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Do you struggle to find ethical work?

• goethes_kind 3y ago
  I was thinking about this recently. What is your definition of meaningful work? I am myself also not a fan of consumerism. But is not most of our economy essentially spinning the hamster wheel of consumerism, in one way or another? Think about it. What is the goal of every industry? To keep us alive, fed, clothed, sheltered, safe and healthy. And what is the ultimate goal of reaching this Nirvana of human existence? To be able finally relax and be entertained. It all seems a bit pointless from this vantage point. This line of thinking will end up in you questioning the meaning of life.
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    Yes, I often think of a lot of the enterprise work that I have been doing as just greasing the wheels of capitalism. More and more people must be becoming aware that the economy is unsustainable. I would argue that those are not the goals of every industry. For example, the majority of the clothing industry pushes fast-fashion rather than trying to sell high-quality goods that will last and that are manufactured fairly. I could continue to give examples for other industries but in short, their main goal is to extract profit. At this point I would settle for work that is not actively causing harm to people or the environment. I've tried to find b-corps or co-operatives to work for, however, there haven't been many options out there.
• Sceptique 3y ago
  Ethical work in a world that committed fully to self destruction is not easy to find if your work is not by nature contradicting the world's way
• martopix 3y ago
  I have reached the conclusion that teaching is what I need to do in my life.
• shanghaikid 3y ago
  You can open your own company, otherwise, for the money they pay you, sometimes you have no choice.
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    I have been trying to avoid this as it would have a negative impact on the work-life balance that I have fought for, however, it could end up being the only way!
• vjerancrnjak 3y ago
  Everything is outside of your control. Including the product of your work. I worked for a company that has a very eco-friendly product yet eventually it was used by industries one might not find ethical. Simplest example is engineering of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses. Are these engineers evil? Is the automation work that was focused on machine production to blame? Why didn’t the engineers predict that their work will be transformed into an industrial slaughterhouse? Just look at what happened with gas chambers. The chain of influence is everywhere. You have to accept that eventually your work results are outside of your control even if you have an illusion of choice (self-employment, owning your own company, picking projects or clients). Once you truly accept that, from that place dilemma no longer exists.
• dusted 3y ago
  Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion). I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. My belief is in bettering the world through regulation rather than individual choice. I drive a diesel, but I'd vote for legislation banning _ALL_ diesel cars in a heatbeat. I travel by plane, but I'd be vote for implementing laws to reduce or eliminate air travel related pollution. I'd vote to ban some of the things I've worked on, definitely, and I'd have been glad to vote to put myself out of that previous job. I'm not an idealist on this point. I'll not personally sacrifice anything when the effect of my personal, specific, individual sacrifice that has direct impact for me personally, has no globally measurable impact. I'm very much for doing good things, but while I'll be glad to do them, I want everyone else to be forced to do them too, so that they work effectively, and not just be my personal little cross to bear. I won't be the one making do without X when X is legally available, ban X if it's bad, we'll all do make do without and find alternatives.
  • tailspin2019 3y ago
    > if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. I downvoted you for this. I considered not doing it but figured someone else would downvote you anyway.
    • BenoitP 3y ago
      But upvotes and downvotes are a form of regulation (global same enforcement for everyone), and not a form of market liquidity. They'd be market-liquid if HN learned an embedding of who-upvotes-what and created a bubble for each user where each sees the comments they'd upvote. In facebook/instagram/tiktok/linkedin your comment would work. (On an unrelated not, I sort wish HN would do that for posts; as I'm not interested in 95% of what makes the HN frontpage. Please bring me back hardcore technical content, please let me ignore societal/self-development/CSS/drama/etc posts. No judgement but I just don't care about that content.)
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• drt5b7j 3y ago
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• hardware2win 3y ago
  Why defence is unethical? I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now. If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.
  • cs02rm0 3y ago
    Why defence is unethical? It's not inherently unethical, that would be a very extreme, purely deontological rather than consequential/utilitarian, position to take.
  • courseofaction 3y ago
    Because you don't even give someone else the chance to not build a weapon.
    • konschubert 3y ago
      well, there are mutual disarmament treaties. Like the ones that are being cancelled by russia right now.
