[throwaway613834]

I don't know how to respond to this. If you're a software engineer with a typical role at {insert "evil" company here} who is just trying to do the best in their role, are you making the world a better or a worse place? It's not like they're making the product decisions (and that's what I've been telling myself -- they're not the ones making the decisions; they're just implementing them), but it's also not like they aren't contributing to the "success" of their company. And certainly they could be working somewhere else that has a more positive role in making the world a better place. How do you draw a line?

[KGIII]

What is the level of culpability for a foot soldier in the army of an evil dictator? What is the level if they committed no atrocities? How about if they were an active participant? How about if they were zealous and inspired new levels of atrocious behavior?

I don't have an answer and those are rhetorical questions. The point I'm laboring to make is that there are varied levels of culpability. There are also varied levels of evilness.

We like to see the world in binary fashion, I think. This may not be new, but it is getting a lot more visible. Look at the political arena and the divisions between the politically active.

Hmm... How to describe this?

If I make a post that supports the right of Nazis to speak freely, I'm assumed to be as evil as they are (by some) and should be punched in the face. Yet, if I am speaking with White Nationalists and post a comment that supports the right for AntiFa to speak freely, I'm called everything from a Jew to communist.

They don't actually take the time to stop and think that I'm not actually any of those things, that I'm just supporting the right to free speech - for everyone. If I'm not supporting Hillary, I'm supporting Trump - even though I voted for Stein.

So, there are varied levels of evil and good - yet people seem to often focus on the extremes. Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

It's very much a sliding scale and no company is completely evil, as is no one person. Well, except Oracle - they are pretty evil!

I guess where you draw the line is a personal thing and, like the rest, is on a sliding scale. It's easier to try to place things into boxes and label them good and evil, but that's intellectually lazy and not very accurate. Even the most evil companies aren't entirely evil.

shrugs

That's my takeaway, for what it's worth. I also try really hard to not judge or to control. I do have lines that can be crossed, but I try to be understanding and have empathy.

I'm not sure if this helps, but it works for me.

[mbrock]

It seems to me that the basically religious concept of "evil" causes a lot of confusion.

What Google, Facebook, and Amazon are is primarily extremely powerful.

The U.S. government, say, does a lot of nasty, undesirable things; it also does a lot of benevolent, desirable things.

Working in these institutions means, to varying degrees, aligning yourself with the motives of extremely powerful entities.

But of course it also means potentially influencing that power in a way that you and your peers would recognize as benevolent.

Neither Google, Facebook, nor Amazon have core missions that are obviously bad, i.e., they are not directly opposed to a free society, they are not fundamentally violent, they are basically not the Nazi Party.

But they do share a core mission that is enormously expansive, kind of like the East India companies. Operationally, they are very likely to use some foul tactics in order to grow and compete.

As long as we have the global kind of capitalism where for-profit corporations grow into hyperobjects, it seems like we will have a top layer of quasi-monopolies using information technology and capital accumulation to dominate.

And according to the ideology, you can't really stop that without violating the principles of liberty. Basically to prevent such formations you need a powerful state, and that state will itself be such a formation, except with elections (hopefully, and maybe only nominally).

You might even need a global state-like entity, right?

If we use the word evil to describe Google, Facebook, and Amazon, I think we should rather say that the structure of capitalism is evil, and that'll get you into trouble.

Especially because this is a forum topically and structurally centered on the very impulse to launch exponentially growing IT firms.

This site is a promotional and educational wing of Y Combinator, which in its essence desires to be a recursively powerful generator of new mega-corporations, structurally bound to the multiplication of accumulated capital.

So, umm, yeah.

[yladiz]

The main issue with this argument is that you can't really choose the government you live in, especially if it's under a strong dictator (e.g. you can move from the US, you can't just from North Korea), but you can choose who you work for, especially when it deals with tech companies.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

Or have they?

Just because a monopoly provides a useful service, doesn't mean that without that monopoly we wouldn't have that useful service, in which case their net contribution to society would not actually be that service, but just their monopoly power over the service, which is not exactly a net positive.

[mirimir]

Soldiers typically have a duty to refuse immoral orders.

[KGIII]

And what if the soldier was never given immoral orders but was a simple cook who fed those who carried out the orders?

I know what you're saying, but that's why I listed all those example questions. I listed them to show there are various levels of culpability and various levels of evil.

Where you draw the line is a personal thing and I'm not qualified to suggest where you draw it on an individual level.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Really, the important question is: What realistic chance did they have to not contribute without killing themselves? I guess one can argue about whether people should also be required to kill themselves to prevent evil, but that certainly is a good minimum.

[taway_1212]

A duty to whom? In most armies and wars, insisting to refuse an order, moral or not, will get you in front of a firing squad (or, if it's a really civilized army, in jail).

[ionised]

The allied powers collectively decided that I was just following orders was not a credible defence of anything during the Nuremberg trials.

[taway_1212]

I kind of see their point - under this defense, the only person you could really convict would be Hitler (everybody else was following orders). I'm guessing the logic here is that if you were for example a commander a Nazi death squad that was doing mass murders of Jews in Eastern Poland, then yeah, you were following orders, but you could have also asked to be transferred to something else.

I'm not sure this logic would hold for Soviet genocides though (not that they were tried at Nuremberg), as I suspect a hint of hestitation from say NKWD commander would probably result in him being promptly sent to Gulag to die. During Stalin's rule, pretty much everybody was operating with a gun to their heads at all times.

[ionised]

I think the logic during the trials was that even if disobeying orders meant punishment such as torture or death, that was preferable to committing the crimes for which they were standing trial.

