[paranoidrobot]

> In Tech it's more like "things I won't work with because it might fail" or "is too difficult" or "might be a bit too unscrupulous"

For some of things, sure.

But there are other things that do cause death, pain and suffering.

If you wrote code that's used in military weapons, that's a more direct relationship.

If you write code that's used to power gambling sites/devices, it's perhaps somewhat abstract - but there are a large number of people who are harmed because of how addictive these things are.

If you write code that's used for managing high-interest loans (like the point-of-sales type of 'buy-now-pay-later' of loans) - then you're enabling the exploitation of people who by-and-large cannot afford the things they're being told they can have, and will spend a large portion of their life paying these loans off.

[Jestar342]

All of which are orthogonal to the blog. The blog is about things the author won't work with out of fear of personal injury. Not writing software for a high interest loan's sake is far from the same.

Being true to one's own ethics is a very worthy virtue. But it just isn't in the same league as not wanting to melt one's face off or accidentally die in a paralysing seizure of excruciating pain.

[big_chungus]

And yet, military weapons serve a necessary purpose. All of us would agree that some military is always necessary. You listed products that are "exploitative", but would you have an issue with working for a manufacturer of hard liquor, a substance with significant addictive potential? What of a gunsmith? A knife manufacturer? Many products have the potential for abuse; few are _inherently_ unethical. If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit producing and selling such things.

[paranoidrobot]

I didn't make an exhaustive list of the companies/industries I wouldn't work for.

For most of the things, my personal opinion on wanting to work for the ones you've listed are definitely in the "it depends on the organisation/management" category.

If it's a company that is (in my opinion) causing more harm than good, then it's not somewhere I'd want to work.

The point of my post was to point out that some tech roles are for companies who do cause harm/pain/suffering whether that's direct (military) or indirect (loan sharking).

Whether the military or an arms manufacturer is necessary is a whole other debate - but the whole point of those types of organisations is the ability to directly cause harm to those they're directed at.

However organisations that provide high interest credit to those who can't afford the thing they're buying, with the intent to keep milking money from their debtors do cause suffering, albeit in a more indirect sense.

[C1sc0cat]

For me payday loans is a hard no, and similar things that battern (take advantage of) on poor people

I am ok with defence apart form Chem and Bio, "that just sqicks me out"

Though it does depend on who id be working for I did turn down a recruiter who was looking for people to work on the MET police Registry, but I would have worked for HMGCC.

Note these where both Avowed Jobs so I am not breaking any laws mentioning them.

[davidgould]

> If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit ...

That's sort of the point of ethics though, it's pretty weak to say "I choose not to steal because it is wrong, but you do you."

[michaelt]

On the other hand, if I said "I choose not to have an abortion, but you do you" that'd be a pretty up-to-date stance, right?

[wyattpeak]

While that statement is usually used as an explicit indicator that the speaker doesn't consider abortion immoral at all, I think there's a difficulty here in that morality is used in two different ways: things I don't think anyone should be doing e.g. owning slaves, and things I'd feel uncomfortable doing e.g. having an abortion.

Perhaps they're two degrees of the same thing, but it doesn't seem obvious to me.

I think there is also a subset of the first: things which I don't think anyone should be doing but social pressure forbids objection - eating meat comes to mind. Abortion may fall into this category for some, but in my experience even in fairly liberal circles people are willing to object to abortion, they just tend to couch it more.

[Vindicis]

What purpose is that? To project power and bully people, sure. If everyone has a gun, no one has a gun. If no one has a gun, everyone has a gun. If one person has a gun, he calls the shots.

[big_chungus]

Self-defense. It's basic game theory that we will never have a world where no one has a gun. This remains true on a national level.