      • courseofaction 3y ago
        Worldwide militarism is a problem, it's a shame that governments still see force as a legitimate means of policy, and investment in force capabilities rather than mutually beneficial peaceful ones. Such waste, such idiocy. Perhaps our new AI overlords will be wiser
      • ailef 3y ago
        Or the ones canceled by the US, like the ABM and the INF treaties with Bush and Trump.
    • hardware2win 3y ago
      Ukraine decided to trust others and disarmed (nuclear). 2-3 decades passed and they have to fight for their lifes
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• konschubert 3y ago
  I think your picture of the world is too negative. Defence is a necessary evil, because otherwise you will be governed by thugs. Financial services enable people without capital to build things. While there are surely material things that you consider vain, consumption is a good thing that improves people's lives.
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• hiddencost 3y ago
  I try to balance and minimize harm. I suggest that your best bet is incremental change. Totally reskilling isn't realistic, but taking a series of jobs that move you closer to skill sets you want is. Similarly, if there are types of work you would find inspiring, can you figure out what those companies are looking for, and move towards roles that would help you become that? Working for a slightly more ethical company is a positive change. Stack up many small improvements, over the course of 5 years you might be surprised.
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    Thanks. I wasn't thinking of a total reskill, just starting to move in the right direction like you suggest. I'm just a bit concerned that the specific world of C#/Azure/Microservices limits my options.
• Teckentrup 3y ago
  You may wish to consider government work. At least in the UK it can pay quite competitively[1] with our private sector, especially when you factor in the hours they ask of you and benefits like pensions, the full package of terms I think looks surprisingly competitive. But more importantly I think the work is meaningful. Whatever your view of government in general, or any executive of the day, often tech folk in gov have a chance to make solid products that benefit millions by just working simply and smoothly. I think making services that work well, especially when users have no choice about engaging with them (and often when they get important goods and services as a result!), is one of the better streams of tech for good jobs out there. [1]: https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    This is great answer, thanks. I'm also in the UK and I'll take a look. I agree that the services that can be built for the government can be apolitical. I know that during the pandemic there was a lot of interesting work going on in the NHS. I think they created teams that were outside of the normal archaic structure of the service and allowed them a lot more freedom. Edit: Looks like the government is pretty focused on the Java stack :'(
    • Teckentrup 3y ago
      There's actually a lot of variety. Java is still popular around UK Departments but is by no means universal. The UK Government Digital Service runs services in Ruby, Python, JavaScript / TypeScript and Java [1]. Other departments with strong programming teams would include: - Department for Education (DfE) - Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - Ministry of Justice (MoJ) - Home Office Amongst others. They'll each have a tendency towards their own tech stack. This is a useful resource [2] (unofficial but run by folks who love this stuff) for finding out what services are out there, and where possible who runs them and links to open source code. Have a look around, see what you like the look of, then set some alerts or reach out to a department to ask if anyone there could tell you more about what it's like to work there... would be my advice. There are even some local authorities with pretty respectable tech operations. Hackney used to get kudos for building good things, as did Surrey. Outside of Gov, Citizens advice run off ruby last I heard, there are wonderful places like MySociety, the ODI as well as the privacy folks like EFF and Open Rights group. I agree with your core point, finding work that is meaningful to you can be hard. Even harder if you want to get paid commercial rates for it. But take heart, there's an ecosystem of folks working their socks off to make things better out there. Hopefully this links you into their networks. Good luck. [1]: https://github.com/alphagov/ https://github.com/alphagov/ [2]: https://govuk-digital-services.herokuapp.com/ https://govuk-digital-services.herokuapp.com/
• courseofaction 3y ago
  Yes. But there are problems that need to be solved which are ethical, and which can be solved. Find them and solve them, leverage your solutions for money, use that money to solve more problems. Bam - you're working for an ethical business.
• PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Yes, look at profile. I have done the calculus, and depending on the project I am working on, I make the choice on whether to stay.
