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In the Hacker News bubble, working for anywhere is a negative on your CV. Amazon treats its warehouse employees badly, Google creates a surveillance state and b

In the Hacker News bubble, working for anywhere is a negative on your CV. Amazon treats its warehouse employees badly, Google creates a surveillance state and bows to authoritarians, Facebook drives engagement with hate/dissent, AirBnB is causing a housing crisis by turning long term rentals into short term rentals, Apple has Chinese sweatshops, Netflix and Spotify run controversial content, Uber/Doordash/Lyft/Instacart exploit gig workers, etc. In reality, practically nobody cares and most employers are more than happy to hire experienced engineers who happened to work at some employers who did sketchy things. But, if we're going to drill down into the ethics of crypto startups, I think they come out looking pretty good in comparison. It's worth noting that the author of this post works at Hubspot which literally had an entire book written about how its workplace culture was highly discriminatory, particularly against older workers.("Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble ") Engineers in glass houses....

detaro 5y ago
The "hackernews bubble" is full of people literally working at all these companies, so I very much doubt that's in any way an accurate representation of the average communities opinions.
- twblalock 5y ago
  Most people who work at those companies don't read or comment on HN.
  - detaro 5y ago
    And most people in the US also don't read or comment on HN, nevertheless HN is full of people from the US.
KarlKemp 5y ago
I’m basically a Stalinist relative to the community here, but among those listed, only Uber and Facebook would fall into don’t-work-for-them-territory. The others are regularly criticised to varying degrees, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to work there for people somewhat conscious of their conscience. It comes down to the question “can you honestly expect to have an impact on the organisation, or is it more likely to hollow you out and make you into another one of their cynical libertarian defenders?” This happens to be exactly the same misunderstanding as calling all criticism “cancel culture”.
- phgn 5y ago
  How much do engineers really have to do with the (bad) business of a company? Facebook has a high technical standard even if you question their societal impact, for Amazon I'd be concerned about the cliche backstabbing culture. Disclaimer: I worked at Uber in the past

detaro 5y ago

The "hackernews bubble" is full of people literally working at all these companies, so I very much doubt that's in any way an accurate representation of the average communities opinions.

twblalock 5y ago
Most people who work at those companies don't read or comment on HN.
- detaro 5y ago
  And most people in the US also don't read or comment on HN, nevertheless HN is full of people from the US.

KarlKemp 5y ago

I’m basically a Stalinist relative to the community here, but among those listed, only Uber and Facebook would fall into don’t-work-for-them-territory. The others are regularly criticised to varying degrees, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to work there for people somewhat conscious of their conscience. It comes down to the question “can you honestly expect to have an impact on the organisation, or is it more likely to hollow you out and make you into another one of their cynical libertarian defenders?” This happens to be exactly the same misunderstanding as calling all criticism “cancel culture”.

phgn 5y ago
How much do engineers really have to do with the (bad) business of a company? Facebook has a high technical standard even if you question their societal impact, for Amazon I'd be concerned about the cliche backstabbing culture. Disclaimer: I worked at Uber in the past