7 ms·

Problematic Employers in Tech

47 points by zdw 5y ago

sneak 5y ago
I don't agree with the premise of this article. We're talking here not about Amazon warehouse staff, but white collar software and systems engineers. These are people with many employment options. I am totally free and valid to criticize those who go work for Amazon, the CIA's sysadmins, or those who go work for Microsoft, who makes the software that helps the USG run concentration camps, same as I am to criticize people who write software for smart munitions at Raytheon. To play the race/orientation/gender card to shut down entirely legitimate moral criticism of certain employers is entirely unreasonable. :(
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Many of us have studiously ignored recruiters from Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Goldman-Sachs, ransom gangs, Oracle, and the like, and have commonly suffered lower compensation as a consequence. We jealously defend our right to disparage those who did not. Yet, it remains true that most of us elsewhere are privileged in being in a position to turn them down; and that there are many not so privileged who might anyway need the credential of a stint there on their CV. Several people I admire actually were hired into Oracle, and stayed there, and continue doing good Free Software work there. Oracle is big enough not to be able to salt every corner of every field they come into possession of. So, I exercise care not to punch down. Everyone is struggling, and we generally discourage them from revealing the details.
- petsormeat 5y ago
  > These are people with many employment options. No, they aren't. The post mentions the lack of prospects many of them have due to visa issues, as well as bias against their gender, age, or race. Want to reduce the power of problematic employers? Encourage your unproblematic employer to hire people like these.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    > Want to reduce the power of problematic employers? Encourage your unproblematic employer to hire people like these. A strange challenge with this approach is that large and often problematic employers are on something of a buying spree. So a smaller, less problematic employer may not exist very long.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  Slippery slope in the wild?
greatgib 5y ago
I also don't agree with this article. To me, the author is a coward, and will "find" legitimate justification to work anywhere. It is not because you are too afraid or it is too difficult to work somewhere else, that it is good to work for whatever asshole company offer you a job. Otherwise, you can easily go to work for companies like NSO group that are responsible for the death of a lot of people. So, it is a personal choice, and anyone can do what they want, but if so they have to accept that others will have legitimate issues with your choice.
twohaibei 5y ago
"As a young, straight, white, cis male, it was easy for him to assume that those folks were incompetent" I closed the tab at this point. Sorry, no.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  Thank you. How many of us think the anti-white narrative is extremely harmful? I am white and I am a good person. I have done nothing wrong. Why should I feel negative?
  - sh4un 5y ago
    Visible minorities think you guys are all messed up with that self hate stuff. I just read an article from a woman who was raped by her transgender friend and then was called transphobic when she threatened to call the cops. Meanwhile comments calling pretty much calling her a white supremacist. I think some of these whiney kids need to speak to their elders to see how life was when there was real discrimination. I don't apologize for my skin tone and you shouldn't have to apologize for that either.
  - jjj123 5y ago
    You shouldn’t feel negative about it, the article doesn’t say anywhere that you should feel negative about it, where are you getting that? Instead of asking you to feel guilty about who you are, we’re asking you to consider the differences in the way society as a whole treats people of your identity compared to other identities. It’s not about which groups are better or worse, though I agree some of the rhetoric can come across that way.
- acdha 5y ago
  It’s true whether or not acknowledging it makes you uncomfortable. Ageism is real. Sexism is real. Racism is real. Homophobia has become less common but is still real and if you’re trans I can imagine it’s like what I heard from gay friends in the 90s. In all of those cases, I’ve heard many stories about people being asked to prove themselves in ways I’ve never been challenged, or low-balled on offers and getting serious pushback on negotiation. A common rule of thumb was that it takes one degree to cancel out each one of those things you are not, and while I’ve heard some fellow white guys question that I’ve never heard anyone else I know disagree.
kache_ 5y ago
slibhb 5y ago
I liked the article until the author started ranting about cis white males. I think it's stupid to judge someone for working at Oracle or Facebook. It's cliquey and smacks of resentment. I'm also bothered by the moral certainty implied. I don't work for a "problematic employer" but I have no idea if my work is making the world better or worse and I suppose it's hard to tell.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  I’m annoyed by the hypocrisy of taking a giant paycheck and then claiming the moral high ground. You want the moral high ground, go work for unicef not a for profit tech company that happens not to be Facebook.
  - CISmale 5y ago
    Working for, and even owning, a for-profit is not inherently bad. Non-profits are not inherently good, either.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      It’s not inherently bad, no. But the purpose of the collective effort is right there in the name—for profit. Don’t pretend you are trying to save the world when you just want a good living. It’s fine to just want a good living!
      - CISmale 5y ago
        There’s a pretty wide spectrum between saving the world and working for Oracle.
        bradleyjg 5y ago
        Oracle’s salespeople are very aggressive. Oracle doesn’t assassinate people.
  - jauer 5y ago
cowpig 5y ago
I believe the opposite of what the author is saying: it's an important part of the way our society functions to shame people who make personal choices at the expense of everyone else. We're hard-wired to care about social status, and it's one of the mechanisms that pushes us to cooperate. Also, while I agree that someone on a work visa is effectively an indentured servant and I can't judge them for working at a company that does bad things, peoples' gender identification or the color of their skin does not absolve them of social responsibility. That part is just flamebaiting or self-indulgent (or both).
truffdog 5y ago
How is Oxide doing these days, have they launched anything?
- jeffrallen 5y ago
  They are a very transparent company, if you want to know their status, seek and you will find. (Hint: Twitter spaces archived to YouTube.)
