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A Reader Asks How to Avoid Working for Evil

124 points by tomrod 4y ago

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
Interesting, from reading her post you'd think it's a real challenge to avoid working in a company that will eventually become evil. My first thought was that there is a failure in the system if it inevitably leads companies to become evil as they grow (maybe a failure of government?). But then I realized looking back at my career, I have not worked for any evil companies to my knowledge, at least not cartoonishly evil. It seems most of the companies she mentions have one thing in common, they are by the bay, part of a local system that's one of the economic engines of the U.S and favours growth over any other considerations, including ethics. So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? There are many industries beside software where good software engineers are needed and you can do good, challenging, and very innovative work "to make the world a better place".
- fphhotchips 4y ago
  There are also plenty of companies based in the bay area that aren't evil? I'm not suggesting they're necessarily good, but they're not evil.
- deathanatos 4y ago
  > There are many industries beside software where good software engineers are needed and you can do good, challenging, and very innovative work "to make the world a better place". Honestly, such as and how? I worked for one company I thought had a good mission, and a good product (it wasn't ads!), ahead of its competitors. Lackluster marketing, then we got acquired and inept management sunk it, and ended up with those of us who worked on it laid off and it's all gone, now. I'm in healthcare now, but it is really hard to move the needle. There's no way around integrating with providers, and they're driving a lot of absolutely bonkers technical decisions. I spent a lot of time building out brand new, but completely broken, things, because there's nobody designing the system. Meanwhile recruiters routinely hit my inbox with information-free cold pitches. I'd kill for a lure that had bait attached to it. The last email that had a salary attached wanted a Senior Software Engineer but was offering less than what I started at in the industry as an entry-level engineer. > don't work in the bay I left the Bay, and it's not really changed anything from a work/career perspective. But I don't think it's morally acceptable to tell people to "just leave"; what if they have a home there? family? connections? Perhaps giving it all up might be the most pragmatic thing, but it might crush a soul in the meantime. That said, the political climate of the Bay was "head, firmly in sand" when I left. I left partly because I do not see the Bay, collectively, being capable of solving the problems they face. (There are a few people trying — including a friend of mine I left behind. But they're hopelessly outnumbered.) > if it matters to you Maslow's hierarchy. Real rent is up, nominal compensation is down. People are getting laid off left and right. Being a millionaire is practically a pre-req to home ownership near any city. (And companies include "geographic adjustment" in compensation these days.)
  - soco 4y ago
    I wouldn't take the message "just leave" necessarily as inconsiderate advice, or at least not always. It might be also meant to vote with your feet, because that's the only influence you can have in the process, and if enough people do it then it may tilt the needle a bit.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    Pick any, I've worked in telecom, GIS, health, you need software everywhere. You have to weigh salary against the appeal of the mission and the work environment. You can't have everything, and you certainly can't have bay salaries. Personally I've never had trouble finding meaningful work with people I respect, but I have had to make sacrifices on the salary front. You seem to have read my comment as saying snarkily "if you really cared you'd just leave", that's not what I intended to convey. Of course I realize people have multi-faceted priorities, family, financial safety concerns, existing investments, and so on... I'm not telling people to leave as much as I'm saying if you care deeply about working for ethical companies, it seems like working in the bay area is not going to make it easy, and you'd probably have a easier time elsewhere. There are plenty of cities where you don't need to be a millionaire to own a home, I have a friend who just bought a nice house in San Antonio for 200k. That's another advantage of working out of the bay.
- rob74 4y ago
  Unfortunately most companies don't exist to make the world a better place, most companies exist to make money - the more, the better. And if you want to make more money, there's definitely a temptation to use unethical (while still legal) methods. And companies that make less money tend to be bought by companies that make more money, which tend to be higher on the "evil scale". Or sometimes, a not-so-evil company will buy a more-evil company which then eats them up from within, like Google with DoubleClick or Boeing with McDonnell Douglas.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    Glance for a moment at the Wikipedia list of profitable companies [0]. Observe that #1 is Saudi Aramco, which supports one of the more horrible regimes. Now I'm sure we have a line of people waiting to claim that they are evil, but we're running an experiment in Europe to find out what happens when horrible regimes stop providing oil - turns out there are serious risks of people starving or freezing to death. The loss to living standards is incalculable but large. There is a great reason that companies are freed from the requirement to be morally good - because human instincts are not calibrated to run an 8-billion-strong postindustrial globe. It doesn't work. If we let people do things completely on instinct most people will die quite quickly, and the leadership will turn out to be corrupt anyway. We do things this way because a lot of experiments were run, and free market economics gets much better results than all the systems people swear do better. It harnesses greed to the cause of ... if you won't admit it is good you have to at least admit it is effective. Honestly, I think it is good too. Good and evil are not the right mental tools here, morals don't cope with the scale that humans need to operate on now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_corporate_profits_and_losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_corporate_prof...
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      >Now I'm sure we have a line of people waiting to claim that they are evil, but we're running an experiment in Europe to find out what happens when horrible regimes stop providing oil - turns out there are serious risks of people starving or freezing to death. The loss to living standards is incalculable but large. Well I don't see how people in Western Europe (i.e. excluding Ukraine) are in danger of starving and I would actually argue the people that we are seeing being killed at the moment are a direct consequence of buying cheap energy no matter the ethics. If Europe would have invested more strongly into becoming energy independent instead of chasing the cheapest oil and gas, we might have a slighly lower standard of living, but much of European politics would not be infiltrated by money from resource oligarchs and likely Russia would never have invaded so people would not be dying in a pointless war. In other words, not
- krageon 4y ago
  Almost every corporation and startup is cartoonishly evil (in that it stupidly and persistently refuses to look at people, except as a vehicle to increase the high score - money). If I may ask, is there some sort of sector you've worked in that kept the corporations you worked for stricly neutral or better? I must admit I'm a little skeptical that they were not strictly amoral (which given the right incentives always tends to an almost ridiculous amount of evil), but I would really like to believe it.
  - codingdave 4y ago
    > If I may ask, is there some sort of sector you've worked in that kept the corporations you worked for stricly neutral or better? Education. Non-profits. Hospitals. Not that the software vendors I worked for in those industries were perfect. Nor were the customers. Evil, greed, ambition, and power came into play and brought negativity to them all. But it tended to center around a handful of poor leaders, and did not prevent the overall impact of the work being "neutral or better".
    - hgsgm 4y ago
  - bstpierre 4y ago
    I’ve worked for various network/telco equipment providers over the course of 20+ years, and there have only been a couple of cartoonishly evil moments that I can recall. Certainly not to the level of thinking that I needed to quit to save my soul. There were some soulless executives, but the business models weren’t morally bankrupt. I have been paid reasonably well (not Bay Area / FAANG well). Most of the companies don’t exist anymore, and I have been through my fair share of layoff cycles.
    - fshr 4y ago
      > Most of the companies don’t exist anymore Do you think there could be a causal link between their lack of evil and the fact that they don’t exist anymore?
- luckylion 4y ago
  > So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? I believe you can find "problematic" companies everywhere. If it matters to you, go look at the pay. If they're paying enormous sums, they believe they can make much more. "Good things" usually don't offer that kind of profit margin. That's not to say that shitty pay = good company, there's plenty of terrible people who are evil AND offer low salaries.
- dsign 4y ago
  This. The majority of companies I know of are evil in just one way: they want your money, and sometimes they will go to great lengths to get it. The big villains in USA are not that powerful in some other places, because people and their governments reign them in.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? I had a job at a publicly traded company with an office (my office) in Ohio - and not headquartered from the bay but another part of the Midwest - and one day during pride month the CEO emailed everyone to say that they would NOT put up a pride flag. They went on to explain that they couldn’t because it would be upsetting, and if inclusivity flags were normal to display at the office, black people may want a flag too, and where would it end?. They were a very generic company, and not particularly evil in other aspects of their business. I have also worked at large FAANG companies in the bay. They treat employees way better (google’s shuttles! Free food! Equity Refreshers!). I would much rather be a Bay Area FAANG employee than an Ohio Generic Co employee. The way FAANG treats their employees isn’t evil. There’s evil everywhere, IMO I might as well be treated well for being complicit towards it.
  - mebassett 4y ago
    I don't understand your point. Are you saying the Ohio company is evil for not putting up a pride flag? Are you saying the Bay-area company isn't evil because they treated their higher-ranked servants well ?
    - papandada 4y ago
      Not OP, but my read is yes; and no, but why not take evil with better benefits.
      - tanseydavid 4y ago
