4 ms·
As a bigcorp programmer, you should absolutely have enough income to be secure from any real discomfort. You're right, you're not secure from all possible redu
by pimterry 6y ago
As a bigcorp programmer, you should absolutely have enough income to be secure from any real discomfort.
You're right, you're not secure from all possible reductions in peak earnings. You may sacrifice some potential income and future wealth by switching jobs. There will always be richer neighbourhoods & schools, so that may mean risking a sacrifice in future lifestyle. But that's not the kind of risk that the article is talking about.
Most people can't leave their jobs because if they do so then they immediately risk not making rent, not feeding themselves/their families, or losing healthcare entirely. In practice, that means they really do have no choice: very few people will give up food for the greater good, and it's not reasonable to expect them to.
Successful programmers are not in that position though. You absolutely have a choice. The choice you're describing is between optimizing for peak wealth or trading a small part of that wealth for the greater good, at no substantial cost to your lifestyle. If greater personal wealth is always more valuable to you than any greater good then perhaps this doesn't feel like a choice either, but you're well past most people's line for reasonably ethical behaviour at that point.
- matchbok 6y agoSimply not true, at all. When supporting a family that comes first. Always.
- meheleventyone 6y agoA cursory evaluation is enough to dispel this myth. People do all sorts of destructive things to their families all the time. Let alone taking a slight hit to wealth in order to respect your morals. I personally wouldn’t do it without talking things over with mine but if I felt strongly about leaving a job on ethical grounds I’m pretty sure my family would support that decision. You are after all just another member of the family that also needs support.
- pimterry 6y agoYou're saying no matter how much money you have, 10x the average national income, 100x, 1000x, there's no way you would risk _any_ loss of income by leaving your software developer job, regardless of what you were asked to do. Is that right? To be clear, we're not talking about risking food & shelter here. We're talking about risking one fewer skiing holiday a year, or buying the house with the slightly smaller swimming pool. Building tools for mass surveillance, undermining employment regulations worldwide, addicting people to abusive tech, exploiting warehouse workers, breaking the law, propping up authoritarian governments. There's nothing you can think of that you'd put above your family's luxuries?
- matchbok 6y agoThe average software engineer does not have a skiing holiday or a swimming pool. Even home ownership is down. The vast majority of people, even people making 100k+, do not have that luxury. Grouping together millionaires with software developers working at Google doesn't make sense to me. This whole debate is about drawing a line in the sand about morality that is convenient for the author. The same exact arguments could be made for any number of things anybody does every single day.
- ddevault 6y agoYou're right. Your family comes first. Endowing your children with good moral sensibilities they can carry forward into the next generation is incredibly important. Hint, hint.
- matchbok 6y agoI guess you are the arbiter of moral righteousness in the world, then. Are you writing this on a computer? Where did the materials come from that built it? Conflict free? How about the wages for the person who built it? Hint hint.