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Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me. Not in a "new-grad or corporate

by neilv 5mo ago

Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me. Not in a "new-grad or corporate PR appropriating meaningless platitudes" kind of way. But in a "I have seen multiple times how one untrustworthy person can easily wreck all the work of a team or organization, and make their lives miserable, so averting that is a high priority" kind of way. Lately, in business context, I tend to characterize what I seek from people as "alignment". I think that many (not all) business people are still willing to buy in on that. And it will just have to be a given that the company and team goals with which people are aligned are respectable. What seems to be getting more difficult in the last few years is finding companies with respectable goals. Of course you knew to avoid any company in crypto. But now, with with a new VC gold rush of AI (often involving the same people who were happy to run crypto scams), there aren't a lot of startups that look respectable. Not all AI companies, nor all companies doing AI, are bad. But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush?

MrDarcy 5mo ago
> But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush? Look for those who are trying to serve established respectable professions, ideally have already done so for many years or decades. Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism (in the ideal sense). Then look at their own mission. Then look at their own work. Do they show their work? Are they open? Do they willingly allow their customers to audit their work product? Does how they talk about their work match the work product itself? Does the thing do what it says on the tin? Are they hypocrites with respect to those they serve or those they manage? These are my strategies and I’ve found they lead to working almost exclusively with people who have high Integrity.
- underlipton 5mo ago
  >established respectable professions >Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism In America, in 2026, this is a particularly dark joke.
  - MrDarcy 5mo ago
    I think this is the comment that drives me off this site permanently. It’s been a good decade and a half.
    - esseph 5mo ago
      Why?
      - bryanrasmussen 5mo ago
        it's evidently a dig at Trump and Republican morals, although if you were inattentive you might expect that it was the opposite. The giveaway is the "in 2026", which implies that it would not be a dark joke in other years. Thus the poster is evidently indicating that: The legal system has been undermined and been shown to have no integrity because it allows illegal actions by the rich and the political class. Journalism has been undermined because major media outlets have been purchased by rich people who only allow the media to publish pro-conservative, pro-rich, talking points. Healthcare is a larger stretch for their dark joke, but the governmental agency that sets the rules for healthcare research and what are the socially approved recommendations is run by RFK Jr. who is a well-known anti-vaxx guy, also the U.S has left WHO and may not get access to WHO data anymore, and last year the CEO of an insurance company got shot basically for denying insurance claims for healthcare, indicating some level of corruption. There may also be more dark joke levels in regards to healthcare if one is a female. Accounting is also something of a stretch, but there are governmental shenanigans where common accounting practices are involved that indicate corruption and that might make you feel like "accounting, what a joke" /strawman quotes there That, at any rate, is what I suppose can only be meant by the somewhat obtuse phrase dark joke in 2026. On edit: no wait, CEO of United Healthcare got shot at the end of 2024.
        simoncion 5mo ago
        > ...although if you were inattentive you might expect that it was the opposite. Speaking as a USian: If one hasn't been paying attention, one might have missed the deterioration of the courts and law enforcement apparatus, the normalization of many types of fraud (accounting included), the consolidation of news companies and subsequent decimation of effective investigative journalism, as well as the gradual deterioration of healthcare over the past several decades (with bonus acceleration of the healthcare deterioration around 2019 when folks decided to get the fuck out of a profession run by people who evidently gave few shits about the safety and wellbeing of its practitioners and the efficacy and timeliness of the care given to those served by it). I'll not claim that this Administration isn't the most visibly worse one we've had in quite a while, because that's plainly untrue. This Administration does do absolutely awful things that -in a just world- folks would be tried and imprisoned for, and do those things very loudly and visibly. But, well, there's a lot of precedent for Administrations doing (and/or turning a blind eye to) just godawful things.
- HexPhantom 5mo ago
  I especially like "do they show their work?" In a gold rush, obscurity is often part of the business model: vague claims, unverifiable demos, hand-wavy benchmarks, carefully managed customer stories. Companies serving serious professions eventually have to deal with people who ask boring, concrete questions and expect boring, concrete answers
- jgalt212 5mo ago
  A lot of America's current problems can be pinned on journalism no longer being a prestige career.
HexPhantom 5mo ago
Maybe a respectable company is one where the answer to "what would make this business more profitable but worse for the world?" is not treated as a product roadmap
kaladin-jasnah 5mo ago
As a new grad, I think a lot of the companies that have respectable goals to me only hire at the senior level. So what am I supposed to do, go do something I deeply disagree with for a few years so I can eventually work on something respectable?
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  Yes, if that's the viable path. The world isn't a perfect place, and you still need to eat. Also, you can do your own job with personal integrity regardless of what others are doing.
  - kaladin-jasnah 5mo ago
    To be fair, I have done things I don't really agree with in the past morally and I couldn't really stand myself or grow as a technologist. The lack of morality in what I did made me work slowly and poorly. So it makes things hard.
- neilv 5mo ago
  Congrats on graduating. Like everyone else at the moment, you're living in interesting times. AFAIK, there are not enough respectable companies for even the senior engineers. (And you may have already noticed that a lot of companies are run by people who make a half-hearted effort to drape the company with positive PR language. But they'll soon hint at their true intentions with their actions. Even in a brand new startup, you can simply look at equity allocation, to see what the founder actually thinks about warm-fuzzy ideas like social equality and valuing others: compare their allocation of wannabe-billionaire founder shares, to the token amount of peanuts in stock options that they think the first hires deserve if the company is successful.) The good news is that a lot of people are looking for high total compensation, or career stability, as higher priorities than respectability, so... less competition for the respectable jobs. One idea: make a ranking list of companies based on how respectable you think they are (recognizing that most have downsides), and then see how close to the top of the ranking you should focus your energies. Do a first shot at this ranking early on (and revise over time based on actions, not overtures), and you might check yourself when a company with low respectability ranking approaches you. When you find a good company, let people know.

