giving (or seeking) could apply to a “Senior Chemical Engineer”, it’s not appropriate for this sub.

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stikves@reddit

Why would they?

I mean if they have moral objections to say... gambling, don't work at an online casino. if you don't like war, don't work for a defense company. if you don't like usury, don't work at a bank, ...

That would still leave hundreds of companies in S&P 500 (and those not listed, like "unicorn" startups)

But if you really have moral objections to everything, and every possible large company... how do you even survive in the modern world?

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catecholaminergic@reddit

> if you really have moral objections to everything, and every possible large company... how do you even survive in the modern world?

Theologian-turned-engineer here: You don't. You just don't.

If you can carve out a spot in foss health tech more power to you but, it's hard.

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Positive-Cold7132@reddit

interesting how the focus shifts from personal morals to survival in modern society

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OhNoItsMeAgainHaha@reddit

This is interesting actually because I was talking to a colleague in the aerospace field and I put forth the same argument. I told them to not work at Lockheed or Anduril but they said the CIA uses AWS as its private cloud, anduril uses cosmos DB from miscrosoft. The point is where do you draw the line? If anduril or Lockheed make tools to kill people, aren’t AWS and Microsoft and other big tech as complicit as well?

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boring_pants@reddit

Microsoft is literally being boycotted for their complicity in genocide, so yes, they're very much complicit. Using them as your example for "surely everyone is complicit so I might as well work at the orphan-slaughter factory" is silly.

Perhaps I'm showing my non-American naivety here, but why do you people talk like it is unimaginable to work at a non-FAANG company? Is it just a prestige thing? Or is the US tech job market really so dominated by that handful of companies that getting decent jobs elsewhere is difficult?

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Adept-Log3535@reddit

The whole silicon valley was built in the foundation of dense companies during the Cold War. Lockheed Martin was the largest employer in the Bay Area until the late 90s. Tech and military are so intertwined there is no way to draw a line cleanly. Even Siri started as a military project.

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nonsense1989@reddit

The internet started as a military funded project. DARPA , the D stands for defense

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crazylikeajellyfish@reddit

Do we blame the auto manufacturers for helping those employees commute to work? The chefs who work in their cafeterias? The power companies?

Infinite regressions of blame aren't a viable way to exist, and they also promote inaction rather than working to make things better. A more reasonable line would be whether your service is predominantly used for purposes you don't believe in. Sure, AWS runs the Pentagon, but they also run a ton of hospitals.

Rather than throwing up your hands and talking about how capitalism is the problem, meanwhile the weapons still get made, it's more ethical to focus on the closest cause. Palantir is still one step away, really, they're not the ones waging war or doing shitty policing. Their tools are predominantly used for those purposes, though, which makes me comfortable with saying they're part of the problem.

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recycled_ideas@reddit

The point is where do you draw the line? If anduril or Lockheed make tools to kill people, aren’t AWS and Microsoft and other big tech as complicit as well?

Everyone is complicit. Militaries buy raw materials to make their, they buy crops to fees their troops. Military hospitals buy healthcare equipment. Hell if you're a US citizen your taxes pay for it all. Every product you can imagine is in some way connected to something evil.

So if you're not just going to off yourself, you need to make judgements about how complicit your company is and how complicit your work is.

Personally I don't see providing generic tools and services that the military happens to use is particularly evil.

There are plenty of things that Amazon and Microsoft do that are evil, but I don't think providing cloud services to Lockheed Martin counts.

Your friend works in Aerospace and doesn't want to restrict their employment opportunities to the few, if any, companies in that space that don't at least tangentially work on weapons, which is fine. They also want to pretend that this doesn't mean a moral decision for them (or they want you to shut up about it), which is maybe less fine.

But none of us is pure, untouched by the evils of the world and totally clean of sin in word and deed. You work out what you can live with and you do what you can.