• bluetomcat 3y ago
  How do you define "ethical"? Oil & gas are an essential ingredient for lifting some societies from extreme poverty. No oil & gas would mean not being able to transport a baby to the hospital or heat their room. "Fast-fashion with questionable supply chains" is only a first-world problem. In some countries, "fast fashion" is all people can afford.
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    Oil & gas industries have been aware of our path towards climite change for decades and have actively worked to suppress and discredit the science. They use their wealth to lobby against the transition to renewable energy. Only in recent years have they started to green-wash now that public opinion is more unified on the topic. The list of their crimes against the environment is endless. They make billions of dollars in profit and yet insist in cutting corners that lead to disasterous oil spills. Read about what Chevron did to Steven Donziger, who had the audacity to stand up to them.
• cs02rm0 3y ago
  I think you may have an unrealistic view of what is an ethical company. The world is a complicated mess of difficult situations. Oil can raise people out of poverty, defence can save the futures of people from aggressors, the world of finance can do a lot of good too. Everything, more or less, is double edged if you dig deep enough. Perhaps bring your ethical values to those industries you see as problematic. Otherwise, you're leaving those industries to people with different ethical views. (And that seems unethical).
• flir 3y ago
  From personal experience: Education and third sector (charities), or the companies that support them. All the universities I've ever dealt with have an ancient patchwork of backend systems, many of which are on the .NET side of the fence. Fair warning: you're not going to get fintech money in the third sector. (Lot of people telling you your personal line in the sand is wrong, rather than just answering the damn question. "Try to change an arms manufacturer from within as a grunt programmer" is especially out-there).
• atemerev 3y ago
  It depends on your ethical guidelines. I think that working in weapon industries helps to maintain peace by deterring autocrats and dictators from taking over the world (and there are a lot of them right now, so it is absolutely moral and necessary to maintain strong defence force for democratic countries). Efficient open markets are contributing to the world peace by maintaining interconnected world. It is difficult to wage war with countries you trade with. And financial service companies are contributing to the global trade and therefore world peace. Oil and gas are a declining industry (however, there is a lot to be done there to help it decline safely and ecologically responsibly). Nuclear power, however, is absolutely necessary for energy transitioning and mitigating climate change. Only adtech cannot be redeemed.
• sireat 3y ago
  You will always have problems with others not sharing your ethical values. Best you can do is strive to do better and not actively deal with those that deal in harm (according to your value set). The main problem is that EVERYONE including yourself has positive qualities along with some ethical lapses to say the least. You mentioned C#, you are aware that there are people in this world who consider Microsoft more evil than say JP Morgan? So pick your poison type of deal. If you have not done much philosophy then a good place to start would be: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, et al. Schur runs into this problem constantly that you can't avoid dealing with unethical entities.
  • Extended0088 3y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!
• hef19898 3y ago
  I did ask the same question quite often, and still do. Since you asked about product / industry, I'll skip the question of wether or not e.g. Meta is a morally acceptable employer. Now, what I realized, is that the answer to that question is highly individual. And not straight forward or clear cut. I drew my line long ago at small arms for example, but I don't mind working on defence projects. Others see no problem working in ammunitions, while refusing jobs in high pollution industries like chemicals. One thing I did learn so, as long as you are not a doctor, nurse or emergency / disaster relief worker, the litterally life saving jobs are far and few between. In the end, idealism, and highly appreciate people that have and maintain it, doesn't put food on the table. And as soon as you meed to be paid, there trade offs. Just what those trade offs are is up to you. Not very specific advice so far, but there is some good news: whatever your skill set, someone somewhere has a need for it. And someone will have need for it to do good (TM) stuff. One option, unless you want to go to the front lines of social work and development aide work (in which case, if you can upend your life to do so, by all means try it), try looking for NGOs, large and small, doing that kind of work. Or rather the kind of work that aligns best with your morals, be that environmentalists or work in poor, developing countries. Pay will be most likely low, but it can be more fulfilling. Or consider some UN orgs, e.g. the UNHCR. They do direly needed work that directly benefits people on the ground. As long as you stay in whatever industry, be aware that profits, money and power have a tendency to trump almost everything (even if not every mega corps is either Weyland-Yutani or the Umbrella Corp.). And as soon as physical supply chains get involved, well, tough luck. Because either zhe raw material and sourcing end, or the recycling end, there will a poor, litteral kid somewhere doing hazardous work for little to no pay in order not to starve. But, and that is the bad news, there is nothing an individual can about that indirect harm our way of life causes. You can look at the very list players doing as little direct harm as possible (by your definition), or actively try to mitigate some of the harm done. But please, try to keep your idealism alive and stay optimistic, there are already enough old cynic farts like myself out there. We, and the world, can use some more idealists to actually change things for the better.