        Because utilitarianism? Just a thought.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      seriously, the other poster never stops to consider that the reason people like this CEO are drawing a line in the sand is BECAUSE of people like this poster are running around drawing such conclusions from something as lik a pride flag. What next, is this poster going to take a flamethrower to the anthill in their backyard? Lets see how well that works.
- cowsandmilk 4y ago
  My experience is any company can be viewed as evil. I’ve done a ton of computational work for pharma companies. We were trying to discover cures for diseases, pretty much a good thing, right? Don’t have to look hard to find people giving reasons why pharma companies are evil.
  - DFHippie 4y ago
    > Don’t have to look hard to find people giving reasons why pharma companies are evil. Case in point: Imagine you find someone grasping a cliff edge by their fingertips. Pulling them back to safety is good! Pulling them back to safety only after they promise you all their worldly wealth forevermore is less good. Being in the business of offering people this deal is not better. Funding the effort to prevent people from restraining your exploitation of cliff danglers is still worse. This isn't an insoluble moral puzzle. I don't think pharma is an ideal example for your larger point. Most businesses don't thrive on the desperation of their customers. But I also don't think your point is correct. There are better and worse companies. I understand one needs to make one's peace with one's choices. I've worked for companies that were doing evil (not exclusively, but at all). I've worked for companies that were mediocre at best. I'm currently working for a company that I would say is positively good. I got paid more by the evil companies. I have been happier working for the good companies though it's harder to support my family. But I understand people who choose to keep working for their evil company, particularly when others depend on their income. In one of the more egregious outbursts of evil at one of the companies I worked for I had friends who quit. They didn't want to be complicit. I stayed. I had kids and didn't want to throw my family into turmoil. But I saw the choice I was making.
    - edanm 4y ago
      > This isn't an insoluble moral puzzle. I don't think pharma is an ideal example for your larger point. Most businesses don't thrive on the desperation of their customers. I mean, pharma as an industry also creates the ability to pull people back from the edge. Medicine isn't created out of thin air, the universe doesn't just owe us a steady supply of new innovations that have kept so many people alive and in better comfort. Money needs to be invested, that money has to be paid by someone. (I'm not talking about specifics of the US healthcare system or anything, where there are problems, just pharma in general.) Like seriously, what is your alternative?
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  > My first thought was that there is a failure in the system if it inevitably leads companies to become evil as they grow (maybe a failure of government? It is not a bug, it is feature. And it is not the government, it is capitalism which endorses greed.
plaguepilled 4y ago
If you have the capital for it, being a business owner is an option here
GavCo 4y ago
Serious question: how can you ensure that you are not working for a company that is contributing to the downfall of humanity?
- krageon 4y ago
  You might work for one that contributes directly to preventing the downfall of humanity. Sadly, that is non-profits / research mostly - and hilariously they will generally treat you like absolute garbage (which to me feels almost as bad as the knowledge that I'm basically working for Sauron) if you do IT work.
- nonmabusiness 4y ago
  Work for a privately owned company, any shareholder owned one will by definition kill its own staff and their families to make a profit. does th company make an active effort lead by the owners or leadership team to cancel out the effects of other companies. (e.g. engange with local community, promote work life balance)? if its a partnership or employee owned then its also probably good, but some partnerships (where there are 10 to 100s of partners) then it becomes like a publicly owned company again and no individuals feel their personal reputation is at stake. personal reputation is about the only thing you can rely on when it comes to not being shitty, as it all comes down to trust really.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Work for a small company. Even if they're cartoonishly evil, the capability of being so is limited. And so most aren't. Also with a small company you'll know just about everything the company is "doing" whereas if you're working for (Rackspace, Google, Meta, etc) you have a very good chance of not knowing what the company is doing somewhere until it becomes a major news headline.
drewm1980 4y ago
I fear I am indirectly responsible for a substantial body count just by helping to build a company that eventually placed itself solidly on the wrong side of the energy transition, but I do not yet have a meaningful number for the C02e -> human life conversion.
- aaron695 4y ago
- TJSomething 4y ago
  It's about 10,000 deaths per year per CO2e PPM from 2080 to 2100, mostly based on this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99156-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99156-5
jll29 4y ago
Even if your employer is not evil, they may get acquired. "What has been thought of once cannot be taken back anymore." Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Die Physiker (1961) See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physicists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physicists
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I highly recommend for anyone in tech to read Die Physiker at least once. Not only is it incredibly funny, but also very thoughtful and is timeless (as you point out)
boxed 4y ago
The initial problem is to define, quantify, and guard against evil. Imo this problem is basically ignored. I have a simple definition I call the Grand Unified Theory of Evil: Evil = delusion * conviction * power Delusion = how factually incorrect your idea is compared with base reality Conviction = how little you will try to find flaws with the idea, how little you will test it, how likely you are to implement the idea at 100% of the universe if you had total power Power = Your ability to push your idea into the world This model isn't a tool to calculate evil. It's a tool to reason about how to avoid evil. First you need to be not wrong. Secondly you need to be damn UNSURE about what you know and try it at small scale. And lastly you need to have just enough power to test the idea, and show that it works to others if it does, but not any more.
- Brigand 4y ago
  How about this: Idea: we can grab this land with our troops (assume this is 100% based in reality) Delusion: 0% Conviction: idea was checked, is aboslutely correct Power: 100% => Evil = 0 * 100 * 100 = 0 I think the categorical imperative is a way better tool to recognise evil.
  - boxed 4y ago
    The delusion is that this is good for your country. That you missed this delusion and then were totally convinced of your own cleverness even though you missed such an enormous flaw.. well that's kindof the point.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > The initial problem is to define, quantify, and guard against evil. Not really. I mean "guard against evil" loosely interpreted includes all of life so it's hard to say. But spending a bunch of time defining, quantifying what is evil, arguing about the specifics on the internet, that is deep in the weeds exactly where they want you. Most people have a good enough intuition for it when they see it up close. The menace is in how well we've obscured a lot of the true evil behind layers of misdirection and diffusion. Focus more on developing your innate sense of wrong so you can ably intuit what is actually happening. That is much more practically valuable than getting bogged down in constructing theories of what evil is and what is evil and how much.
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
It's hard to avoid working for a company that is in some way evil because in general, companies have no morality. They are amoral money-generating machines. Even if individual people inside them have good intentions, the system is set up to incentivise people to do the bad thing anyway, or to abstract over the bad thing so you won't realise what you're doing.
- sdiacom 4y ago
  Perhaps it's interesting to consider who the bad thing is being done to. Consider, for example, working for outlandishly impractical VC-funded ideas, where the main "evil" that's being done is conning venture capitalists into paying for the expenses of a company that will never produce anything of value.
  - kybernetikos 4y ago
    I had a friend who said he wanted 'He did little harm' on his gravestone. At the time I was irritated by how defeatist that attitude seemed, but these days it seems like a surprisingly high bar.
  - codingdave 4y ago
    Defining which companies are evil is difficult because different people have different morals. From your example, I'd see it as the VCs who are conning small companies into taking VC money and driving for growth over sustainability in order to be one of many lottery tickets for that VC as the evil aspect of such scenarios. Or maybe both sides are evil because they ultimately are seeking money, not positive change in the world.
    - sdiacom 4y ago
      You have a point. A related question is, is being useless at being evil equivalent to being neutral? And is profiting of such useless evil, in turn, also neutral? That is, if the VCs are intending to do something evil by turning a company into a growth lottery ticket, but they're so useless at picking potential lottery tickets that they might as well be setting their money on fire. Then what is the moral standing of someone who collects a paycheck from that company, grabs some popcorn, and sits in the sidelines to watch bad decisions unfold?
mathieuh 4y ago
I think it's almost impossible unless you start a business yourself and run it without hierarchies, and with everyone involved being treated as as an end in themselves and not just a means to increase the company value. If I ever make enough money (unlikely), it's a quiet fantasy of mine to start a small company in this model. Personally I will never work in e.g. finance or "defence", but even where I work now could be seen as encouraging throw-away consumerism. It was a very serious consideration of mine when I was looking for a new job. I ruled myself out of some interviews halfway through because I could tell that their product would have rubbed against my morals eventually. Sometimes I feel like a mug for following my convictions like this. I will never be a manager, I will never invest in the stock market, and I will never own more property than I can use myself.
- jasfi 4y ago
  That's interesting because one of my projects is a crypto trader, which I plan to one day extend to stocks. Many people seem to see such a project in a negative light, particularly those who have never been into trading. However my aim is to help prevent people from losing money and thoroughly test strategies before trading any real money. In such a case it's really about preconceived notions.
  - mathieuh 4y ago
