[elliotto]

The author seems like a nice guy, but perhaps a bit naive regarding the efforts big tech companies go to to crush employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...). They appear to be a staff level engineer at a big tech company - I don't know how much money they make, but I suspect it's an ungodly amount.

The organisation he works for is implicated in surveillance, monopoly exploitation, and current military action involving particularly unpopular wars. No one forced him into this role - he could have made less money elsewhere but decided not to. He has decided to be a cog in a larger, poorly functioning machine, and is handsomely rewarded for it. This sacrifice is, for many, a worthwhile trade.

If you don't want to engage with the moral ramifications of your profession, you are generally socially allowed to do so, provided the profession is above board. Unfortunately, you cannot then write a post trying to defend your position, saying that what I do is good, actually, meanwhile cashing your high 6-7 figure check. This is incoherent.

It is financially profitable to be a political actor within a decaying monopolist apparatus, but I don't need to accept that it's also a pathway to a well-lived life.

[therobots927]

I couldn’t agree more. I also work in tech but I’m incredibly cynical which makes it difficult to see the authors post as anything but a combination of self promotion / self soothing.

[stanfordkid]

The dude works for GitHub. I don’t doubt there is some rotten code on there, but what you’re saying seems like a stretch and exactly what he’s describing.

[makeitdouble]

It's been almost 8 years now since the Microsoft acquisition, should it still be seen as an independent culture ?

[rrdharan]

GitHub is owned by Microsoft which covers most of what GP is alluding to…

[enraged_camel]

Yeah, that was bizarre to read. I thought “wait, Sean works for Palantir?!”

[rainonmoon]

Microsoft is currently a target of BDS, which calls it "perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza." This isn't about some hobbyist's wonky code. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I chose to spend most of my career at a company that did stuff I found morally acceptable (inspiring, even). I made probably half what I could have made at places that were more dodgy.

I have found that mentioning that, elicits scorn and derision from many in tech.

Eh. Whatevs. I'm OK with it (but it appears a lot of others aren't, which mystifies me).

[pear01]

I believe what you are running up against is a tendency to externalize shame as anger.

Part of the tradeoff the parent comment references is a lack of thinking about the moral ramifications. Thus, when you mention your position which is grounded in that tradeoff's opposite, the reaction is not surprising. They are largely incompatible. Because your position hinges on a moral component, you are thus passing a moral judgement on others. This is often met with scorn, most especially because people have an aversion to shame, and it doesn't help if it's on the behalf of someone essentially randomly declaring they are morally better than you anytime the topic of their employment comes up.

So really, I'm not sure why you would be surprised, though I sympathize with your general sentiments, in a way you should know better. Surely you are aware of the aversion to shame writ large. That seems a logical predicate of your own conceptualization of your position.

[shikshake]

Your comment really resonates with me, I’m in a similar position though much more junior. My colleagues in tech can’t fathom that I actively choose to stay where I am and make 50% of their salary.

I’ve found talking about ethics and moral responsibility with people working in big tech is futile and frustrating. Almost everyone takes it as a personal attack though I never hold anyone else to my moral standards.

[parpfish]

I think the heart of the problem is that we’ve somehow conflated the highest paying Eng jobs with being the most prestigious.

People feel like if they want to climb the prestige ladder, they need some way of justifying the business practices of the megacorps.

In contrast, I feel like it’s well established that gigs in big law or finance or medicine have found a way to decorrelate pay from social status. You can make a choice between chasing money OR prestige.

[nmfisher]

For what it's worth, I personally have a lot of respect for people who do this (or at the very least, people who forego higher salaries to avoid working for companies they find morally objectionable).

[the_cat_kittles]

its because it hurts peoples feelings to confront the truth

[johnfn]

It seems a bit too much to assert that every developer should be fully responsible for every moral slight their company commits. It is entirely possible to make a positive impact on the world from a large organization - in fact for some people it may be the most direct way that they can make such an impact.

Saying that he is morally bankrupt is like saying that you are morally bankrupt for continuing to live in the US because the current administration is a dumpster fire. It is financially profitable to live in the US; you basically cash in a 6 figure check (perhaps translate the metaphor by taking the monetary value that a significantly increased quality of life is worth to you) by living here rather than some other, lesser developed country with more morally aligned politics. Why not leave? I submit that the calculus that goes through your head to justify staying is roughly equivalent to the one that goes through his when he thinks about continuing to work at big tech. I also don’t think that either of you are wrong for having some justification.

