3 ms·
It's about both, but the magnitudes matter. Would you do a job you love doing for free? Assuming the answer is no, then to paraphrase Churchill, we’ve establish
by GeneralMayhem 4y ago
It's about both, but the magnitudes matter. Would you do a job you love doing for free? Assuming the answer is no, then to paraphrase Churchill, we’ve established what kind of people we are; now we’re just haggling over the price.
Am I willing to take a 10% pay cut to work on things that are good for society instead of selling ads? Sure. 25%? Probably. But those aren't the magnitudes we're talking about. Total comp for a senior-to-staff level engineer at FAANG (or anyone competing with them) will be, let's say, 500k/year, plus best-in-the-world benefits. Total comp for government or charity work rarely cracks 100k, and even tech companies that are focused on good rather than profit, maybe 200.
And it's not like the FAANG jobs are bad - day-to-day, they're incredibly interesting. There's lots of fun stuff to build with smart people. The only problem is the background existential dread. It's also hard to argue that they're actively harming humanity in a lot of cases - maybe this line of reasoning works on potential Raytheon or Palantir employees, where the delta in morality is much greater, but convincing people to go from neutral-ish to good is harder than convincing them to go from bad to good.
So the question you're asking is, are you willing to take a 60-80% pay cut to possibly do a less interesting job, in exchange for moral fulfillment and knowing that you're helping humanity? You might think the answer is yes, but I think it's hard to fault people for whom it isn't.
- kortilla 4y ago> maybe this line of reasoning works on potential Raytheon or Palantir employees The people who work at Raytheon or Palantir think they are less harmful than the people who work for Google/Facebook. Nobody who has decided to work there thinks they are just drone striking children.
- twic 4y agoSome people who work at Lockheed Martin wrote the software for the missiles being fired by Ukrainian HIMARSs. They might even be quite proud of that.
- thephyber 4y agoI bet they conveniently don’t care that Russia can use those HIMARS which remain after territory is take from Ukraine. Not enough people look at both sides of the ledger when it comes to the ethics and morals of their work.
- _kbh_ 4y ago> I bet they conveniently don’t care that Russia can use those HIMARS which remain after territory is take from Ukraine. Due to their long range HIMARS don’t have to be anywhere near the front line to be used. It’s pretty unlikely that any would be captured and even if it looked like they could be they could easily destroy them.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoAs the sibling comment also said, I don’t think the the difference in ethics of working for Facebook/Google vs Palantir/Raytheon as obvious as you state. I would have to think pretty hard about this, but my knee jerk moral evaluation has them all about equal. Not to criticize you directly, but just sharing this perspective.
- thephyber 4y agoI think the fact that Facebook and Google are lumped in here as if they are in the same business is a fault in your comment’s logic and your sibling’s.
- Shugarl 4y ago>. Raytheon or Palantir employees, where the delta in morality is much greater, but convincing people to go from neutral-ish to good is harder than convincing them to go from bad to good. Did palantir do shady things ? I now that the CEO got in trouble for looking down on poor people ( or something along those lines ?), but is there more ?
- chowells 4y agoNow? The name of the company is Palantir. That's not an accident. They're telling you exactly what they do, what they always have done, and always will do. If you're comfortable selling surveillance technology to abusive governments, that's up to you. But this isn't some surprise new thing.
- thephyber 4y agoDoes Palantir publicize what projects they work on for DoD, DoJ, IRS, ICE, Treasury/Secret Service, etc? Why do you think people in a democratic (yes, I know, Constitutional Republic) should not be able to know about what secret projects are being performed with their tacit approval, in their name, with their tax dollars? It’s not exactly fair to criticize a company because of what they aren’t telling us, but that goes with the territory.