    I don't know too much about crypto, it doesn't really interest me and I've never bothered to find out more about it. It does seem to be some right-wing libertarian thing so reflexively I'm suspicious, but some of the claimed ideals appeal to me as an anarchist. I refuse to invest in stocks because that would mean (potentially) profiting from the exploitation of the workers in that company. I suppose if I were awarded stocks in the company I work for that might be different, I'd need to think about it more.
    - jasfi 4y ago
      Crypto can also be viewed as assets to buy and sell for a profit, and nothing more. I know it can get more complicated, but it doesn't have to. Regarding stocks, you can often be assured that public companies are held to a high standard, especially in western countries where the press reports on exploitation.
cykros 4y ago
You can work handing out food to hungry people. If you're making money though, you'll owe taxes, and those taxes will go to wherever the corrupt politicians decide -- often, right into the coffers of weapons manufacturers. Humanity is a brutish, barbaric species. Get used to it.
- zmxz 4y ago
  What happens when you feed someone who grows up to be "evil" and creates a corporation like Facebook? It's anecdotal, I'm agreeing with your last point - humanity is brutish, it's easier to exit the Matrix and to see what humanity really is rather than to keep believing in the romantic image of it.
daedlanth 4y ago
Work at a gay church.
thaumaturgy 4y ago
After doing this about as long as Rachel has been, it seems to me that your choice for employer is usually (a) evil (for varying definitions of evil); (b) incompetent; or (c) an organization of competent paladins that also happen to hate money. There are a very, very few organizations that don't fall into one of those categories. Those that refuse to sell their soul will make ever so much less money than their colleagues. I've kept my soul, but I bet Rachel can keep the lights on. Evil pays really well.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >Evil pays really well You’ve obviously never worked for a nonprofit :-)
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    Those running the non-profits may do better than the workers.
    - jlokier 4y ago
      It depends a lot on the non-profit. As someone who co-ran a non-profit with a mission full time, I ended up deeply in personal debt as a result (of not being paid for years but still having living costs). Those running the non-profit ended up significantly worse off than other people working there. I'm still paying it off years later. At mine, management were required to be volunteers (even full time), but other full time staff were paid salary and benefits. Most people working there were also volunteers, but part time or occasional as they felt like it. They had time for day jobs. The reason for this arrangement was because most members who co-owned it did not believe anyone should be paid, but we had a grant for premises and hired staff. Nobody wanted the hired staff to be in charge overall, as their incentives, skills and competencies were far more aligned with the premises owner and business angle, and not with the non-profit's mission. So it had to be run by motivated volunteers, and that included developing a type of non-profit business and manufacturing service, managing staff, as well as organising a large number of volunteers, events, teaching, safety, purchases, accounting, etc. Boy did that combination take a lot of work for a long time. Like regular startups, we had a big idea and hoped it would grow to something we wanted to see in the world. It actually did really well for what it was. The model broke for different reasons than the obvious one with sustainability, involving assholes and a commercial opportunist who offered the premises owner something better (which they then promptly failed to execute, destroying everything for everyone), just as ours was starting to flourish at a sustainable level and we were getting better at distributing the work and knowledge effectively.
mcrad 4y ago
While fraud and deception is probably on the rise, it's very important to recognize that the "evil" they are referring to comes from people (not companies) and that it's always been this way. We all have the potential to violate our own ethical standards and the temptation rise and fall with circumstances beyond our control. Keep a cool head, expand your understanding of the relationship between your job and the supposed evil, and do your best to expose it without hurting your reputation. The idea that one can job hop their way to promised land is not helping the situation.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Last night I re-watched the "The Good Shepherd" (great cast; Damon, De Niro, Jolie). It reminded me of the price we pay for trying to do the right thing in a world of shit. The quest to "avoid evil" can often drive us into its hands, and we're left only to choose the lesser. To "do good" is not the same. It almost always requires sacrifice. Everyone has capacity for how poor, alone, and frightened they're prepared to be in pursuit of "the good". Duty and unwavering firmness of purpose remain unpopular, and something few people have the stomach for today. But there can also be comradeship and a sense of being part of something historical if you choose the harder path.
- notaspecialist 4y ago
  >But there can also be comradeship and a sense of being part of something historical if you choose the harder path. Meh, I've tried and all I got was hate for many years and very few staunch friends. Sheeple don't want truth, justice and the Amerikan way. After seeing 2020-2022 in action (the lies, the gaslighting, waving evidence in peoples faces until I'm hoarse), I've decided to join The Empire. Evil all the way. Abstergo, here I come.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > The Empire. Evil all the way Well at least the hours are good. And the uniforms are snappy. Red, black. lots of leather. And the shouting. Fuckit, sign me up.
mttpgn 4y ago
This reminded me of an epigram from Philip K. Dick: > Another frame of reference which might help him would be the Doctrine of Original Sin. I wonder if he has ever heard of it. We are all doomed to commit acts of cruelty or violence or evil; that is our destiny, due to ancient factors. Our karma.
college_physics 4y ago
the problem we have is fact almost ludicrus in its simplicity. organizing social and economic life solely around money (as the only serious means of keeping count) has been extraordinary effective - due to the ease and universality of its application. its also been a complete disaster because you can't reduce our multi-dimensional moral landscapes into a single scalar. alas, being the simplest system means it is basically acts like a social virus or a weed: it drowns any competing more complex structure. one "must work for" in order "to pay the bills". you could solve any of humanity's grand challenges and it would still not help you to even feed or warm yourself if not somehow translated into money. that crushing simplicity and its inadequacy is destroying our souls.
johlits 4y ago
You can only be evil in the eyes of those you betray.
danuker 4y ago
I view profit after paying for externalities as the best indicator of good done by a company. That is because for each voluntary trade, both the buyer and the seller at least SEE themselves as better off. If you account for damage done to the commons (i.e. pollution of the environment or involuntary pay (through artificial monopolization, misleading advertising, or corrupt government against people's wishes)), the profit margin is an indicator that what you are doing is needed, and that not enough suppliers compete in that area.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I like that. Elegant and obvious. Profitable companies have lots of people giving them money. Why do they do that? Because they need, want, or will benefit from what the company is selling.
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  Weapons companies running off government contracts look pretty great by this metric.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Again... Account for externalities. For instance: how strongly does the population support the weapons expenses? If it's forced into this spending, the trade is not moral. How much damage is dealt by each bullet? What does a bullet cost?
affgrff2 4y ago
Btw. does someone have an opinion on Bosch? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH Of all the larger multinats, I think it's one of the least evil, especially since it privately owned by a foundation.
- sigriv 4y ago
  I did not read the whole wikipedia page and my eye caught these subtitles: - Nazi collaboration - Role in emission cheating software - Role in Astongate greenwashing campaign
sanitycheck 4y ago
The jobs I've had which I've felt were net positive for the world were a few in educational technology and one writing crime scene analysis software. Those are hard to find, though - so I've mostly worked for companies I think have a net neutral effect, news (though not right wing hatemongers) & entertainment. I don't think you can make a lot of money without enabling evil at least a little bit. I suppose that's where "effective altruism" comes in; do evil but do more good later. Eventually. Maybe. I'm not totally convinced.
christophilus 4y ago
I mentioned to my dad that my wife and I were boycotting a company due to evil / corruption, and he said, “If you’re going to boycott everything that is evil or corrupt, you’ll be very busy. You’d better start with me.” There are degrees of evil and lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but for the most part, if you’re doing anything in this world, you’re going to be interacting with evil in some capacity. I’m writing this on my Foxconn iPhone as I’m making ethically sourced coffee— but is the coffee really ethically sourced? It produced a lot of carbon being shipped to me and being roasted. I’m about to go write some software that I know is being used to teach things that I consider reprehensible and evil. I’ve personally chosen to focus on one or two changes where I can make a difference, and for the most part, I’m letting the rest go.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  This is very similar to the position I've adopted, and I'd like to add on some of the thinking I've done about what I've come to call "weaponized mindfulness." In the balance of "good" and "evil", a lot of people will loudly proclaim e.g. how they drive a smaller car that isn't as wasteful as big American SUVs as if that's virtuous because less waste = good. In my accounting of the world, I totally agree and try my best to support things that waste less! But, inevitably, there's a thorny question left of why the small car is OK and the big car is Bad -- the line is totally arbitrary, both of them uphold a pretty wasteful driving system, and anybody can move the goalposts pretty much wherever they want. Relative to a private jet, the SUV isn't wasteful at all. Relative to a moped, the small hatchback is incredibly wasteful. So, assuming that people are well-intentioned and aren't purely virtue signaling for social capital, what's the measure of a "virtue" like this? Most people try to hand wave it as "the smaller car does approximately X less damage to 'the environment'", but that's all but completely unmeasurable. How do you quantify damage to the environment? How do you weight that against needing to get the kids to school? I'm not convinced there's any meaningful way to do it since it's a global measure for a local action. It seems to me that absent any universal morality, then, a better measure of a virtue is against itself: what an individual is willing to give up to uphold their virtue. "I drive the smaller car into the ground over 20 years, forgoing the luxuries of heated seats in newer models" or "I don't shop on Amazon, preferring instead to take extra time to acquire items locally" sort of a thing. It's still far from a reliable, quantifiable measure, and any of these things can be weaponized in any number of directions against unfavorable people or ideas, but I think it at least scopes the idea of "more and less moral" a little better/more locally.
