Good people working for evil companies and occasionally sneaking in good things is better than evil people working for evil companies and never doing anything good.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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I've never worked at an ethical software company despite only being at three different places in my career. Even something innocouous like an office productivity app is probably automating an office admin out of their job.
I work for shitty companies and just take like 8x longer to do tasks. That's the only way I kinda justify it.
I'm pretty sure everyone I work with is doing it too, because our velocity has become normal/expected now.
Also for the ones constantly monitoring your "available" status, proper mouse jigglers are great for when you want to take a looooong lunch or watch TV.
I also got a cheap used phone for logging in to employer Teams or Slack so I can pretend to be at a computer even if I'm at the store grocery shopping or at the bar drinking.
edit: Similar to another comment, I use the money for my community. Donating to food banks, buying clothing to donate, I recently donated a couple of computers to people who needed them, a few monitors, a cellphone, I helped my friend pay off their medical debt, etc.
I couldn't do that without the money these jobs pay. If I'm still meeting expectations but it isn't detrimental to my mental health and I can take their money and do good, I call that a win.
More so.
You’re not giving any context here, but a guy taking care of the building is usually not connected at all to the business. I’ve always seen them as contracted from a company that does exactly that. They don’t know what the business is doing and have no responsibility for it.
As a software developer, I once interviewed with a spam company. I guess it was pretty obvious what I thought of them, so I did not get the job. I would have gone for it, because I needed the job, but would not have been b happy and would have used my time to find work somewhere more acceptable
At large enough companies, for any given component, many or most engineers will also have nothing to do with it. It could be that you work on an observably tool kit or some such and how no clue how evil X product works. I hesitate to blame engineers either. But management, or c-suite; those are the bad guys.
More
Much more
So fucking much more
I'll throw in my two cents because you're literally describing me.
I'm a software developer working for a bank that has, among other things, stolen from the deceased, profited from environmental destruction and charged fees specifically to not provide a service to customers. On top of all of this I consider usury wholly immoral, so I'll never consider any bank any less than evil.
Am I evil or guilty?
To some extent perhaps, I've certainly helped write code that makes what I view as theft more efficient and "accessible." In order to mitigate this, I've moved into a different position that lets me get away with not working more often. I'm able to use a lot of the money I get to do a lot of good for people in my area. I'm no saint, but I'm trying my hardest to make things better.
Not so long ago, I told a friend of mine how awful I felt about what I do, and about how much worse it makes me feel that I've failed to get out from it. He explained to me that since the day I was born, the capitalist state has been force feeding the propaganda down my throat. I was trained to not see the problems with the world and to accept what I was given, I've only broken free from this relatively recently. Blaming myself for being brainwashed and integrated into a system without my consent is victim blaming.
I think you'll find workers generally aren't evil, they just haven't been kicked into a better framework that reveals the way the world really is.
Why do I still work there?
Because I can't fucking leave, I've been trying constantly for years now and I can't get an ethical job. Every single day I want to quit, but doing so means a lot of very bad things happen to me, this is the power that capitalists wield over us.
I've finally given up on finding a new job as a software dev and have decided to pursue an old dream instead, which will involve me going to uni again for a long time, and then I'll spend the rest of my life making a material difference in people's lives every single day. I'm quite fortunate to be able to pursue this, and the fact I can makes me feel it's something of a duty.
There's no ethical job under capitalism.
You're fine. There's a huge difference between a banking software vs the software on an autonomous killing drone
Thank you for this personal contribution. I like the Robin Hood angle of it.
Time theft is the easiest form of protest lmao
Oh, and a side point. When all the awful shit I mentioned at the top came out in a national probe, I publically told the CEO what a piece of shit he and the board were for knowing about it and doing nothing.
You mean you published something on the internet under you real name (which the company probably didn't notice)?
No I sent a message directly to the ceo on our internal version of Facebook (it's called workplace and it's somehow worse than facebook) in a thread about the report.
He replied to me basically ignoring everything I said and pretending like they were innocent and nice people, despite the report going into detail about why they specifically had known about and profited from a lot of illegal activity. Every other employee then proceed to kiss his ass and pretend like he was the greatest man to have ever lived.
Impressive
I've written code that was later used by militaries, terrorists, pedophiles, and others. The American navy uses my code. The IDF uses my code to plan their attacks on Gaza. Some folks use my code to share CP.
The same code is used to help defend folks who have been arrested by corrupt cops in Brazil and also to manage Japan's power grid. It's used by universities to improve the services they provide and by some smaller companies making tinder-like apps to help young folks hook up.
How it's used is completely out of my control. If I didn't work on it, someone else would. If nobody did, all of those people from my examples would just be using something else. The world wouldn't have been a better or worse place. I'm nothing but a small cog in a large machine and if I don't do my part to keep the machine running, all that will happen is that I'll be replaced by another cog and be left to rust.
Now, I'm not trying to advocate for nihilism here. It's more of a "pick your battles" point of view. If I didn't do the tools that are being used for evil, it wouldn't stop evil, so the only thing that quitting would help is my consciousness. It wouldn't improve the world in any way. However, my own life is certainly improved by this work and by living in better conditions, I'm much more capable of doing good things for the world if I so choose. I personally believe that this is much better.
Of course if I could just change jobs to something that doesn't help evil, that would be preferable.
What was you initial intentions when writing the code? Were you paid to do it for a specific project that was obviously used for "bad"?
Nope. Started as a boring b2b product, over time it evolved to be more generic and usable by pretty much anyone. It was about three years after the first release that we found out it was being used by terrorists (I think ISIS?) , then pedophile groups a few months after that. Both were brought to our attention by random news on the web. They weren't our customers, but official militaries for a few countries actually are.
