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I at one point encountered Drew at a meetup. He basically ignores anyone who has or currently does work at any company he deems unethical (read: Google/Amazon/

I at one point encountered Drew at a meetup. He basically ignores anyone who has or currently does work at any company he deems unethical (read: Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc). You're forever tainted in his eyes, and your opinions are always only useful if someone else agrees with you that isn't tainted. Which really sucks because his entire software stack depends on the work (and opinions) of the people that he discards: Go, Python, and Git for a few.

eesmith 4y ago
But is he right? At what point is it unethical for an ethical person to continue to work for an unethical company? When should people who work for an unethical face personal negative effects? He's not unique in this viewpoint. Quoting jwz: "As I've said before, if you work for Facebook, you should quit; it's the only morally defensible thing for you to do." > his entire software stack depends ... That sounds like the Mr. Gotcha meme: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ . Again referring to jwz, his nightclub is on Facebook and Instagram because it's not economically viable to avoid them. ... Gotcha! Similarly, it's hard to avoid all software which doesn't have influence from the big tech companies. I used https://github.com/swenson/sort https://github.com/swenson/sort ('Sorting routine implementations in "template" C"), and even this little indy package has contributors from Google Inc and the main developer worked at Google for a year. DeVault's working on a new programming language, Hare. You could view that as having the long-term unstated goal of escaping unethical companies.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I think the other comment was right to call them out on hypocrisy. There really are people out there who put their beliefs before their own comfort and even productivity (see: Richard Stallman). Now, that doesn't make them right, but if you're going to defend an opinion, you may as well go all the way. Personally, seeing petty behavior like this doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for whatever product they maintain. I wish I could get paid to maintain random OSS projects too, but the lights gotta stay on and $3 GitHub donations only take you so far. There's nothing evil about working at a company like Facebook unless you're an evil person.

eesmith 4y ago

But is he right? At what point is it unethical for an ethical person to continue to work for an unethical company? When should people who work for an unethical face personal negative effects? He's not unique in this viewpoint. Quoting jwz: "As I've said before, if you work for Facebook, you should quit; it's the only morally defensible thing for you to do." > his entire software stack depends ... That sounds like the Mr. Gotcha meme: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ . Again referring to jwz, his nightclub is on Facebook and Instagram because it's not economically viable to avoid them. ... Gotcha! Similarly, it's hard to avoid all software which doesn't have influence from the big tech companies. I used https://github.com/swenson/sort https://github.com/swenson/sort ('Sorting routine implementations in "template" C"), and even this little indy package has contributors from Google Inc and the main developer worked at Google for a year. DeVault's working on a new programming language, Hare. You could view that as having the long-term unstated goal of escaping unethical companies.

smoldesu 4y ago
I think the other comment was right to call them out on hypocrisy. There really are people out there who put their beliefs before their own comfort and even productivity (see: Richard Stallman). Now, that doesn't make them right, but if you're going to defend an opinion, you may as well go all the way. Personally, seeing petty behavior like this doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for whatever product they maintain. I wish I could get paid to maintain random OSS projects too, but the lights gotta stay on and $3 GitHub donations only take you so far. There's nothing evil about working at a company like Facebook unless you're an evil person.