• JEDI-HACKER 3y ago
  [dead]
• tailspin2019 3y ago
  I really like this question and applaud you for asking it. Heavily disagree with the comments saying “there’s no point”, “it’s out of your control” etc. We always have a choice.
• vinay_ys 3y ago
  In capitalist economy, if something is extremely profitable at scale, it means a lot of people paid for it willingly. Usually, such things are not harmful by societal standards of the day. Working on such things is acceptable. If you want to change societal standards, you can make meaningful impact only if you are powerful – power through money, politics or influence. You don't make any impact on society through your own lone-wolf personal sacrifices in your private life. Ergo, work towards becoming powerful first and then work on using your power to make societal change. Btw, world needs all kinds of people doing all kinds of work. Most work is towards keeping the world running as it is (KTLO work). Very little work that happens in the world is venture bets (trying something crazy new that might work). Then there's some work that actually results in changes to societal norms - those are strategic bets. Only the powerful get to make those strategic bets. Note: Power is most often in the form of having shit tons of personal money to spend. And sometimes in the form of political power and through influence over masses (rarely you get either of those without making friends with people with money). It is extremely rare to be powerful without either.
• Eliah_Lakhin 3y ago
  As mentioned in the comments, our world is driven by consumerism. I don't like this fact too, but I have to pay my checks every month, so I have to accept the compromises. I obviously avoid to do any commitments in the military sector, and the industries that harm the environment. I have to admit the fact that any input that I make into the consumerism economy has indirect harmful impact anyway. By this reason I prefer to specialize in the front-end webdev, which, I believe, has the least impact in general. I would prefer to live in an economy driven by inventions at first place, and with long-term planning where the most of initiatives would be well thought beforehand, and be developed in years before they start giving results, rather than in modern startup economy where everyone expect the results here and now. And in the world that would be driven by more decent people too. My personal sphere of interests is around quite specific aspects in research of programming language compilers. But there are too few job offerings in this field, so I have to earn money in more trending fields.
• neilv 3y ago
  One of the things that I worked on of which I'm proudest, was a data science platform for some really admirable US aviation safety programs, working in an elite team. That said, in my HCOLA city, today I'm competing for housing with people who spent the same decade working at FAANGs and biotechs (as well as competing with old-money and foreign investors). You generally won't get wealthy by working for the government or a federal contractor. And you could be simply priced out of your city -- if not immediately, then as climate change, geopolitical power shifts, "AI", and ongoing wealth concentration disrupt things. A colleague (who's done a lot of real activist work, mostly behind the scenes, since before the recent wave of fashionable activism), and who was there with me as a skilled techie at the start of the dotcoms, later said something like, "we should've taken the money, and then had the money for do-gooding after". I haven't had the positive impact he has, and in hindsight he might've been right (though it was more complicated than that). But I'm not necessarily encouraging "take the money", as blanket advice for everyone. That's already the default that people do. And another default is for the person who might've said something about "improving the system from within" to then get acclimated to behavior they previously questioned, and instead chase career status and wealth. Most of us don't need to be encouraged to follow the default, and instead probably need to be nudged more to understand and be inspired to do better for society.
• s_dev 3y ago
  The only purely ethical tech company I think of is the Wikimedia Foundation. Perfectly moral product with zero real negative impacts on the world, amenable work env.
• aeze 3y ago
  I faced a similar dilemma which led me to leave a big 4 consulting firm to join a non-profit focused on a mission that I could get behind (substance use, my family has had a history with it). I don't regret the decision at all. I took a massive paycut, but I feel better - and I'm still writing software.