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BetterWhereas3245@reddit

Mechanical tools are also used to build missiles, bombs and war machines. Are you going to refuse to work at a hammer and screw factory because those are used in said war equipment? It seems a bit crazy to draw such a stark line.

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Cahnis@reddit

I have a friend that works in the nonprofit space. The csuites all get 150k+.

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AngusAlThor@reddit

If you work on a product that is morally bad, that is a bad thing and you should quit. However, not all big companies are equally involved in making horrible shit;

Palantir helps murder people, so you shouldn't work for them.
Facebook is stealing our attention and data, and actively works to get kids addicted to their platform, so you shouldn't work for them.
Microsoft has done some truly reprehensible lawyering to get out of paying taxes, as well as all their spying and anti-competitive bullshit. However, some of their devs are just making Excel. So, in their case it kinda depends what you do for them... a bit.

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disperso@reddit

I totally thought you were going to say as a last moment joke that making Excel was the biggest crime ever.

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kuncol02@reddit

Palantir wants us all to be slaves of bilionaries, or straight up dead. No one should be working for them. They don't even try to hide this.

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norskie7@reddit

Pretty terrible. Especially with LLMs sapping the joy and value out of my work, it’s becoming harder and harder for me to find valid reasons to stay working in software dev.

Thinking of becoming a teacher or something

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xpingu69@reddit

What matters are your choices. Only your direct actions have moral consequences for you and your mind. If you choose to act greedy, that will have consequences.

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AsciiMorseCode@reddit

IMO it's the midsize companies that suffer in terms of ethics. Those sorts of places have just enough layers between actions and consequences that the decision makers can be unethical and it not be "person x did bad thing" vs "company y made strategic decision" but are also not so big that there's a journalist waiting to report on the company, forcing management into scrutinizing every decision.

Src: worked at companies ranging from low dozen headcount to ~50K directly-employed corporate employees.

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lorryslorrys@reddit

Don't worry, the medium sized business is probably owned by some awful private equity company anyway.

I think what they do is more important.

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bdanmo@reddit

It me. And PÉ truly ruins everything.

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Ok_Discipline_9946@reddit

depends on the company's specific practices and policies

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brainrotbro@reddit

Making employment decisions based on your ethics is huge a privilege. It's much easier done when you have no kids & a healthy support network. I'd happily make the ethical choice if I had money banked to retire with enough for my family's basic needs. Maybe some want more than that, but that's a minimum threshold.

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jmking@reddit

Turning down work is an option for the privileged.

People lie to themselves that they would choose their moral objections to tracking/ads or whatever working for Meta if they found themselves a few weeks from running out of savings, and their family was going to end up on the streets as a result.

It's easy to sit on one's high horse when they are working and living comfortably.

Like, I wouldn't choose to work for Meta or Palentir or other defense contractors or weapons manufacturers, etc etc. However, I recognize that I have the privilege to make that choice. It's that simple, and it's the same for a majority of others. History has proven time and time again that people will compromise their morals.

It's the trolly problem. Sometimes you have options, but they're all "bad", but you end up in a position where you have to choose the "least bad".

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boring_pants@reddit

Turning down work is an option for the privileged.

If you work in the tech industry you are extremely privileged compared to most of the rest of the population.

Like, the median US wage is in the ballpark of $60,000 a year, and people in the tech industry will act like twice that is unparalleled hardship.

You're right, there are absolutely less privileged people working for these companies. And you're right, they may not have much choice if they want food on the table.

But everyone on this sub is privileged as heck. Not only are we software developers, we're in senior roles. We are easily in the 1%. If we can't afford to be picky about where we work, no one can.

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boring_pants@reddit

Ethically, I don't think size is the key differentiator.

It just so happens that all the biggest tech companies are swamps of unethical behavior and incentives, but... there are also smaller companies that are just as evil.

So I think the more pertinent question is "how do you feel about the ethics of working at unethical companies?"

