Comment by testfrequency
19 days ago
Is this your way of sharing that you work at X or are open to hurting people in exchange for cash?
Also, you can retain your morals and choose a career, it is optional to select where you work as it’s hopefully voluntary.
There's nothing voluntary when your options are homelessness and starvation. The bank won't accept your morals in lieu of money when accepting mortgage repayments.
Thankfully I don't live in the US and I don't work for anything even remotely related to this. I don't know if I would have the fortitude in the current US job market (based on what I read here) to threat the well being of the wife and daughter by taking principled stances.
Dilapidating the world for an easy buck is gonna bite you and/or your kids eventually. We have reached technological sophistication where certain kinds of mistakes are not allowed if civilization as we know it is to survive.
When the bank reposseses the house because you are not paying the mortgage, this will bite you and your kids too.
You can call it an "easy buck", and it is just coping. An easy way to make some poor schlemiel creating a miserable report with user location data during his sprint into a greedy bastard that is just enriching his bank account out of the suffering of plenty.
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Okay, I'll accept your point for those software engineers that have a choice between working at an immoral company or "homelessness and starvation".
Thankfully, that isn't most of them. Despite the job market not being as good as it used to be, the vast majority of software engineers in the US could still find another job to pay the bills before becoming homeless and starving.
If that's the case, great then. I did work for a company I find morally objectionable in the past (i.e.: evil), and I eventually found my way out.
At the time I was still paying rent and needed employment to keep my visa. I also had little savings, and an ill parent that depended on me. I certainly couldn't take the principled stance of "fuck this, I'm out".
My point is that if you are in the position to take a principled stance, good for you. Maybe you already own your home, maybe you had time to accumulate savings, maybe you can do a few interviews and land a less evil job even in the current market (and perhaps a pay cut won't be a massive blow in you life). All that is awesome, but also a position of relative privilege.
Prescribing principled stance as universal without recognizing this is just cruelty though.
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You chose the most absolute and extreme predicament possible to cast your “money is money” belief.
You do realize this is what most criminals of the world just so happen to say as well, right?
Where is the line?
There's nothing extreme in what I said, it is actually how the world we live in works.
It's an extremely unfair system based on coercion - you are beaten down into submission by the implicit threat that without work you won't be able to make ends meet.
Maybe you have a family that can support you financially. Maybe you already own the place where you live and could save up money over an extended period that you can weather a storm. If you are in these situations, that's great, but it is also an extremely privileged position to be in.
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