deleted 4y ago
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2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> This one came in a request from a reader. They want to know my feelings about trying to "... avoid a company contributing to the downfall of humanity". This one's tough, particularly given my own history. > I worked for a web hosting company that had a dubious history of keeping spammers around far too long. How quaint. Which companies or industries are contributing to the downfall of humanity? This answer is hard to answer but I don't think it's ads, spam, or user tracking despite being vehemently against these things. Perspective is needed. Raytheon or Lockheed Martin? They're certainly milking the taxpayer but they also fulfill an extremely important need. Fossil fuel industry? They are polluters but low energy costs contribute immensely to standards of living. I can't think of any companies or industries that are legit evil, if there even are any. Tobacco industry? Building nukes for North Korea or Iran?
neilv 4y ago
Sometimes, it's obvious a company is evil, because it's been in the news as evil, almost since it was founded. (Sometimes, they even get Hollywood's greatest speechwriter to make a movie about it, to re-spin the bad PR.) Other times, it's less-obvious: 1. You don't have enough visibility into the company's operations, plans, or executives. 2. You don't know enough context of society and/or business, to understand how something innocuous-sounding is evil. 3. All's good on intentions and impact, but later the situation changes (company is pressured by market or investors, or someone falls into a bad influence yacht party scene, etc.), Complicating this is that it's the norm (especially for startups) for a company to claim to be doing something positive for society: 1. Sometimes it's just marketing/brand convention that people go through, and don't think they have to take seriously (it'd be rude to say you just want to extract money). 2. Sometimes the founders/execs believe it, but with poor understanding of the problems and solutions (often by class sheltering, or simply not knowing the domain well enough). 3. Sometimes it's con artists and/or narcissists, who work the narrative to manipulate others, or to increase sense of personal glory. I don't know a complete solution to this problem of detecting evil so you can avoid working for it. I also haven't figured out a satisfying way to reconcile not wanting to work for evil, with wanting to have a comfortable life right now. Especially in "tech" right now, where a lot of bad practices have become so ordinary, we don't realize it. (And if someone called out the practices, we might get irritated like a 9th grade Economics fan, because that person who thinks that's a problem must be stupid, because we were told this is the way things are.)
prievidza 4y ago
> Of course, while I toiled in the infra mines at this company, all kinds of truly evil shit was going on, including the installation of a fascist regime in my country I guess "fascist regime" is a reference to Trump here? If so it's hard for me to take the author seriously. My grandparents survived actual fascist regime (Nazi Germany occupation during WW2), and my parents grew up in authoritarian puppet states of USSR. Trump doesn't get anywhere close to what my people went through in 20th century, and it's pretty insulting for me when people make this comparisons.
- lzaaz 4y ago
  That caught my eye too, I guess she's an inmigrant from some country in Europe or whatever? But there aren't any European countries with fascist regimes currently. It makes no sense whatsoever. Probably hyperbole of the bad kind. Americans have the luxury of not having had to live under a fascist regime and it shows.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    You are maybe unaware of Hungary? It is tragic.
  - yownie 4y ago
    belarus comes to mind.
- tokai 4y ago
  Get out of here. Are you seriously going to gate keep authoritarianism? So you are not allowed to complain before millions of people are dead? And the 'my people went through in 20th century', because only a few select people can claim to have been effected by a literal world war right? What you're gps went through doesn't automatically give you any special insight. Are you sure that rachelbythebay also doesn't have some gps whos suffering she can virtue signal with? Maybe they suffered even more than yours.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
rivkarichler 4y ago
Interesting reading this post and the comments. I've learnt a lot from everyone's perspectives.
vintermann 4y ago
There are two questions I would ask: * Can you imagine a better world where the goods and services this company provides aren't needed? * Does it seem like the company is moving us closer to that world, or does it seem more like they would do everything in their power to prevent that world? It may be a bit of both. For instance, you could be writing software that the company will desperately try to monopolize, but also in that capacity contribute to open source software that your company uses that others could use to compete with it.
greenthrow 4y ago
I think there's two lessons I'd take from Rachel's history as it was given here. The first is that any company that relies on ad revenue is doomed. Selling ads in an ethical way requires you to say no to so many things that advertisers want. The second is that in the Uber case, from the beginning their disregard for the law was apparent. That should be a good warning sign as well. It's one thing to ignore unjust laws as an individual; we can have moral agency for reasons other than profit. A corporation is solely a prodit seeking machine and if you build disregard for laws it disagrees with into its behavior, you're going to have a bad time.
mikequinlan 4y ago
I worked for a University for 12 years; there were certainly evil people who worked there but the institution itself was certainly not evil. I can also easily imagine a company that wants to be evil but is too incompetent to accomplish it.
redditor98654 4y ago
I think about this a lot and many times I feel it is impractical to expect your company to visibly demonstrate moral ground that you can be proud of as an employee. I work at Netflix and I am happy here. Curious if any of you would consider it to be an evil company in the sense we are discussing in this post.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Netflix seems pretty neutral to me, but it's like an obese person's feeder, it enables self-harm to some extent (it seems all streaming services do). There are things that IMO could make it good, most involve encouraging users to use it less, ... now if Netflix's _goals_ include engaging viewers beyond what is healthy (rather than viewers using neutral features in that way), then that is evil. Two quick things, as a user, I would change about Netflix: 1) More childrens' content with actual people in. It's all cartoons (cheaper) whilst I hypothesise children develop better viewing real human interactions. 2) At account level build in breaks. It used to be adverts would provide a break that would encourage at least some movement and offer a chance to go off and be distracted (for adults and children alike). I'd love to say "minimum 10 minute break between episodes"; the screen would go off and only restart if interacted with after 10 minutes ... some will say "just have some will power", but IMO tech should help us with such things. Mind you, I'd also change copyright law to allow any service to stream content of one service does (no exclusives except for a limited time; forced syndication, effectively) in order to create competition and choice at the service level rather than the content level.
xen0 4y ago
I used to work for a non-profit scientific research facility. That was 6 years of definite 'not evil' work. Maybe not impactful, but not evil. Now I work for a big tech company. Maybe it's evil, but if that's true, at least evil pays better.
bluedino 4y ago
The company I work for is easily 'evil'. It's hard to avoid in the industry they are in. Their products have killed people, caused birth defects, and ruined lives in many countries around the world. Those fertilizers that hurt more than they helped? Those chemicals spread all over enemy lands during the war? That plant disaster that they tried to cover up? Everything I do helps the company be more efficient at producing these products. The in-joke is "what kind of poison are we making today?", or "what country are we killing people in with this?" On the other hand, the other 95% of the products produced here are making people's lives better.
donclark 4y ago
Is one of the indicators - if it is a publicly traded company, its probably evil?
fallingfrog 4y ago
Unfortunately our economic system ends up producing companies that do evil, and promoting people who are evil, just because of its own internal feedbacks. Consider: if you start with 10 companies in a given field, 9 of which are run by decent people with strong ethics, and one which is run by an evil bastard with no scruples whatsoever, which one will have the highest profit margins? The evil one. And so the evil one will eat the other 9, and the employees of the other 9 will be put to work doing evil things, and if the company gets large enough, the political system of the country the evil company is in will be bribed to do evil things. The counteracting force to that is organized popular movements, but those are on the defensive lately- witness congress intervening to undermine a strike when all the workers wanted was to be able to stay home when they were sick.
_8j50 4y ago
If you live in a democracy I can ask you the same question. Your government that derives its power and authority from you tolerates and collects tax from "evil" so how can you ask that question? People work to eat.
throwaway22032 4y ago
The problem with "not working for evil" is that everyone is evil. If you chose to apply the same standard to the people around you, you'd have no friends or family. Because you have friends who work for minimum wage (enabling evil), you have family members who use all of the worst social networks and have all of the voice assistants on, you have a racist uncle, you have whatever. The specific examples aren't relevant, literally everyone else does _something_ you don't like. I think it's better to try to control what precisely _you_ are doing because otherwise you'll just silo yourself into a corner until you can't do anything. It's fine to avoid working for a company whose explicit purpose is to do something you don't believe in, it's another thing to exclude basically everything because some nonzero component of what is happening isn't to your liking. Not that I practice what I preach, I'm out of work because I think video calls are evil. Bugger.

