I agree. I think it partly comes down to the extent to which they are apathetic about this though vs being actively aware of the wrong they feel they are doing.

I agree. I think it partly comes down to the extent to which they are apathetic about this though vs being actively aware of the wrong they feel they are doing. If somebody works on something that they personally believe is toxic and bad for society, I would be concerned about that person's level of alienation and what else that might mean about them as a worker and a person I have to work with. However, I'd be interested to know how many people are truly in this category. Are these engineers, enthusiasticly solving hard problems on some nefarious product, genuinely against what they're doing? Maybe most of them are simply apathetic about that part of it. That's not great either of course and it seems like an immature and selfish attitude at the very least. Of course, I would caveat this by saying that we don't all have the luxury of finding companies that align with our values and its probably a "first world problem". I'm very much aiming this at skilled software engineers, especially those in the major cities of wealthy countries, who can probably pick and choose a fair bit. Personally, I don't want to work with people who don't care about the end goal for practical reasons as much as anything else. For the sorts of companies I've worked for at least, they make sub-standard contributions. I work on a very product-centric engineering team in a complex domain where not knowing the domain well will seriously hamper your ability to plan, refine and execute on features and bug fixes. Sure, we have a product manager but we still need that deep knowledge and you're probably only going to obtain that by being into the product and fairly engaged with it and the company's mission.