As in, your potential death or suffering at the hands of your superiors is also not a credible defence for what you did.

That obviously makes a lot more sense in the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity though.

[mirimir]

Well, it does depend on the army, I admit. And "immoral" was probably not a good term. More like "an order that seems to violate policy". But following illicit orders can also get you in trouble.

[porker]

That sounds very much like the "just following" orders defence, also known as "Superior Orders". More details @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

[throwaway613834]

Yeah I know. But it's also true that if they tried to do the opposite of what they were told (or if they just refused) then they'd get fired. So what do you do?

[microtonal]

Just stop pretending that working at {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} is the highest goal that a tech person can strife for. A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

Also, we have to be honest with ourselves. While we (as a community) were hating Microsoft, we made Google our tech darling. Now they are ethically probably as rotten as Microsoft were in the early ~2000s. We should stop putting companies on pedestals. Then they might suck less talent out of other potential startups, academia, and non-profits and create a healthier economy.

I think practically this means investing in open standards, open source, and open networks (Mastodon for Twitter, MusicBrainz for CDDB, Openstreetmap for Google/Apple maps, etc.). Also, tech people and journalists should continue to expose bad behaviour of companies.

[kelnos]

This is the thing I don't get. While certainly Google, Facebook, and Amazon are working on a lot of interesting problems, they're also big behemoths and your individual contribution isn't going to be all that noticeable.

At this point in my career I could likely get a job at any of the three of them if I wanted to and worked at it, but I'm not really sure I want to. I'd rather work at a smaller company where what I do every day actually matters as to whether or not the company will succeed or fail.

I guess that's just my preference, though; perhaps people like at G/F/A because they get to work on interesting projects without the stress associated with their output being a make-or-break for the company. And there's certainly more job security at a larger company than one that could more easily slip into hard times.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Just stop pretending that working at {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} is the highest goal that a tech person can strife for. A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

It's not, you have to admit, a terrible goal. Granted, a lot of the people at the big 4 do rather mundane things but there are also opportunities at those places to build software that (literally) affects the whole world and leave lasting contributions to the software engineering field for those with the talent and drive.

> Also, we have to be honest with ourselves. While we (as a community) were hating Microsoft, we made Google our tech darling. Now they are ethically probably as rotten as Microsoft were in the early ~2000s.

I'm incredibly amused to see people starting to say this because I've been around enough to remember when IBM was the "ethically rotten" behemoth and Microsoft was the tech darling who saved us from their evil clutches; the more things change, the more they stay the same. I don't think people will stop putting companies on a pedestal; it makes for too compelling a narrative.

Who will be the new tech darling to save us from Google's evil clutches?

[dagw]

A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

I wonder if that really is their goal? I think if you pushed them on it you'll probably find that their true life goal was to earn a massive salary while hanging out with smart people and fucking around with cool tech. It just so happens that (they believe that) {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} will offer them that.

I suspect there is a good reason that Google, Facebook etc. structure their work setting on an idealized version of the university campus.

[microtonal]

I wonder if that really is their goal?

The aspects that you mention definitely count as well, but I think that prestige is a large part of it (both in the field and among family/friends).

[rmc]

They will also provide free food, a laundry service, etc. It's basically like having your mother look after you!

[sillysaurus3]

The most productive thing: Voice dissent. Ensure the higher-ups have thought through their position and the consequences. Assume they know things you don't. Ultimately, follow the order.

Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

[microtonal]

Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

Uhm, no? You have another choice: not working for companies that work as privatised spying agencies.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

WTF? There are still people who haven't grasped that that is basically the recipe for all man-made humanitarian catastophes in human history?

[kelnos]

You need to draw the line somewhere, though.

As an extreme example, if a company I worked at decided that they were going to murder someone, I would certainly voice my dissent. If they decided to continue to go through with it, I'd quit.

Sure, that's a bit hyperbolic, but consider companies like Palantir that work on things that actively erode citizen privacy. I'd never work at a company like that, and if my employer suddenly shifted gears to work on things like that, I'd quit.

"Following orders" is for the military... and even then I would hope someone in the armed forces would refuse to comply with an unlawful or otherwise morally horrible order.

[throwaway613834]

Okay, so how do I get my friends to do that is the question. Conveying this requires getting them to admit there is something wrong with what their employer is doing in the first place, and at that point I'd be already past the obstacle I'm trying to figure out how to overcome.

[sverige]

After reading most of the comments, I think you tell them bluntly what you're thinking.

If they listen to you, maybe they'll quit. If you lose their friendship, you can make new ones who don't work for evil companies.

And if they keep doing evil things for a living but still want to be your friend, maybe you should be the one to end the friendship. I've done that a few times. It gets easier with practice.

[sillysaurus3]

If they listen to you, maybe they'll quit. If you lose their friendship, you can make new ones who don't work for evil companies.

This is what I meant by "Don't try to control your friends."

If you don't let your friends have radically different beliefs from your own, you're just making an echo chamber for yourself.

[alloyed]

If your intent is to improve the world, and not just act superior, I don't see what this accomplishes. Hear dissent without action long enough and it becomes noise.

[ionised]

That sounds ridiculously cynical and half-arsed to me.

This accomplishes nothing.

[addHocker]

Higherups will usually defend by hiding behind the process - aka the virtual will and orders of the social golem that is a company.

And nobody alone is responsible for the process. There is not necessary a feeling of responsibility on top- just because powers are granted by the process.

[namandixit]

As Lord Varys convinced himself- "I am not the one doing it."