- mwattsun 5y ago
  That's the rant the came to my mind as well
ShroudedNight 5y ago
> Instead, address your concerns to the companies and the leadership that made those companies problematic in the first place. My knee-jerk reaction to the conclusion of this piece was to recall a couple of lines from The Universal Soldier: "But without him how would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau? "Without him Caesar would have stood alone" My feeling was that, while any one software developer doesn't necessarily cause significant movement of the needle, in aggregate, the choices we make collectively about who we choose to enable have significant consequences to how the future unfolds. Trying to look up the lyrics, though, I was once-again reacquainted with a snippet of an interview with Buffy Sainte Marie prepended to a video of one of her live performances in which she recalls seeing enlisted soldiers during the Vietnam war repatriating their casualties, horrified, and looking for someone to blame. Unable to blame the soldiers themselves, starts off blaming senior military leadership, but over time shifts, first to blaming politicians for having directed the actions of the military, but eventually ends up deciding that ultimately the responsible party was "us" - the citizenry, having elected and enabled to politicians to take the actions they did. While it seems uncomfortably presumptive, if not pretentious to propose any kind of general equivalence between tech workers and soldiers, the parallels between the odd, internally contradictory idealism found in tech, and the contradiction of fighting war indefinitely, hoping to ultimately bring about world peace seem eerily apt, with the themes of The Universal Soldier being worth considering anew in the context of 'big tech' in 2021.
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
This is a valuable piece, it brings to light just some of the hidden stories that explain why job distribution is the way it is in a world where we know some companies do more active harm than others. It’s much more valuable than the world in which we just pretend it happens because people are evil or cowards. Truthfully speaking, the number of people I’ve met in the tech industry who are in it (long-term) for a love of the industry is slim. People have families, and want to make good money to take care of them or even just their friends. I’m also guilty — When I was a little younger I would also look down on coworkers who worked at known evildoing companies. Sometimes things are as simple as a money hungry engineer. Often they’re a little more complicated.
allthecybers 5y ago
IMO there aren’t any perfectly ethical companies. Even the six years I spent working in tech for non-profit orgs lent itself to some ethical dilemmas for me. It’s a personal decision on who you work for and what work you do. There are some tech companies that I would not want to work for, mainly because their core business model IMO is a net negative for society. Or in other cases their business model is supported by exploitation of some worker class. Others might think they could do good at one of these entities by building more equitable business practices or beneficial products. One of my friends works for the USG in a national security capacity. While I view that space as fraught with ethical and geopolitical implications, their perspective has always been this is their way of serving and protecting their country. Bottom line, I’m the one that has to live with my choices and maintain a way to pay the bills. A tech career gives me the freedom to make that choice without having to sacrifice too much in the way of pay or benefits.
wayne-li2 5y ago
I don’t doubt that sexism and anti-LGBT sentiment was much more prevalent back then. But can someone fill me in on the landscape nowadays? I’ve hopped around a few notable companies and have seen nothing but acceptance at minimum. Many of them have gone above and beyond with dedicated groups and communities within the company for identity. Out of three employers I’ve had two female director of engineering, and only one cis white male direct manager. I’ve made some non-straight friends and while they still face challenges, they’ve never talked about being uncomfortable at work. Sorry if it seems like an aside. Reading this article made me curious.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  I can say that I’ve seen blatant sexism at a place I worked previously. It often felt like being back at college working with friends in a frat. Often fun, but I was glad when a female intern complained and they took cleaning things up seriously. That was within the last 5 yrs. Apparently this was something that was an issue talked about among the women at the workplace for awhile and I only became privy much later when hanging with some of them outside of work and presumably they felt comfortable speaking about it. Personally I’ve only worked with one person I think I’d feel comfortable discussing any discrimination I’ve faced. I suspect that’s pretty common, not that discrimination is necessarily common but that people feel uncomfortable talking about it.
bawolff 5y ago
> Instead, address your concerns to the companies and the leadership that made those companies problematic in the first place. Lol. Let me know how that goes for you. Personally i wouldn't criticize someone for working at fb. FB is not a saint but its not nearly as evil as people make it out to be. However there is evil in this world, and people who work for them are culpable. Like if someone works for a randsomware group, i fully believe the employee is evil. And yes, people do have reasons for staying at morally questionable job. If behaving morally didn't come at a cost everyone would do it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lnxg33k1 5y ago
IMHO it's not anyone else business to know why people would work in a certain place, as it is not people business to tell others what are they allowed to dislike paradoxically, i personally stopped seeing friends who went to work for Google and another for Facebook, are they free to do their things? am i free to non appreciate someone who actively support things that i consider evil?
cheradenine_uk 5y ago
This entire article reeks of "I'm angry at VOE, who you will know who i, so I'll take a general position and construct specific cases where it doesn't work". It's totally disingenuous to claim that if I'm liable, say, to think less of you for working at Oracle that I'm incapable of distinguishing whether your circumstances (say: healthcare, green card, having been taken over) are a factor - compared with, say, accepting a job offer there. As the VOE put it (paraphrased): "If you work at Oracle, will I think less of you? YES! Of course I will. Your name is on the flag supporting <despicable behaviours>, But: You don't have to think anything of that. Why is my thinking less of you a problem for you? Unless, maybe, that's your conscience?" See also: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121

