> “this other thing is also bad” is not an exoneration
No, but it puts some perspective on things. IMO Google, after abandoning its early "don't be evil" motto is directly responsible for a significant chunk of the current evil in the developed world, from screen addiction to kids' mental health and social polarization.
Working for Google and drawing an extravagant salary for many, many years was a choice that does affect the way we perceive other issues being discussed by the same source. To clarify: I am not claiming that Rob is evil; on the contrary. His books and open source work were an inspiration to many, myself included. But I am going to view his opinions on social good and evil through the prism of his personal employment choices. My 2c.
This is a purity test that cannot be passed. Give me your career history and I’ll tell you why you aren’t allowed to make any moral judgments on anything as well.
Point is he is criticizing Google but still collecting checks from them. That's hypocritical. He would have a little sympathy if he never worked for them. He had decades to resign. He didn't. He stayed there until retirement. He's even using gmail in that post.
I think everyone, including myself, should be extremely hesitant to respond to marketing emails with profanity-laden moralism. It’s not about purity testing, it’s about having the level of introspection to understand that people do lots of things for lots of reasons. “Just fuck you. Fuck you all.” is not an appropriate response to presumptively good people trying to do cool things, even if the cool things are harmful and you desperately want to stop them.
My take on the above, and I might be taking it out of context is that I think what is being said here is that the exploitation and grift needs to stop. And if you are working for a company that does this, you are part of the problem. I know that pretty much every modern company does this, but it has to stop somewhere.
We need to find a way to stop contributing to the destruction of the planet soon.
I don't work for any of these companies, but I do purchase things from Amazon and I have an apple phone. I think the best we can do is minimize our contribution to it. I try to limit what services I use from this companies, and I know it doesnt make much of a differnce, but I am doing what I can.
I'm hoping more people that need to be employed by tech companies can find a way to be more selective on who they employ with.
> “this other thing is also bad” is not an exoneration
No, but it puts some perspective on things. IMO Google, after abandoning its early "don't be evil" motto is directly responsible for a significant chunk of the current evil in the developed world, from screen addiction to kids' mental health and social polarization.
Working for Google and drawing an extravagant salary for many, many years was a choice that does affect the way we perceive other issues being discussed by the same source. To clarify: I am not claiming that Rob is evil; on the contrary. His books and open source work were an inspiration to many, myself included. But I am going to view his opinions on social good and evil through the prism of his personal employment choices. My 2c.
This is a purity test that cannot be passed. Give me your career history and I’ll tell you why you aren’t allowed to make any moral judgments on anything as well.
Point is he is criticizing Google but still collecting checks from them. That's hypocritical. He would have a little sympathy if he never worked for them. He had decades to resign. He didn't. He stayed there until retirement. He's even using gmail in that post.
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I think everyone, including myself, should be extremely hesitant to respond to marketing emails with profanity-laden moralism. It’s not about purity testing, it’s about having the level of introspection to understand that people do lots of things for lots of reasons. “Just fuck you. Fuck you all.” is not an appropriate response to presumptively good people trying to do cool things, even if the cool things are harmful and you desperately want to stop them.
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My take on the above, and I might be taking it out of context is that I think what is being said here is that the exploitation and grift needs to stop. And if you are working for a company that does this, you are part of the problem. I know that pretty much every modern company does this, but it has to stop somewhere.
We need to find a way to stop contributing to the destruction of the planet soon.
I don't work for any of these companies, but I do purchase things from Amazon and I have an apple phone. I think the best we can do is minimize our contribution to it. I try to limit what services I use from this companies, and I know it doesnt make much of a differnce, but I am doing what I can.
I'm hoping more people that need to be employed by tech companies can find a way to be more selective on who they employ with.
No, but in this case it indicates some hypocrisy.
> “this other thing is also bad” is not an exoneration
Data centers are not another thing when the subject is data centers.