And... I don't like it. So far I've spent most of my career at a company where I believed I actually made a positive difference in the world, enabling better health care for actual human beings, plus a few years at companies which I'd describe as ethically neutral. Like, accounting software for publishing companies. It's not the military industrial complex, it doesn't have a disastrous climate footprint, it doesn't get children hooked on social media, it doesn't push ads in people's faces, but it also doesn't save lives. In the big picture, it basically doesn't matter.

I think that's my red line. I'm okay with working on something that's ethically largely neutral. I will not do work that I believe does harm.

And yes, that means I'll never work at a FAANG company, and I'm fine with that.

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editor_of_the_beast@reddit

I see nothing wrong with it.

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crazylikeajellyfish@reddit

I don't think the size of the business is the relevant question. My rationale is: 1. Does the business provide a real good or service? 2. Who are they providing that service to? 3. On balance, does that service make the users' lives better?

If all those are true, then I'm good. Scale makes things trickier because you often end up with a lot of different businesses under one umbrella, so you have to start reasoning about your role in the picture and which piece you're helping.

More importantly, there are tons of businesses with small headcounts who fail on those criteria. Would your friends feel good about working at a small hedge fund?

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Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit

Sour grapes

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WaitingForTheClouds@reddit

I worked at a small business, the owner was a narcissist who regularly lied to customers, sold the software to shady governments to help them oppress people, bullied and gaslit employees (i watched him trying to forcefully convince the lead dev that he designed a major feature that the lead dev designed), skirted tax laws thanks to connections in govt and the fact that the company wasn't big actually helped it stay under the radar, he literally threatened to punch employees and regularly threatened to sue employees if they quit on bad terms even though he literally designed the contract so that it's easy to terminate it.

I now work for a large, multinational corporation. We make software for factories. It doesn't directly harm people. Helps build stuff which feels nice. Being a major corporation, they are under scrutiny from everyone and so they behave. And it seems to be working. Now sure, it's just to avoid lawsuits so it's obviously not genuine interests in environmentalism or employee wellbeing etc but who the fuck cares so long as they actually do the right thing. It's also nice to be so far removed from the owners of the company that I don't have a control freak behind my back reminding me that every breath I take at the office is a dollar from his pocket. So in the end the big corpo behaves better thanks to regulation and scrutiny from governments and the eu and is better for my mental health. Win win.

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HouseAutomatic5774@reddit

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gdinProgramator@reddit

Anyone who complained to me about this was a hypocrite virtue hoe.

Brother, if you have issues with it, leave. Oh but the pay is too good? Well we established now that you are a hoe and have a price for which you will sell your morals.

I personally worked for gambling companies, and I think that gambling destroys my country more than drugs, cigarettes or whatever else. The games I made are being used today even. But this has also given me very deep insight into how it exactly works, and I have used that knowledge to help people turn away from it. They are willing to listen to you if you are an expert in the field.

Yes they ask me how they can beat the system, and I tell them the one way that exists today. But then you compete with others that also know the catch.

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SeerUD@reddit

Size doesn't matter as much as what it does, and how it does it, IMO

Though, I do work for a small company, because I think the small company lifestyle is much better.

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Wadix9000f@reddit

Would you work for a what you perceived as a non-ethical company if it means food on the table, shelter and all the needs of your family or would you go on a quest to find this utopian tech company,most would just suck it up. Afaik and if i remember my philosophy right there is no absolute moral and ethics system

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zeocrash@reddit

I don't have any ethical problems with it in principle. Obviously that doesn't mean it's work for any company, I'd assess each job offer as to whether the company goes against my values.

That said, I tend to avoid working at larger companies anyway as I don't really like the big corporate work environment.

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VeryAmaze@reddit

I benefit from capitalism the same way the C levels and shareholders do. I have opinions about the sort of industry and specific companies I won't work for, but I am not going to peace out of the capitalist race.

