A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Defense industry, law enforcement, and surveillance are all instant dealbreakers for me whenever a recruiter reaches out to me. And sadly that seems like the vast majority of positions for which recruiters are looking for candidates.
That or AI shit.
I'm so tired of the tech industry.
Science grad with 10 years engineering experience. I had to turn down a lot of jobs before I found one that didn't involve killing people. It took two years. I'm paid about half of what I could get if I sold my morals. Totally worth it.
Depending on engineering discipline, oil & gas is another common one.
There's positive tech stuff out here too, bud. You'll likely need to look for yourself though, the recruiter reaching out to you is better funded for some reason.
I desperately wanted to get a degree in mechanical engineering so I could go to work for an arms company (like Heckler & Kock, FN Herstal, etc.). Never happened, got an art degree instead. Then I met a guy that owns a very small firearms company, and, well, yeesh. It's a brutally hard business. He makes a good product, he has good morals and ethics, but the market is so saturated that anyone smaller than the largest arms companies are hemorrhaging money. Glad I didn't try to live my dream now.
I may not like what governments do with arms, but good goddamn, the arms themselves are neat.
“He has good morals and ethics”
How could he possibly if he has devoted his life to creating weapons? What’s his response if and when his guns are used for violence, be it murder, suicide, armed robbery, etc? Even if he is “small time” for “enthusiasts” of the “sport” it is only a matter of time until this occurs. How does he reconcile this? That it’s not the guns fault? Just the glamorization of them, the obscene amount of them, the fact that they are readily available, pushing it onto “mental health”, or some other scapegoat that allows him to escape accountability for facilitating mortal violence.
I hope your friend goes out business and his entire industry collapses.
His response, as is mine, is that what people use his guns for simply isn't his business. If people used Stanley hammers to beat people to death, would it mean that Stanley was an immoral company? Or would it mean that people used the product in an unlawful and immoral way?
I happen to very, very strongly believe in 2A, and I think that the US is in the shitstorm it is currently in in no small part because liberals--but not leftists--have been working their asses off to disarm themselves. And I will note that the person in question has consistently employed furries--he loves their work ethic--and strongly supports the rights of LGBTQ+ people to arm themselves.
I find that there's a lot of overlap between people who like engines, clocks, and guns. They're all machines with a concrete goal, harnessing an incredible force in a very controlled way, through precise, complex mechanisms and allow near complete freedom on how exactly you achieve that goal. There's a beauty to it that's hard to find anywhere else.
I don't think anyone with an engineering degree would believe there's a hell. Neither should you.
Although I can imagine what hell would look like: commuting for 1h to sit in an office that has more people than desks to have a zoom meeting over VPN with flaky wifi and AC that is set to overheat whoever sits under the vent and under heat everyone further.
Oh did I tell you that meeting could have been an email? And the coffee machine broke yesterday. And there's a bathroom queue.
Well, tomorrow morning, commuting hell will be sitting next to me. I don't know what those samosas had in them but I sound like a WWII machine gun nest and smell like aisle 3 at the spice store.
there’s probably an infinite number of paths, and an even greater number of perspectives to be considered across each moment and position along each of them. or absolutely nothing at all. most other possibilities seem so unlikely, they probably aren’t worth considering
Instructions unclear, I work at a prosthetics company.
Not an engineer, but I have I have Asian parents, if I were an engineer and worked for a genocidal dictator, they wouldn't care, that's success anyways.
So... yea...
people value success over ethics
welcome to life
society...
Wouldn't they still be disappointed that you are an engineer and not a doctor?
what are engineers, if not machine doctors?
💀
Look man, making missile killing lasers is just way more interesting than building another pointless SUV to a price target.
Gods, I'm considering Job hopping and I saw Lockheed was hiring for my role, less experience, less certs, full remote, and quadruple my pay.
I had to block them on indeed and LinkedIn. I hated that I was considering it.
yeah they're an option in my area and I've made the decision several times to not look at any positions they have
That moment when you quit the arms company and joined the legs company:
This is why I focused on graphics hardware for so long.... Then some arsehole came up with running AI on GPUs.
Yeah, I got started in silicon thinking cheaper, faster, more power efficient chips would be a net benefit to the world... Then we became a social media surveillance state and AI dogshit is just the icing on the cake.
Now I drink to forget we're boiling the oceans to ruin society. One day this capitalist hellscape will end.
I just use my skills to make gooner games. My soul is pure. To heaven I shall go. Unironically.
I would like to goon to some of your games
To quote Casually Explained:
"The only real question engineering students and new grads need to know the answer to is 'When is it ok to violate your moral principles?'
...
Exactly. It has to be at least 6 figures."
Yea I'm an LGBTQ+ ally:
The ally they're talking about:
L ockheed Martin
G eneral Dynamics
B AE
T exas Instruments
Q inetiq
"our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!" -their motto, probably
"our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!" -their motto, probably
Bravo!
I may be an engineer, but I am still too fucking stupid to get a job at an arms company
It’s easier than you’d think. The applicant pool doesn’t tend to be the best and brightest.
One of the guys I went to college with is an amazing programmer and had such a great understanding of C that hes why i got as far into CS as i did, couldn't get a job after grad because 1) Covid and more importantly 2) he's insufferable.
He got a job making $100k a year for I wanna say Lockheed because he quote "Wrote good looking code". That's all they needed because Tue DoD already told them that the project he was hired for was not going to be adopted, but they were still contracted for minimum 2 more years of development and Lockheed would be in breach of contract if they weren't making progress even though it was already Dead.
The Military industrial complex is JUST a grift to put tax dollars in private hands.
He got a job making $100k a year
$100k per year writing code at a defence contractor isn't very much.
I have no ethical qualms with those who make weapons. Horizontal communities need the means to defend themselves against external domination. The dilemma is, under capitalism, dominators employ weapons against those unable to defend themselves thereby realizing the idea of Hell on Earth.
The groomers in the MIC have claimed soooo many kids who just wanted to make video games. Gross and sad.