by neilv 5mo ago

MrDarcy 5mo ago

> But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush? Look for those who are trying to serve established respectable professions, ideally have already done so for many years or decades. Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism (in the ideal sense). Then look at their own mission. Then look at their own work. Do they show their work? Are they open? Do they willingly allow their customers to audit their work product? Does how they talk about their work match the work product itself? Does the thing do what it says on the tin? Are they hypocrites with respect to those they serve or those they manage? These are my strategies and I’ve found they lead to working almost exclusively with people who have high Integrity.

underlipton 5mo ago
>established respectable professions >Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism In America, in 2026, this is a particularly dark joke.
- MrDarcy 5mo ago
  I think this is the comment that drives me off this site permanently. It’s been a good decade and a half.
  - esseph 5mo ago
    Why?
    - bryanrasmussen 5mo ago
      it's evidently a dig at Trump and Republican morals, although if you were inattentive you might expect that it was the opposite. The giveaway is the "in 2026", which implies that it would not be a dark joke in other years. Thus the poster is evidently indicating that: The legal system has been undermined and been shown to have no integrity because it allows illegal actions by the rich and the political class. Journalism has been undermined because major media outlets have been purchased by rich people who only allow the media to publish pro-conservative, pro-rich, talking points. Healthcare is a larger stretch for their dark joke, but the governmental agency that sets the rules for healthcare research and what are the socially approved recommendations is run by RFK Jr. who is a well-known anti-vaxx guy, also the U.S has left WHO and may not get access to WHO data anymore, and last year the CEO of an insurance company got shot basically for denying insurance claims for healthcare, indicating some level of corruption. There may also be more dark joke levels in regards to healthcare if one is a female. Accounting is also something of a stretch, but there are governmental shenanigans where common accounting practices are involved that indicate corruption and that might make you feel like "accounting, what a joke" /strawman quotes there That, at any rate, is what I suppose can only be meant by the somewhat obtuse phrase dark joke in 2026. On edit: no wait, CEO of United Healthcare got shot at the end of 2024.
      - simoncion 5mo ago
        > ...although if you were inattentive you might expect that it was the opposite. Speaking as a USian: If one hasn't been paying attention, one might have missed the deterioration of the courts and law enforcement apparatus, the normalization of many types of fraud (accounting included), the consolidation of news companies and subsequent decimation of effective investigative journalism, as well as the gradual deterioration of healthcare over the past several decades (with bonus acceleration of the healthcare deterioration around 2019 when folks decided to get the fuck out of a profession run by people who evidently gave few shits about the safety and wellbeing of its practitioners and the efficacy and timeliness of the care given to those served by it). I'll not claim that this Administration isn't the most visibly worse one we've had in quite a while, because that's plainly untrue. This Administration does do absolutely awful things that -in a just world- folks would be tried and imprisoned for, and do those things very loudly and visibly. But, well, there's a lot of precedent for Administrations doing (and/or turning a blind eye to) just godawful things.
HexPhantom 5mo ago
I especially like "do they show their work?" In a gold rush, obscurity is often part of the business model: vague claims, unverifiable demos, hand-wavy benchmarks, carefully managed customer stories. Companies serving serious professions eventually have to deal with people who ask boring, concrete questions and expect boring, concrete answers
jgalt212 5mo ago
A lot of America's current problems can be pinned on journalism no longer being a prestige career.

HexPhantom 5mo ago

Maybe a respectable company is one where the answer to "what would make this business more profitable but worse for the world?" is not treated as a product roadmap

kaladin-jasnah 5mo ago

As a new grad, I think a lot of the companies that have respectable goals to me only hire at the senior level. So what am I supposed to do, go do something I deeply disagree with for a few years so I can eventually work on something respectable?

SoftTalker 5mo ago
Yes, if that's the viable path. The world isn't a perfect place, and you still need to eat. Also, you can do your own job with personal integrity regardless of what others are doing.
- kaladin-jasnah 5mo ago
  To be fair, I have done things I don't really agree with in the past morally and I couldn't really stand myself or grow as a technologist. The lack of morality in what I did made me work slowly and poorly. So it makes things hard.
neilv 5mo ago
Congrats on graduating. Like everyone else at the moment, you're living in interesting times. AFAIK, there are not enough respectable companies for even the senior engineers. (And you may have already noticed that a lot of companies are run by people who make a half-hearted effort to drape the company with positive PR language. But they'll soon hint at their true intentions with their actions. Even in a brand new startup, you can simply look at equity allocation, to see what the founder actually thinks about warm-fuzzy ideas like social equality and valuing others: compare their allocation of wannabe-billionaire founder shares, to the token amount of peanuts in stock options that they think the first hires deserve if the company is successful.) The good news is that a lot of people are looking for high total compensation, or career stability, as higher priorities than respectability, so... less competition for the respectable jobs. One idea: make a ranking list of companies based on how respectable you think they are (recognizing that most have downsides), and then see how close to the top of the ranking you should focus your energies. Do a first shot at this ranking early on (and revise over time based on actions, not overtures), and you might check yourself when a company with low respectability ranking approaches you. When you find a good company, let people know.