124 points by tomrod 4y ago

Interesting, from reading her post you'd think it's a real challenge to avoid working in a company that will eventually become evil. My first thought was that there is a failure in the system if it inevitably leads companies to become evil as they grow (maybe a failure of government?). But then I realized looking back at my career, I have not worked for any evil companies to my knowledge, at least not cartoonishly evil. It seems most of the companies she mentions have one thing in common, they are by the bay, part of a local system that's one of the economic engines of the U.S and favours growth over any other considerations, including ethics. So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? There are many industries beside software where good software engineers are needed and you can do good, challenging, and very innovative work "to make the world a better place".

fphhotchips 4y ago
There are also plenty of companies based in the bay area that aren't evil? I'm not suggesting they're necessarily good, but they're not evil.
deathanatos 4y ago
> There are many industries beside software where good software engineers are needed and you can do good, challenging, and very innovative work "to make the world a better place". Honestly, such as and how? I worked for one company I thought had a good mission, and a good product (it wasn't ads!), ahead of its competitors. Lackluster marketing, then we got acquired and inept management sunk it, and ended up with those of us who worked on it laid off and it's all gone, now. I'm in healthcare now, but it is really hard to move the needle. There's no way around integrating with providers, and they're driving a lot of absolutely bonkers technical decisions. I spent a lot of time building out brand new, but completely broken, things, because there's nobody designing the system. Meanwhile recruiters routinely hit my inbox with information-free cold pitches. I'd kill for a lure that had bait attached to it. The last email that had a salary attached wanted a Senior Software Engineer but was offering less than what I started at in the industry as an entry-level engineer. > don't work in the bay I left the Bay, and it's not really changed anything from a work/career perspective. But I don't think it's morally acceptable to tell people to "just leave"; what if they have a home there? family? connections? Perhaps giving it all up might be the most pragmatic thing, but it might crush a soul in the meantime. That said, the political climate of the Bay was "head, firmly in sand" when I left. I left partly because I do not see the Bay, collectively, being capable of solving the problems they face. (There are a few people trying — including a friend of mine I left behind. But they're hopelessly outnumbered.) > if it matters to you Maslow's hierarchy. Real rent is up, nominal compensation is down. People are getting laid off left and right. Being a millionaire is practically a pre-req to home ownership near any city. (And companies include "geographic adjustment" in compensation these days.)
- soco 4y ago
  I wouldn't take the message "just leave" necessarily as inconsiderate advice, or at least not always. It might be also meant to vote with your feet, because that's the only influence you can have in the process, and if enough people do it then it may tilt the needle a bit.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  Pick any, I've worked in telecom, GIS, health, you need software everywhere. You have to weigh salary against the appeal of the mission and the work environment. You can't have everything, and you certainly can't have bay salaries. Personally I've never had trouble finding meaningful work with people I respect, but I have had to make sacrifices on the salary front. You seem to have read my comment as saying snarkily "if you really cared you'd just leave", that's not what I intended to convey. Of course I realize people have multi-faceted priorities, family, financial safety concerns, existing investments, and so on... I'm not telling people to leave as much as I'm saying if you care deeply about working for ethical companies, it seems like working in the bay area is not going to make it easy, and you'd probably have a easier time elsewhere. There are plenty of cities where you don't need to be a millionaire to own a home, I have a friend who just bought a nice house in San Antonio for 200k. That's another advantage of working out of the bay.
rob74 4y ago
Unfortunately most companies don't exist to make the world a better place, most companies exist to make money - the more, the better. And if you want to make more money, there's definitely a temptation to use unethical (while still legal) methods. And companies that make less money tend to be bought by companies that make more money, which tend to be higher on the "evil scale". Or sometimes, a not-so-evil company will buy a more-evil company which then eats them up from within, like Google with DoubleClick or Boeing with McDonnell Douglas.
- roenxi 4y ago
  Glance for a moment at the Wikipedia list of profitable companies [0]. Observe that #1 is Saudi Aramco, which supports one of the more horrible regimes. Now I'm sure we have a line of people waiting to claim that they are evil, but we're running an experiment in Europe to find out what happens when horrible regimes stop providing oil - turns out there are serious risks of people starving or freezing to death. The loss to living standards is incalculable but large. There is a great reason that companies are freed from the requirement to be morally good - because human instincts are not calibrated to run an 8-billion-strong postindustrial globe. It doesn't work. If we let people do things completely on instinct most people will die quite quickly, and the leadership will turn out to be corrupt anyway. We do things this way because a lot of experiments were run, and free market economics gets much better results than all the systems people swear do better. It harnesses greed to the cause of ... if you won't admit it is good you have to at least admit it is effective. Honestly, I think it is good too. Good and evil are not the right mental tools here, morals don't cope with the scale that humans need to operate on now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_corporate_profits_and_losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_corporate_prof...
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    >Now I'm sure we have a line of people waiting to claim that they are evil, but we're running an experiment in Europe to find out what happens when horrible regimes stop providing oil - turns out there are serious risks of people starving or freezing to death. The loss to living standards is incalculable but large. Well I don't see how people in Western Europe (i.e. excluding Ukraine) are in danger of starving and I would actually argue the people that we are seeing being killed at the moment are a direct consequence of buying cheap energy no matter the ethics. If Europe would have invested more strongly into becoming energy independent instead of chasing the cheapest oil and gas, we might have a slighly lower standard of living, but much of European politics would not be infiltrated by money from resource oligarchs and likely Russia would never have invaded so people would not be dying in a pointless war. In other words, not
krageon 4y ago
Almost every corporation and startup is cartoonishly evil (in that it stupidly and persistently refuses to look at people, except as a vehicle to increase the high score - money). If I may ask, is there some sort of sector you've worked in that kept the corporations you worked for stricly neutral or better? I must admit I'm a little skeptical that they were not strictly amoral (which given the right incentives always tends to an almost ridiculous amount of evil), but I would really like to believe it.
- codingdave 4y ago
  > If I may ask, is there some sort of sector you've worked in that kept the corporations you worked for stricly neutral or better? Education. Non-profits. Hospitals. Not that the software vendors I worked for in those industries were perfect. Nor were the customers. Evil, greed, ambition, and power came into play and brought negativity to them all. But it tended to center around a handful of poor leaders, and did not prevent the overall impact of the work being "neutral or better".
  - hgsgm 4y ago
- bstpierre 4y ago
  I’ve worked for various network/telco equipment providers over the course of 20+ years, and there have only been a couple of cartoonishly evil moments that I can recall. Certainly not to the level of thinking that I needed to quit to save my soul. There were some soulless executives, but the business models weren’t morally bankrupt. I have been paid reasonably well (not Bay Area / FAANG well). Most of the companies don’t exist anymore, and I have been through my fair share of layoff cycles.
  - fshr 4y ago
    > Most of the companies don’t exist anymore Do you think there could be a causal link between their lack of evil and the fact that they don’t exist anymore?
luckylion 4y ago
> So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? I believe you can find "problematic" companies everywhere. If it matters to you, go look at the pay. If they're paying enormous sums, they believe they can make much more. "Good things" usually don't offer that kind of profit margin. That's not to say that shitty pay = good company, there's plenty of terrible people who are evil AND offer low salaries.
dsign 4y ago
This. The majority of companies I know of are evil in just one way: they want your money, and sometimes they will go to great lengths to get it. The big villains in USA are not that powerful in some other places, because people and their governments reign them in.
vineyardmike 4y ago
> So my conclusion from this post would be, if it matters to you, don't work in the bay? I had a job at a publicly traded company with an office (my office) in Ohio - and not headquartered from the bay but another part of the Midwest - and one day during pride month the CEO emailed everyone to say that they would NOT put up a pride flag. They went on to explain that they couldn’t because it would be upsetting, and if inclusivity flags were normal to display at the office, black people may want a flag too, and where would it end?. They were a very generic company, and not particularly evil in other aspects of their business. I have also worked at large FAANG companies in the bay. They treat employees way better (google’s shuttles! Free food! Equity Refreshers!). I would much rather be a Bay Area FAANG employee than an Ohio Generic Co employee. The way FAANG treats their employees isn’t evil. There’s evil everywhere, IMO I might as well be treated well for being complicit towards it.
- mebassett 4y ago
  I don't understand your point. Are you saying the Ohio company is evil for not putting up a pride flag? Are you saying the Bay-area company isn't evil because they treated their higher-ranked servants well ?
  - papandada 4y ago
    Not OP, but my read is yes; and no, but why not take evil with better benefits.
    - tanseydavid 4y ago
      Because utilitarianism? Just a thought.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    seriously, the other poster never stops to consider that the reason people like this CEO are drawing a line in the sand is BECAUSE of people like this poster are running around drawing such conclusions from something as lik a pride flag. What next, is this poster going to take a flamethrower to the anthill in their backyard? Lets see how well that works.
cowsandmilk 4y ago
My experience is any company can be viewed as evil. I’ve done a ton of computational work for pharma companies. We were trying to discover cures for diseases, pretty much a good thing, right? Don’t have to look hard to find people giving reasons why pharma companies are evil.
- DFHippie 4y ago
  > Don’t have to look hard to find people giving reasons why pharma companies are evil. Case in point: Imagine you find someone grasping a cliff edge by their fingertips. Pulling them back to safety is good! Pulling them back to safety only after they promise you all their worldly wealth forevermore is less good. Being in the business of offering people this deal is not better. Funding the effort to prevent people from restraining your exploitation of cliff danglers is still worse. This isn't an insoluble moral puzzle. I don't think pharma is an ideal example for your larger point. Most businesses don't thrive on the desperation of their customers. But I also don't think your point is correct. There are better and worse companies. I understand one needs to make one's peace with one's choices. I've worked for companies that were doing evil (not exclusively, but at all). I've worked for companies that were mediocre at best. I'm currently working for a company that I would say is positively good. I got paid more by the evil companies. I have been happier working for the good companies though it's harder to support my family. But I understand people who choose to keep working for their evil company, particularly when others depend on their income. In one of the more egregious outbursts of evil at one of the companies I worked for I had friends who quit. They didn't want to be complicit. I stayed. I had kids and didn't want to throw my family into turmoil. But I saw the choice I was making.
  - edanm 4y ago
    > This isn't an insoluble moral puzzle. I don't think pharma is an ideal example for your larger point. Most businesses don't thrive on the desperation of their customers. I mean, pharma as an industry also creates the ability to pull people back from the edge. Medicine isn't created out of thin air, the universe doesn't just owe us a steady supply of new innovations that have kept so many people alive and in better comfort. Money needs to be invested, that money has to be paid by someone. (I'm not talking about specifics of the US healthcare system or anything, where there are problems, just pharma in general.) Like seriously, what is your alternative?
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
> My first thought was that there is a failure in the system if it inevitably leads companies to become evil as they grow (maybe a failure of government? It is not a bug, it is feature. And it is not the government, it is capitalism which endorses greed.