[elliotto]

I don't think he's morally bankrupt. I am disagreeing with his attempt to handwave away a moral analysis of these organizations as 'cynicism'. I think these analyses are really important.

I don't live in the US. But if I did, and I was capable enough to be a successful software engineer, I would try to work for an organisation that was not implicated in abhorrent behaviour. If I was to work for one, I would not attempt to dismiss criticisms of it as cynicism.

[coryrc]

Were individual Germans responsible for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime? If they weren't there because they were resisting, then I say yes. And if we go on living our lives without resisting the current government -- especially if you work at Google, with your leader bowing down to Trump and doing his bidding -- then, yes, you are morally culpable. Most people are shitty, so it's not surprising so many are still going along with it. The engines of commerce are still going. The ports are not blockaded and the government buildings are not being burned. We aren't marching on Washington and liberating the buildings. We are culpable.

Democratic voters are culpable; their politicians are all about keeping the system going but tweaking it. No, the system is bad. A system that results in trump being elected a second time is prima facie evil and must be torn down. If you have power and aren't working to treat down this system, you are culpable.

[hahahacorn]

Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting.

I’m glad for the antitrust litigation. It’s very obvious that this was a collusion effort that was self serving to each party involved, as a means of overcoming a negative (for them) prisoners dilemma type situation.

The fact that it depressed wage growth was a welcomed side effect. But framing that as the intended outcome as a way of discrediting original author is telling. I don’t know if you’ve understood corporations to be rather simple profit seeking entities, whose behavior can be modeled and regulated to ideal societal outcomes accordingly.

What military action is GitHub involved with.

[swiftcoder]

> Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting.

How exactly would you frame major corporations colluding to suppress wages?

> What military action is GitHub involved with.

GitHub has been part of Microsoft for the better part of a decade now, and Microsoft is pretty broadly involved with the military (across a wide swathe of countries)

[voxl]

Perceiving corpos as "simple profit seeking entities" is some of the most naive Milton Friedman crap. Corporations operate as an amalgamation of the desires of a group of powerful enough influencers, of which your rank and file investor is NOT making a meaningful contribution. Milton Friedman has done more harm to capitalism than Marx has done to socialism.

[conception]

Evergreen: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

[bdangubic]

except they do understand it of course but choose not to accept it :)

[asadotzler]

I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley, 100% of it working on making OSS happen, and 90% of it for a non-profit, while my peers from the early days almost all moved on to Big Tech by 2005-2010, most for 2x+ what I was making and a few for outrageously more than that. But I couldn't do it. The lure was attractive and I spent uncountable hours over about a decade debating whether to bite, but in the end I knew I couldn't feel good about myself if I was working for the absolute worst companies in the world.

I will leave this world with no meaningful legacy, but that's preferable to exiting knowing that I'd directly helped Big Tech get bigger and even more evil.

If I'd had kids, maybe my calculus would have been different. Maybe I'd have been motivated enough for their futures to sacrifice my conscience for them, but I did not, and so all I had to consider was whether or not I'd be able to live with myself, and the answer for me was no.

There have always been enough decent, even well paying jobs in software outside of the Big Tech companies, even in Silicon Valley, and so paying my bills and saving for a good retirement didn't require the soul sacrifice.

I don't begrudge anyone who bit that lure but I am entirely content to have said no myself.

[koverstreet]

OSS is your legacy!

If you write proprietary code, everything you do dies with that company. I certainly don't want my life's work locked away like that. Working on OSS means a better chance to put the engineering first and do something that will last.

I did my few years and Silicon Valley too, and when it came to decide between money and code, I chose the code. Haven't regretted a thing.

[qnleigh]

Let's not make everything political.

Not to take a stance on the issue either way, but I think the author is only referring to the politics involved in building products, not the broader political/moral issue of what the company does with all of the money it earns from those products. I don't see their post as defending or even referring to the latter.

[afavour]

> Let's not make everything political.

Everything is political, though. Establishing a barrier for cynicism so it doesn’t have to tackle the tough questions is understandable but it’s not that justifiable.