47 points by zdw 5y ago

I don't agree with the premise of this article. We're talking here not about Amazon warehouse staff, but white collar software and systems engineers. These are people with many employment options. I am totally free and valid to criticize those who go work for Amazon, the CIA's sysadmins, or those who go work for Microsoft, who makes the software that helps the USG run concentration camps, same as I am to criticize people who write software for smart munitions at Raytheon. To play the race/orientation/gender card to shut down entirely legitimate moral criticism of certain employers is entirely unreasonable. :(

ncmncm 5y ago
Many of us have studiously ignored recruiters from Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Goldman-Sachs, ransom gangs, Oracle, and the like, and have commonly suffered lower compensation as a consequence. We jealously defend our right to disparage those who did not. Yet, it remains true that most of us elsewhere are privileged in being in a position to turn them down; and that there are many not so privileged who might anyway need the credential of a stint there on their CV. Several people I admire actually were hired into Oracle, and stayed there, and continue doing good Free Software work there. Oracle is big enough not to be able to salt every corner of every field they come into possession of. So, I exercise care not to punch down. Everyone is struggling, and we generally discourage them from revealing the details.
petsormeat 5y ago
> These are people with many employment options. No, they aren't. The post mentions the lack of prospects many of them have due to visa issues, as well as bias against their gender, age, or race. Want to reduce the power of problematic employers? Encourage your unproblematic employer to hire people like these.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > Want to reduce the power of problematic employers? Encourage your unproblematic employer to hire people like these. A strange challenge with this approach is that large and often problematic employers are on something of a buying spree. So a smaller, less problematic employer may not exist very long.
dijonman2 5y ago
Slippery slope in the wild?

greatgib 5y ago

I also don't agree with this article. To me, the author is a coward, and will "find" legitimate justification to work anywhere. It is not because you are too afraid or it is too difficult to work somewhere else, that it is good to work for whatever asshole company offer you a job. Otherwise, you can easily go to work for companies like NSO group that are responsible for the death of a lot of people. So, it is a personal choice, and anyone can do what they want, but if so they have to accept that others will have legitimate issues with your choice.