plaguepilled 4y ago

If you have the capital for it, being a business owner is an option here

GavCo 4y ago

Serious question: how can you ensure that you are not working for a company that is contributing to the downfall of humanity?

krageon 4y ago
You might work for one that contributes directly to preventing the downfall of humanity. Sadly, that is non-profits / research mostly - and hilariously they will generally treat you like absolute garbage (which to me feels almost as bad as the knowledge that I'm basically working for Sauron) if you do IT work.
nonmabusiness 4y ago
Work for a privately owned company, any shareholder owned one will by definition kill its own staff and their families to make a profit. does th company make an active effort lead by the owners or leadership team to cancel out the effects of other companies. (e.g. engange with local community, promote work life balance)? if its a partnership or employee owned then its also probably good, but some partnerships (where there are 10 to 100s of partners) then it becomes like a publicly owned company again and no individuals feel their personal reputation is at stake. personal reputation is about the only thing you can rely on when it comes to not being shitty, as it all comes down to trust really.
bombcar 4y ago
Work for a small company. Even if they're cartoonishly evil, the capability of being so is limited. And so most aren't. Also with a small company you'll know just about everything the company is "doing" whereas if you're working for (Rackspace, Google, Meta, etc) you have a very good chance of not knowing what the company is doing somewhere until it becomes a major news headline.

drewm1980 4y ago

I fear I am indirectly responsible for a substantial body count just by helping to build a company that eventually placed itself solidly on the wrong side of the energy transition, but I do not yet have a meaningful number for the C02e -> human life conversion.

aaron695 4y ago
TJSomething 4y ago
It's about 10,000 deaths per year per CO2e PPM from 2080 to 2100, mostly based on this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99156-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99156-5

jll29 4y ago

Even if your employer is not evil, they may get acquired. "What has been thought of once cannot be taken back anymore." Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Die Physiker (1961) See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physicists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physicists

cycomanic 4y ago
I highly recommend for anyone in tech to read Die Physiker at least once. Not only is it incredibly funny, but also very thoughtful and is timeless (as you point out)

boxed 4y ago

The initial problem is to define, quantify, and guard against evil. Imo this problem is basically ignored. I have a simple definition I call the Grand Unified Theory of Evil: Evil = delusion * conviction * power Delusion = how factually incorrect your idea is compared with base reality Conviction = how little you will try to find flaws with the idea, how little you will test it, how likely you are to implement the idea at 100% of the universe if you had total power Power = Your ability to push your idea into the world This model isn't a tool to calculate evil. It's a tool to reason about how to avoid evil. First you need to be not wrong. Secondly you need to be damn UNSURE about what you know and try it at small scale. And lastly you need to have just enough power to test the idea, and show that it works to others if it does, but not any more.

Brigand 4y ago
How about this: Idea: we can grab this land with our troops (assume this is 100% based in reality) Delusion: 0% Conviction: idea was checked, is aboslutely correct Power: 100% => Evil = 0 * 100 * 100 = 0 I think the categorical imperative is a way better tool to recognise evil.
- boxed 4y ago
  The delusion is that this is good for your country. That you missed this delusion and then were totally convinced of your own cleverness even though you missed such an enormous flaw.. well that's kindof the point.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
> The initial problem is to define, quantify, and guard against evil. Not really. I mean "guard against evil" loosely interpreted includes all of life so it's hard to say. But spending a bunch of time defining, quantifying what is evil, arguing about the specifics on the internet, that is deep in the weeds exactly where they want you. Most people have a good enough intuition for it when they see it up close. The menace is in how well we've obscured a lot of the true evil behind layers of misdirection and diffusion. Focus more on developing your innate sense of wrong so you can ably intuit what is actually happening. That is much more practically valuable than getting bogged down in constructing theories of what evil is and what is evil and how much.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

It's hard to avoid working for a company that is in some way evil because in general, companies have no morality. They are amoral money-generating machines. Even if individual people inside them have good intentions, the system is set up to incentivise people to do the bad thing anyway, or to abstract over the bad thing so you won't realise what you're doing.

sdiacom 4y ago
Perhaps it's interesting to consider who the bad thing is being done to. Consider, for example, working for outlandishly impractical VC-funded ideas, where the main "evil" that's being done is conning venture capitalists into paying for the expenses of a company that will never produce anything of value.
- kybernetikos 4y ago
  I had a friend who said he wanted 'He did little harm' on his gravestone. At the time I was irritated by how defeatist that attitude seemed, but these days it seems like a surprisingly high bar.
- codingdave 4y ago
  Defining which companies are evil is difficult because different people have different morals. From your example, I'd see it as the VCs who are conning small companies into taking VC money and driving for growth over sustainability in order to be one of many lottery tickets for that VC as the evil aspect of such scenarios. Or maybe both sides are evil because they ultimately are seeking money, not positive change in the world.
  - sdiacom 4y ago
    You have a point. A related question is, is being useless at being evil equivalent to being neutral? And is profiting of such useless evil, in turn, also neutral? That is, if the VCs are intending to do something evil by turning a company into a growth lottery ticket, but they're so useless at picking potential lottery tickets that they might as well be setting their money on fire. Then what is the moral standing of someone who collects a paycheck from that company, grabs some popcorn, and sits in the sidelines to watch bad decisions unfold?

mathieuh 4y ago

I think it's almost impossible unless you start a business yourself and run it without hierarchies, and with everyone involved being treated as as an end in themselves and not just a means to increase the company value. If I ever make enough money (unlikely), it's a quiet fantasy of mine to start a small company in this model. Personally I will never work in e.g. finance or "defence", but even where I work now could be seen as encouraging throw-away consumerism. It was a very serious consideration of mine when I was looking for a new job. I ruled myself out of some interviews halfway through because I could tell that their product would have rubbed against my morals eventually. Sometimes I feel like a mug for following my convictions like this. I will never be a manager, I will never invest in the stock market, and I will never own more property than I can use myself.

jasfi 4y ago
That's interesting because one of my projects is a crypto trader, which I plan to one day extend to stocks. Many people seem to see such a project in a negative light, particularly those who have never been into trading. However my aim is to help prevent people from losing money and thoroughly test strategies before trading any real money. In such a case it's really about preconceived notions.
- mathieuh 4y ago
  I don't know too much about crypto, it doesn't really interest me and I've never bothered to find out more about it. It does seem to be some right-wing libertarian thing so reflexively I'm suspicious, but some of the claimed ideals appeal to me as an anarchist. I refuse to invest in stocks because that would mean (potentially) profiting from the exploitation of the workers in that company. I suppose if I were awarded stocks in the company I work for that might be different, I'd need to think about it more.
  - jasfi 4y ago
    Crypto can also be viewed as assets to buy and sell for a profit, and nothing more. I know it can get more complicated, but it doesn't have to. Regarding stocks, you can often be assured that public companies are held to a high standard, especially in western countries where the press reports on exploitation.