• Nullinker 3y ago
  I also have ethical standards for employers. I do feel like it has limited my career in some ways and that I did not accumulate as much wealth as I could have had if I had different standards. I do have the peace of mind that I can tell myself that I tried to make things better, of course there is more I could have done but I have accepted that there are limits to what to expect of yourself and others. I did struggle finding work that would actively make the world better, and have limited my ambitions in that regards. I now settle for not actively making things worse. I now work on software for accountants to automate and streamline workflows for them and their customers so everybody can spend less time on doing accounting and filing their taxes and just do whatever they are trying to do. One benefit is that avoiding exploitative businesses also seems to have a good correlation of avoiding toxic work environments. I am still often disappointed that many people seem to totally absolve any responsibility by deferring ethical decision making to whatever organization they are involved in. It's a chilling realization after interacting with someone to realize that their ethical compass just does not seem there, and they are completely unaware or OK with that. I remember so many history classes in school where we would learn about how average people became involved in horrible things, and the few people that would stand up against it and face hardships because of it. Maybe the lesson was not that you should strive to be one of those people that stands up for what is right, but that it just the way it is that most people don't would rather keep their heads down.
• neilv 3y ago
  This post quickly got a lot of activity once it hit page 1, then was buried to page 12. 348. Do you struggle to find ethical work? | 41 points by Extended0088 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 67 comments
• karmakaze 3y ago
  I've gone through a similar thought process when deciding what to do (next). At the time I was in retail Forex which amounts to gambling. After a while I accepted/reframed it as entertainment with a false sense of investment which was tolerable. I didn't want to work in fintech (too derivative/decoupled) nor adtech. What I found was working at smaller companies/startups that solve specific problems/areas, e.g. photography. Now I'm at an e/comerce platform which does have a percentage of fast fashion but on the whole promotes trade which connects economies and individual independence which is net plus.
• eimrine 3y ago
  Programming except of FOSS is unethical as well, especially Java/C#. Spying and dark patterns seems much worse than miltech and oil&gas for me because I need gas for heating my house and I need weapons for protecting my country.
• friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Yup, sure do. That's why I don't work in SV. I personally would rather work for an energy or finance company (no retail consumer products) than for an SV company. I don't really find energy production or financial tools unethical, what I find unethical is addicting people to their phones for ad revenue, or building companies just to sell to someone who's going to do that anyway. Or trying to find out how people like to fuck so that they can be shilled a different brand of dog food or whatever. I don't know what to tell you. In the professional world we are all assumed to be willing to do whatever for a paycheck as long as it's legal. A lot of jobs are going to try to get you to do shit that doesn't align with your values. The best I can come up with is work on mundane stuff like information processing tools or something, where you won't be expected to actually build unethical stuff. You could make games, but you'll probably be pressured to build slot machine level addictive pay to play mini games for kids. Building some back end software that performs a computation on a data feed for a financial services firm that helps increase 401k valuations over time doesn't really sound that unethical in comparison.
• Apreche 3y ago
  Absolutely yes. When I’m looking for jobs, or recruiters come looking for me, well over 90% of the opportunities I have to turn away right from the start because I’m morally opposed to the company. Just a small sample of the thing I’m morally opposed to, finance, crypto, advertising, defense, anything that severely contributes to global warming (automotive, fossil fuels), gambling, for-profit medicine, anything that’s profiting from invading people’s privacy. Somehow I’ve still managed to find jobs I find acceptable, but I also could have, and could be, making a lot more money if I didn’t have such a restriction. I guess if I was in dire straits, I would take a job at an immoral place just to survive, but I’d be constantly looking to get out as soon as I got in.
• phagenlocher 3y ago
  Even when you do ethical work there is a question about the effectiveness of the work. At least that is something that I struggle with. While the software I work on benefits healthcare workers I often question if and how my contributions are actually making a difference. Maybe a small one? To me that raises the question whether it would make more sense to work for a bank / hedge fund and just donate the money I would make there to good causes -- effective altruism style. But that seems like extreme mental gymnastics to me.
• tennisflyi 3y ago
  Most people take the work they can get. So no.
• nec4b 3y ago
  What exactly is unethical about any of the industries you enumerated?