twohaibei 5y ago

"As a young, straight, white, cis male, it was easy for him to assume that those folks were incompetent" I closed the tab at this point. Sorry, no.

dijonman2 5y ago
Thank you. How many of us think the anti-white narrative is extremely harmful? I am white and I am a good person. I have done nothing wrong. Why should I feel negative?
- sh4un 5y ago
  Visible minorities think you guys are all messed up with that self hate stuff. I just read an article from a woman who was raped by her transgender friend and then was called transphobic when she threatened to call the cops. Meanwhile comments calling pretty much calling her a white supremacist. I think some of these whiney kids need to speak to their elders to see how life was when there was real discrimination. I don't apologize for my skin tone and you shouldn't have to apologize for that either.
- jjj123 5y ago
  You shouldn’t feel negative about it, the article doesn’t say anywhere that you should feel negative about it, where are you getting that? Instead of asking you to feel guilty about who you are, we’re asking you to consider the differences in the way society as a whole treats people of your identity compared to other identities. It’s not about which groups are better or worse, though I agree some of the rhetoric can come across that way.
acdha 5y ago
It’s true whether or not acknowledging it makes you uncomfortable. Ageism is real. Sexism is real. Racism is real. Homophobia has become less common but is still real and if you’re trans I can imagine it’s like what I heard from gay friends in the 90s. In all of those cases, I’ve heard many stories about people being asked to prove themselves in ways I’ve never been challenged, or low-balled on offers and getting serious pushback on negotiation. A common rule of thumb was that it takes one degree to cancel out each one of those things you are not, and while I’ve heard some fellow white guys question that I’ve never heard anyone else I know disagree.

kache_ 5y ago

slibhb 5y ago

I liked the article until the author started ranting about cis white males. I think it's stupid to judge someone for working at Oracle or Facebook. It's cliquey and smacks of resentment. I'm also bothered by the moral certainty implied. I don't work for a "problematic employer" but I have no idea if my work is making the world better or worse and I suppose it's hard to tell.

bradleyjg 5y ago
I’m annoyed by the hypocrisy of taking a giant paycheck and then claiming the moral high ground. You want the moral high ground, go work for unicef not a for profit tech company that happens not to be Facebook.
- CISmale 5y ago
  Working for, and even owning, a for-profit is not inherently bad. Non-profits are not inherently good, either.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    It’s not inherently bad, no. But the purpose of the collective effort is right there in the name—for profit. Don’t pretend you are trying to save the world when you just want a good living. It’s fine to just want a good living!
    - CISmale 5y ago
      There’s a pretty wide spectrum between saving the world and working for Oracle.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        Oracle’s salespeople are very aggressive. Oracle doesn’t assassinate people.
- jauer 5y ago

cowpig 5y ago

I believe the opposite of what the author is saying: it's an important part of the way our society functions to shame people who make personal choices at the expense of everyone else. We're hard-wired to care about social status, and it's one of the mechanisms that pushes us to cooperate. Also, while I agree that someone on a work visa is effectively an indentured servant and I can't judge them for working at a company that does bad things, peoples' gender identification or the color of their skin does not absolve them of social responsibility. That part is just flamebaiting or self-indulgent (or both).

truffdog 5y ago

How is Oxide doing these days, have they launched anything?

jeffrallen 5y ago
They are a very transparent company, if you want to know their status, seek and you will find. (Hint: Twitter spaces archived to YouTube.)
mwattsun 5y ago
That's the rant the came to my mind as well

ShroudedNight 5y ago

> Instead, address your concerns to the companies and the leadership that made those companies problematic in the first place. My knee-jerk reaction to the conclusion of this piece was to recall a couple of lines from The Universal Soldier: "But without him how would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau? "Without him Caesar would have stood alone" My feeling was that, while any one software developer doesn't necessarily cause significant movement of the needle, in aggregate, the choices we make collectively about who we choose to enable have significant consequences to how the future unfolds. Trying to look up the lyrics, though, I was once-again reacquainted with a snippet of an interview with Buffy Sainte Marie prepended to a video of one of her live performances in which she recalls seeing enlisted soldiers during the Vietnam war repatriating their casualties, horrified, and looking for someone to blame. Unable to blame the soldiers themselves, starts off blaming senior military leadership, but over time shifts, first to blaming politicians for having directed the actions of the military, but eventually ends up deciding that ultimately the responsible party was "us" - the citizenry, having elected and enabled to politicians to take the actions they did. While it seems uncomfortably presumptive, if not pretentious to propose any kind of general equivalence between tech workers and soldiers, the parallels between the odd, internally contradictory idealism found in tech, and the contradiction of fighting war indefinitely, hoping to ultimately bring about world peace seem eerily apt, with the themes of The Universal Soldier being worth considering anew in the context of 'big tech' in 2021.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago

This is a valuable piece, it brings to light just some of the hidden stories that explain why job distribution is the way it is in a world where we know some companies do more active harm than others. It’s much more valuable than the world in which we just pretend it happens because people are evil or cowards. Truthfully speaking, the number of people I’ve met in the tech industry who are in it (long-term) for a love of the industry is slim. People have families, and want to make good money to take care of them or even just their friends. I’m also guilty — When I was a little younger I would also look down on coworkers who worked at known evildoing companies. Sometimes things are as simple as a money hungry engineer. Often they’re a little more complicated.

allthecybers 5y ago

IMO there aren’t any perfectly ethical companies. Even the six years I spent working in tech for non-profit orgs lent itself to some ethical dilemmas for me. It’s a personal decision on who you work for and what work you do. There are some tech companies that I would not want to work for, mainly because their core business model IMO is a net negative for society. Or in other cases their business model is supported by exploitation of some worker class. Others might think they could do good at one of these entities by building more equitable business practices or beneficial products. One of my friends works for the USG in a national security capacity. While I view that space as fraught with ethical and geopolitical implications, their perspective has always been this is their way of serving and protecting their country. Bottom line, I’m the one that has to live with my choices and maintain a way to pay the bills. A tech career gives me the freedom to make that choice without having to sacrifice too much in the way of pay or benefits.

wayne-li2 5y ago

I don’t doubt that sexism and anti-LGBT sentiment was much more prevalent back then. But can someone fill me in on the landscape nowadays? I’ve hopped around a few notable companies and have seen nothing but acceptance at minimum. Many of them have gone above and beyond with dedicated groups and communities within the company for identity. Out of three employers I’ve had two female director of engineering, and only one cis white male direct manager. I’ve made some non-straight friends and while they still face challenges, they’ve never talked about being uncomfortable at work. Sorry if it seems like an aside. Reading this article made me curious.

alphabettsy 5y ago
I can say that I’ve seen blatant sexism at a place I worked previously. It often felt like being back at college working with friends in a frat. Often fun, but I was glad when a female intern complained and they took cleaning things up seriously. That was within the last 5 yrs. Apparently this was something that was an issue talked about among the women at the workplace for awhile and I only became privy much later when hanging with some of them outside of work and presumably they felt comfortable speaking about it. Personally I’ve only worked with one person I think I’d feel comfortable discussing any discrimination I’ve faced. I suspect that’s pretty common, not that discrimination is necessarily common but that people feel uncomfortable talking about it.

bawolff 5y ago

> Instead, address your concerns to the companies and the leadership that made those companies problematic in the first place. Lol. Let me know how that goes for you. Personally i wouldn't criticize someone for working at fb. FB is not a saint but its not nearly as evil as people make it out to be. However there is evil in this world, and people who work for them are culpable. Like if someone works for a randsomware group, i fully believe the employee is evil. And yes, people do have reasons for staying at morally questionable job. If behaving morally didn't come at a cost everyone would do it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lnxg33k1 5y ago

IMHO it's not anyone else business to know why people would work in a certain place, as it is not people business to tell others what are they allowed to dislike paradoxically, i personally stopped seeing friends who went to work for Google and another for Facebook, are they free to do their things? am i free to non appreciate someone who actively support things that i consider evil?

cheradenine_uk 5y ago

This entire article reeks of "I'm angry at VOE, who you will know who i, so I'll take a general position and construct specific cases where it doesn't work". It's totally disingenuous to claim that if I'm liable, say, to think less of you for working at Oracle that I'm incapable of distinguishing whether your circumstances (say: healthcare, green card, having been taken over) are a factor - compared with, say, accepting a job offer there. As the VOE put it (paraphrased): "If you work at Oracle, will I think less of you? YES! Of course I will. Your name is on the flag supporting <despicable behaviours>, But: You don't have to think anything of that. Why is my thinking less of you a problem for you? Unless, maybe, that's your conscience?" See also: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121