cykros 4y ago

You can work handing out food to hungry people. If you're making money though, you'll owe taxes, and those taxes will go to wherever the corrupt politicians decide -- often, right into the coffers of weapons manufacturers. Humanity is a brutish, barbaric species. Get used to it.

zmxz 4y ago
What happens when you feed someone who grows up to be "evil" and creates a corporation like Facebook? It's anecdotal, I'm agreeing with your last point - humanity is brutish, it's easier to exit the Matrix and to see what humanity really is rather than to keep believing in the romantic image of it.

daedlanth 4y ago

Work at a gay church.

thaumaturgy 4y ago

After doing this about as long as Rachel has been, it seems to me that your choice for employer is usually (a) evil (for varying definitions of evil); (b) incompetent; or (c) an organization of competent paladins that also happen to hate money. There are a very, very few organizations that don't fall into one of those categories. Those that refuse to sell their soul will make ever so much less money than their colleagues. I've kept my soul, but I bet Rachel can keep the lights on. Evil pays really well.

dontbenebby 4y ago
>Evil pays really well You’ve obviously never worked for a nonprofit :-)
- smitty1e 4y ago
  Those running the non-profits may do better than the workers.
  - jlokier 4y ago
    It depends a lot on the non-profit. As someone who co-ran a non-profit with a mission full time, I ended up deeply in personal debt as a result (of not being paid for years but still having living costs). Those running the non-profit ended up significantly worse off than other people working there. I'm still paying it off years later. At mine, management were required to be volunteers (even full time), but other full time staff were paid salary and benefits. Most people working there were also volunteers, but part time or occasional as they felt like it. They had time for day jobs. The reason for this arrangement was because most members who co-owned it did not believe anyone should be paid, but we had a grant for premises and hired staff. Nobody wanted the hired staff to be in charge overall, as their incentives, skills and competencies were far more aligned with the premises owner and business angle, and not with the non-profit's mission. So it had to be run by motivated volunteers, and that included developing a type of non-profit business and manufacturing service, managing staff, as well as organising a large number of volunteers, events, teaching, safety, purchases, accounting, etc. Boy did that combination take a lot of work for a long time. Like regular startups, we had a big idea and hoped it would grow to something we wanted to see in the world. It actually did really well for what it was. The model broke for different reasons than the obvious one with sustainability, involving assholes and a commercial opportunist who offered the premises owner something better (which they then promptly failed to execute, destroying everything for everyone), just as ours was starting to flourish at a sustainable level and we were getting better at distributing the work and knowledge effectively.

mcrad 4y ago

While fraud and deception is probably on the rise, it's very important to recognize that the "evil" they are referring to comes from people (not companies) and that it's always been this way. We all have the potential to violate our own ethical standards and the temptation rise and fall with circumstances beyond our control. Keep a cool head, expand your understanding of the relationship between your job and the supposed evil, and do your best to expose it without hurting your reputation. The idea that one can job hop their way to promised land is not helping the situation.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Last night I re-watched the "The Good Shepherd" (great cast; Damon, De Niro, Jolie). It reminded me of the price we pay for trying to do the right thing in a world of shit. The quest to "avoid evil" can often drive us into its hands, and we're left only to choose the lesser. To "do good" is not the same. It almost always requires sacrifice. Everyone has capacity for how poor, alone, and frightened they're prepared to be in pursuit of "the good". Duty and unwavering firmness of purpose remain unpopular, and something few people have the stomach for today. But there can also be comradeship and a sense of being part of something historical if you choose the harder path.

notaspecialist 4y ago
>But there can also be comradeship and a sense of being part of something historical if you choose the harder path. Meh, I've tried and all I got was hate for many years and very few staunch friends. Sheeple don't want truth, justice and the Amerikan way. After seeing 2020-2022 in action (the lies, the gaslighting, waving evidence in peoples faces until I'm hoarse), I've decided to join The Empire. Evil all the way. Abstergo, here I come.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > The Empire. Evil all the way Well at least the hours are good. And the uniforms are snappy. Red, black. lots of leather. And the shouting. Fuckit, sign me up.

mttpgn 4y ago

This reminded me of an epigram from Philip K. Dick: > Another frame of reference which might help him would be the Doctrine of Original Sin. I wonder if he has ever heard of it. We are all doomed to commit acts of cruelty or violence or evil; that is our destiny, due to ancient factors. Our karma.

college_physics 4y ago

the problem we have is fact almost ludicrus in its simplicity. organizing social and economic life solely around money (as the only serious means of keeping count) has been extraordinary effective - due to the ease and universality of its application. its also been a complete disaster because you can't reduce our multi-dimensional moral landscapes into a single scalar. alas, being the simplest system means it is basically acts like a social virus or a weed: it drowns any competing more complex structure. one "must work for" in order "to pay the bills". you could solve any of humanity's grand challenges and it would still not help you to even feed or warm yourself if not somehow translated into money. that crushing simplicity and its inadequacy is destroying our souls.

johlits 4y ago

You can only be evil in the eyes of those you betray.

danuker 4y ago

I view profit after paying for externalities as the best indicator of good done by a company. That is because for each voluntary trade, both the buyer and the seller at least SEE themselves as better off. If you account for damage done to the commons (i.e. pollution of the environment or involuntary pay (through artificial monopolization, misleading advertising, or corrupt government against people's wishes)), the profit margin is an indicator that what you are doing is needed, and that not enough suppliers compete in that area.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I like that. Elegant and obvious. Profitable companies have lots of people giving them money. Why do they do that? Because they need, want, or will benefit from what the company is selling.
JonChesterfield 4y ago
Weapons companies running off government contracts look pretty great by this metric.
- danuker 4y ago
  Again... Account for externalities. For instance: how strongly does the population support the weapons expenses? If it's forced into this spending, the trade is not moral. How much damage is dealt by each bullet? What does a bullet cost?

affgrff2 4y ago

Btw. does someone have an opinion on Bosch? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH Of all the larger multinats, I think it's one of the least evil, especially since it privately owned by a foundation.

sigriv 4y ago
I did not read the whole wikipedia page and my eye caught these subtitles: - Nazi collaboration - Role in emission cheating software - Role in Astongate greenwashing campaign

sanitycheck 4y ago

The jobs I've had which I've felt were net positive for the world were a few in educational technology and one writing crime scene analysis software. Those are hard to find, though - so I've mostly worked for companies I think have a net neutral effect, news (though not right wing hatemongers) & entertainment. I don't think you can make a lot of money without enabling evil at least a little bit. I suppose that's where "effective altruism" comes in; do evil but do more good later. Eventually. Maybe. I'm not totally convinced.

christophilus 4y ago

I mentioned to my dad that my wife and I were boycotting a company due to evil / corruption, and he said, “If you’re going to boycott everything that is evil or corrupt, you’ll be very busy. You’d better start with me.” There are degrees of evil and lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but for the most part, if you’re doing anything in this world, you’re going to be interacting with evil in some capacity. I’m writing this on my Foxconn iPhone as I’m making ethically sourced coffee— but is the coffee really ethically sourced? It produced a lot of carbon being shipped to me and being roasted. I’m about to go write some software that I know is being used to teach things that I consider reprehensible and evil. I’ve personally chosen to focus on one or two changes where I can make a difference, and for the most part, I’m letting the rest go.

Rayhem 4y ago
This is very similar to the position I've adopted, and I'd like to add on some of the thinking I've done about what I've come to call "weaponized mindfulness." In the balance of "good" and "evil", a lot of people will loudly proclaim e.g. how they drive a smaller car that isn't as wasteful as big American SUVs as if that's virtuous because less waste = good. In my accounting of the world, I totally agree and try my best to support things that waste less! But, inevitably, there's a thorny question left of why the small car is OK and the big car is Bad -- the line is totally arbitrary, both of them uphold a pretty wasteful driving system, and anybody can move the goalposts pretty much wherever they want. Relative to a private jet, the SUV isn't wasteful at all. Relative to a moped, the small hatchback is incredibly wasteful. So, assuming that people are well-intentioned and aren't purely virtue signaling for social capital, what's the measure of a "virtue" like this? Most people try to hand wave it as "the smaller car does approximately X less damage to 'the environment'", but that's all but completely unmeasurable. How do you quantify damage to the environment? How do you weight that against needing to get the kids to school? I'm not convinced there's any meaningful way to do it since it's a global measure for a local action. It seems to me that absent any universal morality, then, a better measure of a virtue is against itself: what an individual is willing to give up to uphold their virtue. "I drive the smaller car into the ground over 20 years, forgoing the luxuries of heated seats in newer models" or "I don't shop on Amazon, preferring instead to take extra time to acquire items locally" sort of a thing. It's still far from a reliable, quantifiable measure, and any of these things can be weaponized in any number of directions against unfavorable people or ideas, but I think it at least scopes the idea of "more and less moral" a little better/more locally.

