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One of the better "service to humanity" opportunities for software engineers is to join a company like Meta or TikTok and perform awfully for as long as you can

One of the better "service to humanity" opportunities for software engineers is to join a company like Meta or TikTok and perform awfully for as long as you can.

saagarjha 1y ago
Yeah I'm making the world a better place by earning 500k a year doing a bad job to slow down this company. Look at how much good I am doing sorry I can't hear you over my paycheck clearing
- komali2 1y ago
  Activism doesn't require participation in a poverty cult. Any socialist in a nation like the USA or the UK is by someone's lens a champagne socialist. Let's not participate in this tired trope.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Who said anything about socialism? There are many ways to criticize Meta from non-socialist angles.
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    I don't think you need to be poor to protest injustice. I just think that joining Meta so that you can "bring it down from the inside" is unlikely to be effective and very easy to justify to yourself.
Hammershaft 1y ago
I think a better service to humanity is to excel at your job even if you end up at a socially corrosive org like Meta or Tiktok but donate a decent chunk of your paycheck to effective altruist charities that save lives.
- kriops 1y ago
  A better service to humanity yet is taking that money and spending it on whatever is valuable to yourself, thus providing more people with the opportunity to sustainably work for a living. Capitalism and all that.
  - ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
    There is no reason to expect "buy stuff you want" to be more charitable than charity. At a glance, the stuff itself obviously takes up a good chunk of the money and much is going to end up in the hands of people who already have plenty. You emphasize "sustainably", but how is it more sustainable to give 500k/year to capitalism until you don't make that much / retire / die? In either option, that 500k/year is there until it isn't. With charity, you'd help more people but it would be no more or less sustainable.
    - kriops 1y ago
      “More charitable than charity” is circular – nothing can be more charitable than charity. Something can however be a lot more valuable than any action by which value is destroyed. Destroying value, by the way, can by definition not be sustainable. Alas, opportunity cost is (also by definition) not directly observable, so it gets dismissed. Hence, e.g., the broken window fallacy. You don’t “give to capitalism”, you engage in voluntary transactions with other individuals and legal entities, such that they are a net (expected) gain in value for all parties involved.
  - CPLX 1y ago
    The idea that all decisions under capitalism are value-neutral is ludicrous. By your definition, selling arms to dictators and using the money to buy a yacht and private security qualifies as "service to humanity."
    - kriops 1y ago
      The entire point of capitalism is that they are not. That is also the reason why there is no real alternative to the price mechanism wrt. resource allocation at scale.
CPLX 1y ago
The best way to serve humanity in your professional life is serve humanity in your professional life. In other words, be useful. You don't have to worry about "being good" or "doing good" though many do and it's quite admirable to do so. But that's not the bar you have to clear. The bar you should try to clear is to be useful. If what you're doing all day is helping people have shelter, or raise families, or be more healthy, or have more knowledge, or even be entertained or amused, you're being useful to people. If what you do all day ultimately serves to make people poorer, more divided, more addicted, and more unwell, then what you're doing is not useful, it's harmful. If what you're doing all day primarily contributes, even indirectly, to making people's lives worse, then nothing you do after that will erase it. Arguments to the contrary are just rationalization.

One of the better "service to humanity" opportunities for software engineers is to join a company like Meta or TikTok and perform awfully for as long as you can.

saagarjha 1y ago

Yeah I'm making the world a better place by earning 500k a year doing a bad job to slow down this company. Look at how much good I am doing sorry I can't hear you over my paycheck clearing

komali2 1y ago
Activism doesn't require participation in a poverty cult. Any socialist in a nation like the USA or the UK is by someone's lens a champagne socialist. Let's not participate in this tired trope.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Who said anything about socialism? There are many ways to criticize Meta from non-socialist angles.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I don't think you need to be poor to protest injustice. I just think that joining Meta so that you can "bring it down from the inside" is unlikely to be effective and very easy to justify to yourself.

Hammershaft 1y ago

I think a better service to humanity is to excel at your job even if you end up at a socially corrosive org like Meta or Tiktok but donate a decent chunk of your paycheck to effective altruist charities that save lives.

kriops 1y ago
A better service to humanity yet is taking that money and spending it on whatever is valuable to yourself, thus providing more people with the opportunity to sustainably work for a living. Capitalism and all that.
- ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
  There is no reason to expect "buy stuff you want" to be more charitable than charity. At a glance, the stuff itself obviously takes up a good chunk of the money and much is going to end up in the hands of people who already have plenty. You emphasize "sustainably", but how is it more sustainable to give 500k/year to capitalism until you don't make that much / retire / die? In either option, that 500k/year is there until it isn't. With charity, you'd help more people but it would be no more or less sustainable.
  - kriops 1y ago
    “More charitable than charity” is circular – nothing can be more charitable than charity. Something can however be a lot more valuable than any action by which value is destroyed. Destroying value, by the way, can by definition not be sustainable. Alas, opportunity cost is (also by definition) not directly observable, so it gets dismissed. Hence, e.g., the broken window fallacy. You don’t “give to capitalism”, you engage in voluntary transactions with other individuals and legal entities, such that they are a net (expected) gain in value for all parties involved.
- CPLX 1y ago
  The idea that all decisions under capitalism are value-neutral is ludicrous. By your definition, selling arms to dictators and using the money to buy a yacht and private security qualifies as "service to humanity."
  - kriops 1y ago
    The entire point of capitalism is that they are not. That is also the reason why there is no real alternative to the price mechanism wrt. resource allocation at scale.

CPLX 1y ago

The best way to serve humanity in your professional life is serve humanity in your professional life. In other words, be useful. You don't have to worry about "being good" or "doing good" though many do and it's quite admirable to do so. But that's not the bar you have to clear. The bar you should try to clear is to be useful. If what you're doing all day is helping people have shelter, or raise families, or be more healthy, or have more knowledge, or even be entertained or amused, you're being useful to people. If what you do all day ultimately serves to make people poorer, more divided, more addicted, and more unwell, then what you're doing is not useful, it's harmful. If what you're doing all day primarily contributes, even indirectly, to making people's lives worse, then nothing you do after that will erase it. Arguments to the contrary are just rationalization.