Ask Lemmy

I have very fond memories from long discussions with people at our legal department, helping them understand the GPL (and FSF as an organisation) resulting in "the company" changing its view on working with GPL code.

/ex-Sony

I worn in Automotive despite hating cars and believing the industry is fundamentally at fault for the state of the world currently (Leaded gasoline, micro plastics, and climate change) and is working on contributing to the death of privacy and owning things.

There are a few different things that help me sleep at night, though I don't sleep well in general.

First, I have poor self image. This means both that I struggle to believe I can find work elsewhere and also that I don't feel like I'm good at my job. You might think that would make me want to leave more and believe me I do, but it also kind of Uno reverses the act of working for them. If I think I'm bad at my job and my job is at an evil corporation, then I'm actively draining the organization of money that could be spent elsewhere.

Second my work mostly doesn't touch on the things that are vile and awful about the industry. I'm a programmer and my work primarily deals with displays and control interfaces. A display not coming up isn't going to harm the industry in any meaningful way, but it will impact a person using the end product. Since that's where most of my work lies it is easy to rationalize doing those things.

I'm unhappy my industry exists and has done such damage to the world, but until I can find something better I'm stuck.

This is part of why I went into accounting. Can do it at any company, don't need to work anyplace I think is evil, every organization uses this skill set, most everyone needs something accounted for.

But - when my oldest wanted to go into physical therapy work I pushed hard for her to do the training in the Army because she could easily meet the physical requirements, they pay you while training instead of you paying for school, and yes you are indentured for 7 years while you get the best possible training, but are not used in the field just in the hospitals in safe areas, and don't do anything evil just help people. She could not countenance it but I still think she'd be better off, would have finished all that by now. So I guess I have still no problem rationalizing working for an evil empire if you are doing something good for people, and getting good pay and training for yourself, that you can then take out into the world to do good and make money.

If it's the only job you can get you make it work.

I would ideally work at an evil villain lair involved with plans to destroy all humans. But I have yet to find a job that matches my ethical criteria. So I don't work. And starve.

Feeding ones' family

I wouldnt have the issue because i wouldnt take a job if it crossed my ethical or moral lines. You always have a choice.

I'm shocked at how many people are saying its fine. The options aren't work at a place or starve. Why are we acting like there are no decent businesses and acting like you can't start your own. Most companies arent bad, they just do standard boring everyday services.

You dont live in lockheedville where the only employer is Lockheed and they force you to design more efficient killchains or you'll starve and die.

Surreptitiously collect information about it, and it's confidential parts while researching its competitors. Extend feelers to said competitors anonymously, seeking to sell said information, all while actively interviewing for work elsewhere. Don't just dump them, sandbag them on the way out without exposing yourself.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

I don't think a weapons manufacturer is comparable to qualcomm or microsoft personally. I believe in foss and democracy but im not anti proprietary tech I just don't think people or governments should use them. There are certainly corps I would less want to work for. I mean I still work on windows machines even though I now run primarily on linux and im not even sure if any phones don't use qualcomm chips.

I work at a company the supplies some stuff to those companies and idk. Our stuff doesn't really matter too much like we're not giving them explosives or something but we're aiding their process.

In the long run, I plan to hop out of this company in to something else but for now, I work in IT and even if they have me or don't, I don't really affect that side of the business. So it helps if I'm distanced away for it but doesn't bring me comfort.

Might be better for your mental health and conscious if you pick something else though

I work it with a distaste in my mouth and mischievous internal sabotage.

There's no ethical production under capitalism

More seriously, when I was working in the oilsands, the answer was: grudgingly, and only until I could get into a more palatable line of work

Hey, I'm just trying to make my nut, man.

Well, you gotta grow your career somehow, and ideology alone doesn't mean crap if you have no power to manifest it.