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2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> This one came in a request from a reader. They want to know my feelings about trying to "... avoid a company contributing to the downfall of humanity". This one's tough, particularly given my own history. > I worked for a web hosting company that had a dubious history of keeping spammers around far too long. How quaint. Which companies or industries are contributing to the downfall of humanity? This answer is hard to answer but I don't think it's ads, spam, or user tracking despite being vehemently against these things. Perspective is needed. Raytheon or Lockheed Martin? They're certainly milking the taxpayer but they also fulfill an extremely important need. Fossil fuel industry? They are polluters but low energy costs contribute immensely to standards of living. I can't think of any companies or industries that are legit evil, if there even are any. Tobacco industry? Building nukes for North Korea or Iran?

neilv 4y ago

Sometimes, it's obvious a company is evil, because it's been in the news as evil, almost since it was founded. (Sometimes, they even get Hollywood's greatest speechwriter to make a movie about it, to re-spin the bad PR.) Other times, it's less-obvious: 1. You don't have enough visibility into the company's operations, plans, or executives. 2. You don't know enough context of society and/or business, to understand how something innocuous-sounding is evil. 3. All's good on intentions and impact, but later the situation changes (company is pressured by market or investors, or someone falls into a bad influence yacht party scene, etc.), Complicating this is that it's the norm (especially for startups) for a company to claim to be doing something positive for society: 1. Sometimes it's just marketing/brand convention that people go through, and don't think they have to take seriously (it'd be rude to say you just want to extract money). 2. Sometimes the founders/execs believe it, but with poor understanding of the problems and solutions (often by class sheltering, or simply not knowing the domain well enough). 3. Sometimes it's con artists and/or narcissists, who work the narrative to manipulate others, or to increase sense of personal glory. I don't know a complete solution to this problem of detecting evil so you can avoid working for it. I also haven't figured out a satisfying way to reconcile not wanting to work for evil, with wanting to have a comfortable life right now. Especially in "tech" right now, where a lot of bad practices have become so ordinary, we don't realize it. (And if someone called out the practices, we might get irritated like a 9th grade Economics fan, because that person who thinks that's a problem must be stupid, because we were told this is the way things are.)

prievidza 4y ago

> Of course, while I toiled in the infra mines at this company, all kinds of truly evil shit was going on, including the installation of a fascist regime in my country I guess "fascist regime" is a reference to Trump here? If so it's hard for me to take the author seriously. My grandparents survived actual fascist regime (Nazi Germany occupation during WW2), and my parents grew up in authoritarian puppet states of USSR. Trump doesn't get anywhere close to what my people went through in 20th century, and it's pretty insulting for me when people make this comparisons.

lzaaz 4y ago
That caught my eye too, I guess she's an inmigrant from some country in Europe or whatever? But there aren't any European countries with fascist regimes currently. It makes no sense whatsoever. Probably hyperbole of the bad kind. Americans have the luxury of not having had to live under a fascist regime and it shows.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  You are maybe unaware of Hungary? It is tragic.
- yownie 4y ago
  belarus comes to mind.
tokai 4y ago
Get out of here. Are you seriously going to gate keep authoritarianism? So you are not allowed to complain before millions of people are dead? And the 'my people went through in 20th century', because only a few select people can claim to have been effected by a literal world war right? What you're gps went through doesn't automatically give you any special insight. Are you sure that rachelbythebay also doesn't have some gps whos suffering she can virtue signal with? Maybe they suffered even more than yours.
- deleted 4y ago
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rivkarichler 4y ago

Interesting reading this post and the comments. I've learnt a lot from everyone's perspectives.

vintermann 4y ago

There are two questions I would ask: * Can you imagine a better world where the goods and services this company provides aren't needed? * Does it seem like the company is moving us closer to that world, or does it seem more like they would do everything in their power to prevent that world? It may be a bit of both. For instance, you could be writing software that the company will desperately try to monopolize, but also in that capacity contribute to open source software that your company uses that others could use to compete with it.

greenthrow 4y ago

I think there's two lessons I'd take from Rachel's history as it was given here. The first is that any company that relies on ad revenue is doomed. Selling ads in an ethical way requires you to say no to so many things that advertisers want. The second is that in the Uber case, from the beginning their disregard for the law was apparent. That should be a good warning sign as well. It's one thing to ignore unjust laws as an individual; we can have moral agency for reasons other than profit. A corporation is solely a prodit seeking machine and if you build disregard for laws it disagrees with into its behavior, you're going to have a bad time.

mikequinlan 4y ago

I worked for a University for 12 years; there were certainly evil people who worked there but the institution itself was certainly not evil. I can also easily imagine a company that wants to be evil but is too incompetent to accomplish it.

redditor98654 4y ago

I think about this a lot and many times I feel it is impractical to expect your company to visibly demonstrate moral ground that you can be proud of as an employee. I work at Netflix and I am happy here. Curious if any of you would consider it to be an evil company in the sense we are discussing in this post.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Netflix seems pretty neutral to me, but it's like an obese person's feeder, it enables self-harm to some extent (it seems all streaming services do). There are things that IMO could make it good, most involve encouraging users to use it less, ... now if Netflix's _goals_ include engaging viewers beyond what is healthy (rather than viewers using neutral features in that way), then that is evil. Two quick things, as a user, I would change about Netflix: 1) More childrens' content with actual people in. It's all cartoons (cheaper) whilst I hypothesise children develop better viewing real human interactions. 2) At account level build in breaks. It used to be adverts would provide a break that would encourage at least some movement and offer a chance to go off and be distracted (for adults and children alike). I'd love to say "minimum 10 minute break between episodes"; the screen would go off and only restart if interacted with after 10 minutes ... some will say "just have some will power", but IMO tech should help us with such things. Mind you, I'd also change copyright law to allow any service to stream content of one service does (no exclusives except for a limited time; forced syndication, effectively) in order to create competition and choice at the service level rather than the content level.

xen0 4y ago

I used to work for a non-profit scientific research facility. That was 6 years of definite 'not evil' work. Maybe not impactful, but not evil. Now I work for a big tech company. Maybe it's evil, but if that's true, at least evil pays better.

bluedino 4y ago

The company I work for is easily 'evil'. It's hard to avoid in the industry they are in. Their products have killed people, caused birth defects, and ruined lives in many countries around the world. Those fertilizers that hurt more than they helped? Those chemicals spread all over enemy lands during the war? That plant disaster that they tried to cover up? Everything I do helps the company be more efficient at producing these products. The in-joke is "what kind of poison are we making today?", or "what country are we killing people in with this?" On the other hand, the other 95% of the products produced here are making people's lives better.

donclark 4y ago

Is one of the indicators - if it is a publicly traded company, its probably evil?

fallingfrog 4y ago

Unfortunately our economic system ends up producing companies that do evil, and promoting people who are evil, just because of its own internal feedbacks. Consider: if you start with 10 companies in a given field, 9 of which are run by decent people with strong ethics, and one which is run by an evil bastard with no scruples whatsoever, which one will have the highest profit margins? The evil one. And so the evil one will eat the other 9, and the employees of the other 9 will be put to work doing evil things, and if the company gets large enough, the political system of the country the evil company is in will be bribed to do evil things. The counteracting force to that is organized popular movements, but those are on the defensive lately- witness congress intervening to undermine a strike when all the workers wanted was to be able to stay home when they were sick.

_8j50 4y ago

If you live in a democracy I can ask you the same question. Your government that derives its power and authority from you tolerates and collects tax from "evil" so how can you ask that question? People work to eat.

throwaway22032 4y ago

The problem with "not working for evil" is that everyone is evil. If you chose to apply the same standard to the people around you, you'd have no friends or family. Because you have friends who work for minimum wage (enabling evil), you have family members who use all of the worst social networks and have all of the voice assistants on, you have a racist uncle, you have whatever. The specific examples aren't relevant, literally everyone else does _something_ you don't like. I think it's better to try to control what precisely _you_ are doing because otherwise you'll just silo yourself into a corner until you can't do anything. It's fine to avoid working for a company whose explicit purpose is to do something you don't believe in, it's another thing to exclude basically everything because some nonzero component of what is happening isn't to your liking. Not that I practice what I preach, I'm out of work because I think video calls are evil. Bugger.