Why did God give me integrity?
This morning, as I was sipping my coffee and nodding along to a BetterOffline podcast on how LLMs are breaking big tech, I checked my inbox to see if I heard back from any of the tech companies I applied to.
To my surprise, I did! I had an email inviting me to schedule an interview with a recruiter. I clicked the link, scheduled an interview for the earliest available time, and felt encouraged about having a job again.
And then I got the automated confirmation email which included some recommended reading material about the company. And when I clicked on those links, that's when I realized I don't remember applying to this company. (In my defense, I've been sending out lots of applications.)
I applied to a company that was building software for municipal emergency services, helping dispatchers, coordinating rescue operations, etc. Basically software that tries to save lives.
The company I heard back from is Palantir / Anduril / Flock adjacent.
Fuck.
Apparently the company I applied to was bought out by these guys.
I don't want to work at a job where the company makes weapons, mass surveillance systems, or software designed to target / kill / deport people.
But what if that evil company is hiring for their genuinely-not-evil department? Can I stomach working for them then?
I recently read Serious Endeavor's my evil job does not make me evil here on Bear, which you should go read as it's very relevant here.
Basically it's a bunch of quotes you'd hear someone say as they try to defend working at an evil company. The lines that are hitting hard this morning are:
...
I'm not even that responsible for most of the evil things we're doing.
Most of that is a completely different department.
And when I clock in at my evil job, know that I'm against the evil parts.
...
I want to be able to sleep at night. I want to be proud of the work I do, the things I build, who I surround myself with.
It's such a shame that I'm having a hard time finding a company that isn't controversial. And that the tech industry is becoming increasingly immoral.
At least I have a skill set that is in demand! I can go on LinkedIn and find so many good opportunities. I can go work for a crypto startup, helping scam millions of people out of their life savings! I can work at Meta and make teens want to kill themselves! I can work at OpenAI and build a chatbot that's wrecking havoc on the environment, the economy, built off IP theft, and is literally helping teens kill themselves! I can work at Google and help build out their advertising surveillance network! I can work at a facial recognition firm that sells to the military! Or go into fintech, helping the rich get richer! The world needs more rich people, don't you know.
And all of those jobs pay really fucking well. Alas, I have integrity.
But...
Am I too woke? Am I naive? Am I being unrealistic? The world isn't black and white. Literally nothing is perfect. Everything has shades of grey.
Those companies (some, at least) are doing good things as well. On a hackernews thread about Google's year in review:
... But the Nobel winning contributions to quantum computing, the advances in healthcare and medicine, the cutting edge AI hardware, and the best in class weather models go way beyond what you might have expected. Google could have been an advertising company with a search engine. I'm glad they aren't.
Also in that thread is a link to the wikipedia page on splitting, which is basically "the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative qualities of something into a cohesive, realistic whole".
These companies aren't all bad. They aren't all good. I'm still conflicted, and now I'm afraid of rationalizing myself into working for an evil corp.
"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
I don't want my salary to make me forget my morals.
What are your thoughts? What advice would you give me?
Email me at: antelope41 at duck dot com