Just venting, but I straight-up don’t understand how so many developers working in gambling, FAANG, the MIC, commercial health insurance, etc. so readily pull the wool over their own eyes before eventually crashing out.
If you’re a working class person with no better way to pay the bills, that’s one thing — but from lived experience as a tech bro, these people are generally well-off white collar professionals with plenty of options. You can do something ethical that pays the bills, lets you live comfortably, travel the world and more, or you can do something obviously heinous for a ~20% marginal salary increase — and this set of nitwits pick the heinous gig every time.
Like have they never bothered to try using the services of the companies they work for? Are they too daft to recognize a dark pattern when they see it?
The only answer I see as a reliable answer is greed and money. OOP and people like them ruin my faith in humanity like nothing else.
I worked at a small network monitoring startup. We sold devices that network operators could use to monitor their services, find problems, fix issues, that kind of stuff.
After a few years there I learned what network operators actually do with our tools: They log everything the customers do, create motion profiles, log your text messages and internet traffic and sell all that on to advertisers (it’s in your phone contract somewhere burried deep in the fine print). Oh, and apparently the company also sold devices to the egyptian secret service to squash the opposition, and to a few other secret services.
So I left from there and joined a mid-sized automation tool manufacturer that makes a platform that is used to e.g. automate a theme park or to automate updates and stuff for a large retailer. Directly when I joined, the company was bought up by a huge corporation that jacked up the prices, fired a large part of the employees and squeezed everyone for money.
Then I switched to a company that makes tools to manage logistics. During the hireing process they talked about green transformation, democratization, automation, stuff like that. Turns out they use these tools to squeeze truck drivers into working for as little money as possible.
About a year ago I switched to work in the IT of a large and old retailer. You know, a company that’s part of the backbone of the nation’s food supply. Job security, a somewhat ethical type of business, doing something good that helps people. Well, turns out that I’m working on the marketing app and the whole point is manipulating people into spending more money for less using dark patterns.
There is no such thing as an ethical IT job that pays the bills. I purposely avoided US businesses, FAANG, gambling, health insurance and all the stuff you mentioned, and I tried to vet potential work places for ethics before joining and still I always ended with non-ethical crap because ethical IT jobs don’t exist.
So I spend my free time to make open source hardware. I made a phone keyboard attachment that I know is used by at least one blind person, and currently I am making a physiotherapy game console for chronically ill kids to make their daily physiotherapy experience more interesting.
During the hireing process they talked about green transformation, democratization, automation, stuff like that. Turns out they use these tools to squeeze truck drivers into working for as little money as possible.
I was convinced I wanted to go into a science or engineering from childhood through my early 20s.
Mid 20s was a complete turnaround for me, and I’m a firefighter/medic now. There’s a lot about the job that sucks: but the pay and benefits are decent enough and I’m (mostly) actually helping people without making some sociopath billionaire even richer.
I thought I wanted to work at FAANG in my younger years. After getting flown in for an on-site interview at Google, I decided it wasn’t really worth it to work somewhere with an unethical business model and constantly be in a moral quandary that ultimately my work is contributing to some huge corporation doing shitty things.
I got to try the “free food” and tour the Mountain View campus, but ended up taking a remote job elsewhere. Many years later, I now make probably make 25% less than what I would be making if I were still at Google, assuming a promotion a level above what I was interviewing for, but at least my conscience doesn’t bother me every day. One thing that does bother me, actually, is that a company I worked for got acquired by Oracle, and that piece of shit Ellison now owns a product I put my heart and soul into building. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel working for a place like that directly.
Also, IMO, working remotely beats commuting to a FAANG office with free food and fun things to do. I can make my own damn food, thank you very much, and I also don’t really want to piss around doing “fun things” at work: I just want to get my shit done ASAP and log off.
I think in some cases it is far more than a marginal increase. I make just $120k at one of my jobs but I could make $400k+ at a job for a company far less ethical. Hell, a guy I know hit $700k one year at Ye Olde Meta (that did include exercising options though).
The allure of being able to retire early is nice. But instead of seeking high paying jobs I just mix and match multiple low paying ones from smaller companies and achieve roughly the same thing with less stress.
It’s not hard. I’ve worked in education, grant management, county government, online retail (that one was marginally not evil), and a bunch of others. You just have to know when to say yes and when to say no.
As a rule of thumb, the more ethical companies are going to be smaller shops as opposed to household names, because they’re siphoning less of the economic value they produce into bloat and “hyperscaling”. Yet there are plenty such shops in every field doing quality work for clients at fair prices; they’re just not the ones making waves and catching press.
If you’re seriously looking for something though, tell me your niche or PM your CV, and I’ll see if I can’t find something reasonable.
Startups are most often not ethical either. They are often run by a wannabe dictator who does everything that benefits them, especially squeezing the employees while underpaying.
Mid-size companies usually don’t have enough money to act ethical when it comes down to it.
Large size corporations only got there by not working ethically.
They would literally make more money by job-hopping in pursuit of such a company, but you’re right. Even a single team that remembers what ethics are is a big ask.