If didn't work on it, someone else would.
I'm not trying to critique or judge you, but I think it's worth pointing out this is a logical fallacy.
As a general rule, sure. In my specific case it's just the truth. We have dozens of competitors that can do everything our software do - and they are probably used for other evil purposes too, along with many noble or just boring uses as well.
And one thing I might not have been clear about: I've never done anything specifically for those people, it's just that they happen to also use the stuff I worked on.
The billionaires are guilty, not the people.
You're oversimplifying things. If the evil overlord (tm) demands to build weapons of mass destruction, is the proud engineer with a family of 5 who designs them innocent?
'only following orders'
Well this whole thing is going down a rabbithole, but personal accountability should factor in.
I think there's a big difference between the person pulling the trigger and the person assembling the gun, even if ultimately both of their actions were required for a murder to happen.
When I was in high school, I excelled in math and science, so I was pushed super hard to go into engineering for college. I ended up changing majors eventually, but holy shit did I not understand just how strong the engineering school -> “defense” industry pipeline is. They recruit engineering students hard
It was an eye-opening experience, realizing just how many people were comfortable working for these companies as long as they got a fat paycheck
Well that's what they invented companies for!
(ok well I know that wasn't the objective at the beginning but it was developed that way)
It depends on circumstances you haven't provided.
- Do they know the company is evil?
- if so, do they agree with what the company is doing?
- if not, do they have any viable alternate options?
- if they don't, do they have any undesirable options?
- if so, they are choosing known evil over inconvenience
- if not, then they are stuck
Let's take what may be the average software engineer on Lemmy or Reddit. So I would guess:
- Do they know the company is evil? Yes
- if so, do they agree with what the company is doing? Some yes, like the cutting edge tech, some no, like the personal data harvesting or undermining democracy.
- if not, do they have any viable alternate options? Yes, many other options but with less money making.
Guilty of what? Making a living?
My god guys, these purity tests will reveal nothing, but destroy everything
Evil, it says it right in the title
My god guys, this lack of reading comprehension will destroy everything
Who decides what's evil? You?
If your moral compass is broken that sounds like a you problem
Having seen other comments of yours in other threads though I do know I'm more qualified than you to decide, at least, so sure I'll do it
Most people are not free from the need to work and might have plenty of personal factors pushing them into compliance. Working for a company that gives good conditions and good salary should never be shamed. First because it alienates the people in question, reinforcing their disregard for any ethical or political discussion. Then because it sow division among the workers. The choice of the word "guilty" makes it worse.
Working for an evil company is not intrinsically an evil act: you might be trying to unionize it, you might sabotage it from within, for your own interest (taking naps) or political reasons, you might be salting it.
If you really want to run a purity test on people, you should try at least to assess the space of action they have to fight against the company evil practices, their knowledge of it, the risks they are taking if they went for action. If a person has a chance to act against the evil impact of the company, risks pretty much nothing, has all the knowledge and psychological strength to act, and then doesn't act, then we can start talking about unethical behavior.
I'm assuming they both work at same "evil" company.
The guilt would depend on the crime.
Did the roof collapse despite numerous warnings from the maintenance staff about structural issues? If the worker failed to report outside the company, yes there is some fault on them for inaction.
If the company ordered some cyrpto mining baked into their software, then the developer who accepted the task and implemented it would share guilt.
I’m assuming they both work at same “evil” company.
Yes
Did the roof collapse despite numerous warnings from the maintenance staff about structural issues? If the worker failed to report outside the company, yes there is some fault on them for inaction.
Let's say there is no issue regarding maintenance, everything is safe, the building technician is only "guilty" of helping an "evil" company run.
If the company ordered some cyrpto mining baked into their software, then the developer who accepted the task and implemented it would share guilt.
So it's more about directly working on something bad?
I guess that means people working directly on the chain of personal data exploitation at the tech giants are more guilty.
What's the context here? I know people say lawyers are evil, but I've never heard people say building maintenance technicians are evil just because of the job they do...lol
That's kind of the origin of my question, does this thinking about the technician extends to someone more involved in the product made, such as an engineer?
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are they doing a good job? if so are they pushing back on anything unethical in the software that they want?
Short answer: yes
Long answer: yyyyeeessssss
It depends on what kind of evil.
There are evil things that only CEO's or sales can do, like unfair competition. Then both the dev and the maintenance guy are not guilty.
But if it's done by software, then the dev might be guilty, depending on his personal part of it.
If a company is doing all kinds of evil and everybody knows it, then both are to blame.
Depends on if they are building a software to track clock-in/clock-out, or the software used on autonomous drones to conduct indiscriminate killings overseas.
Just following orders!
engineers have not only the option, but the duty to refuse unethical orders. if your company tries to get you to do something that is unethical, you refuse, and they kick you out, that's a legal issue and the unions would descend on that company like vultures.
there's also the option of malicious compliance; implement things wrong on purpose before blowing the whistle.
keeping both of these in mind: if you are in this situation, you know about these options, and you still do it, then yes you are liable as all hell. not as much as your employer because they do have power over you (thinking of dieselgate) but you definitely had the option of walking away.
the maintenance tech is probably not even employed there, it's more efficient for one maintenance firm to do maintenance for multiple companies.
Guilty? Why are you using criminal law language in context of wage slavery?
Who collects the surplus value of labour, rent seeks and directs the extraction racket? Start there.
You should really think about why you are framing these questions in such a manner.
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More. Because they're more involved with the actual business, doing evil. But the amount depends on what they're doing.
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