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pydry@reddit

The most ethical people arent the ones who refuse to work for unethical companies. The most ethical people are the ones that leak evidence of hidden wrongdoing.

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HolyPommeDeTerre@reddit

This subjects spans over politics here.

Banks - investors - economy - capitalism... This is really hard to say. Even small businesses have doubtful practices when it comes to survival.

I hate money as a concept and how it's used now. But I still have a salary and work for money...

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AggressiveAd5248@reddit

Pick the least evil one that pays you good money, do good things with your good money and don’t live for the company. Volunteer in an area you care about if you have the time. I think we generally have a good mix of time and money as software engineers so volunteering lets us give back in a way some other professions generally don’t get to due to crazy always jn office or workplace work schedules.

I’d personally never work for a defence firm or in the gambling industry. Even companies who do good things will probably have bad people using them to either legally or illegally, do bad things.

There’s moral arguments for why you’d rather it be you doing those defence and gambling jobs rather than someone else though. You’d triple check the guidance system, the gambling addict will gamble anyway, you’d rather they do it on a site which strictly follows gambling regulations, maybe you make the “GET HELP” button just a little bit more obvious than someone else would etc.

Pretty much every company will have something morally questionable going on, even charities who you would assume are great, have morally questionable practices about getting donations sometimes etc. Pressuring people around the time of a loved one’s death to see if they’d like to increase their monthly donations etc.

Even if you made a company that cures cancer, that’s great, now we need to negotiate how much people need to pay you to get it, for some people and governments the price will be too high. Poor people are now missing out on cancer treatments because they don’t have the funds. See how an objective moral good quickly becomes morally grey once money gets involved?

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soylentgraham@reddit

I have turned down military work (contract)

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xlb250@reddit

Most people don’t care. They passively invest in S&P500 index.

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LoveSpiritual@reddit

I have worked mostly at large companies. Some very large. Right now I work at a startup that I passionately believe in.

I’ll say that I love working on something I can whole heartedly believe in (and represent at conferences and in public). But I do recognize it as quite a luxury.

Still, I never worked on a product that I didn’t at least think was net beneficial to society. I chose my career path carefully in this regard, so it wasn’t just pure chance.

And yet I would not pretend moral superiority. Outside of some incredibly unethical situations, I think developers should do what is best for their family and their careers, as their impact is minor at best, and we have a life to live. If they have an opportunity to pick a moral course, they should.

Bottom line: each individual has to make their own choices about what is ethical and what is not. If the moral discomfort isn’t worth it, start looking for a different job.

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Kaimito1@reddit

having issues working at major companies due to moral issues

If not me then it'll be someone else working there.

Moral issues are the privilege of people who are already financially sorted imo

I plan to stay in the industry, make money to survive while I figure out how to not need to be employed at big firms and be comfortable, then get out.

Of course, if it's something like "training AI for military warfare use" or something crazy id probably not want that job

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lordnacho666@reddit

Whatever morals qualms people have can be suppressed by putting them in a suitable position.

Either pay them enough that they rationalize it to themselves, or pay them so little they do the same.

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im-ba@reddit

Well, the major company I work for pays my mortgage, gives me a 401k, and enough money left over to fix up my house so I feel pretty lucky. I used to just scrape by.

Ethics and morals don't pay the bills. Unless you're a VP or something at some big company, it really doesn't matter what you do. Even then you're beholden to the board and shareholders.

Nobody's ever going to fix the system so you may as well get what you can from it while you still can.

Anyway, what's this got to do with being an experienced developer anyways?

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disposepriority@reddit

Do you wrestle with any moral qualms about the work you do?

nope

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Altruistic-Bat-9070@reddit

I have met these people and its just a way for them to feel better but they won’t actually be morally better when you look at other things they do. They have drawn an imaginary line.

Like i get not working for oil companies or gambling companies. The line being ‘big companies’ is always weird to me as those companies will also have a lot of opportunities to do good things thanks to their size.