Just venting, but I straight-up don’t understand how so many developers working in gambling, FAANG, the MIC, commercial health insurance, etc. so readily pull the wool over their own eyes before eventually crashing out.
If you’re a working class person with no better way to pay the bills, that’s one thing — but from lived experience as a tech bro, these people are generally well-off white collar professionals with plenty of options. You can do something ethical that pays the bills, lets you live comfortably, travel the world and more, or you can do something obviously heinous for a ~20% marginal salary increase — and this set of nitwits pick the heinous gig every time.
Like have they never bothered to try using the services of the companies they work for? Are they too daft to recognize a dark pattern when they see it?
The only answer I see as a reliable answer is greed and money. OOP and people like them ruin my faith in humanity like nothing else.
I worked at a small network monitoring startup. We sold devices that network operators could use to monitor their services, find problems, fix issues, that kind of stuff.
After a few years there I learned what network operators actually do with our tools: They log everything the customers do, create motion profiles, log your text messages and internet traffic and sell all that on to advertisers (it’s in your phone contract somewhere burried deep in the fine print). Oh, and apparently the company also sold devices to the egyptian secret service to squash the opposition, and to a few other secret services.
So I left from there and joined a mid-sized automation tool manufacturer that makes a platform that is used to e.g. automate a theme park or to automate updates and stuff for a large retailer. Directly when I joined, the company was bought up by a huge corporation that jacked up the prices, fired a large part of the employees and squeezed everyone for money.
Then I switched to a company that makes tools to manage logistics. During the hireing process they talked about green transformation, democratization, automation, stuff like that. Turns out they use these tools to squeeze truck drivers into working for as little money as possible.
About a year ago I switched to work in the IT of a large and old retailer. You know, a company that’s part of the backbone of the nation’s food supply. Job security, a somewhat ethical type of business, doing something good that helps people. Well, turns out that I’m working on the marketing app and the whole point is manipulating people into spending more money for less using dark patterns.
There is no such thing as an ethical IT job that pays the bills. I purposely avoided US businesses, FAANG, gambling, health insurance and all the stuff you mentioned, and I tried to vet potential work places for ethics before joining and still I always ended with non-ethical crap because ethical IT jobs don’t exist.
So I spend my free time to make open source hardware. I made a phone keyboard attachment that I know is used by at least one blind person, and currently I am making a physiotherapy game console for chronically ill kids to make their daily physiotherapy experience more interesting.
I don’t work in IT, but this is so familiar.
I was convinced I wanted to go into a science or engineering from childhood through my early 20s.
Mid 20s was a complete turnaround for me, and I’m a firefighter/medic now. There’s a lot about the job that sucks: but the pay and benefits are decent enough and I’m (mostly) actually helping people without making some sociopath billionaire even richer.
I thought I wanted to work at FAANG in my younger years. After getting flown in for an on-site interview at Google, I decided it wasn’t really worth it to work somewhere with an unethical business model and constantly be in a moral quandary that ultimately my work is contributing to some huge corporation doing shitty things.
I got to try the “free food” and tour the Mountain View campus, but ended up taking a remote job elsewhere. Many years later, I now make probably make 25% less than what I would be making if I were still at Google, assuming a promotion a level above what I was interviewing for, but at least my conscience doesn’t bother me every day. One thing that does bother me, actually, is that a company I worked for got acquired by Oracle, and that piece of shit Ellison now owns a product I put my heart and soul into building. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel working for a place like that directly.
Also, IMO, working remotely beats commuting to a FAANG office with free food and fun things to do. I can make my own damn food, thank you very much, and I also don’t really want to piss around doing “fun things” at work: I just want to get my shit done ASAP and log off.
Which is why I’m a backend developer/infrastructure engineer for a nonprofit organization in the area of social services.
The pay is not as good but I can look my children in the eye and tell them that I am proud of the work I do.
I think in some cases it is far more than a marginal increase. I make just $120k at one of my jobs but I could make $400k+ at a job for a company far less ethical. Hell, a guy I know hit $700k one year at Ye Olde Meta (that did include exercising options though).
The allure of being able to retire early is nice. But instead of seeking high paying jobs I just mix and match multiple low paying ones from smaller companies and achieve roughly the same thing with less stress.
where’s your magical list of ethical companies 😂😂😂
It’s not hard. I’ve worked in education, grant management, county government, online retail (that one was marginally not evil), and a bunch of others. You just have to know when to say yes and when to say no.
As a rule of thumb, the more ethical companies are going to be smaller shops as opposed to household names, because they’re siphoning less of the economic value they produce into bloat and “hyperscaling”. Yet there are plenty such shops in every field doing quality work for clients at fair prices; they’re just not the ones making waves and catching press.
If you’re seriously looking for something though, tell me your niche or PM your CV, and I’ll see if I can’t find something reasonable.
Startups are most often not ethical either. They are often run by a wannabe dictator who does everything that benefits them, especially squeezing the employees while underpaying.
Mid-size companies usually don’t have enough money to act ethical when it comes down to it.
Large size corporations only got there by not working ethically.
They would literally make more money by job-hopping in pursuit of such a company, but you’re right. Even a single team that remembers what ethics are is a big ask.
💰💸💵💶💷💴
^ this is how