If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way. If you are not good the best thing you can do is stay and incrementally dilute their talent pool.
If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a company that scale.
Internal activism has demonstrably achieved a noticeable amount in steering the company to act a bit more morally.
As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe).
Interestingly every time this topic crops up there's a chorus of "just quit if you feel that way about it" as if the exact opposite was true although in reality I think everybody kind of knows it's really not.
From a non American perspective it's really strange watching this play out. Like looking at a culture that cant see the color blue or something.
> As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe).
The idea is that you leave and go work on something else that makes the world better versus contributing to the borg.
Still a good chance it'll come to nothing and your efforts to help reform the borg if you stayed (even by a tiny amount) would have been more effective in making the world a better place.
It's definitely a trade off thats quite personal.
Unlike other personal trade offs people seem quite comfortable making this one on your behalf.
> As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe).
The thesis being, AIUI, that then they weren't good enough. Because if they had been, the competitor they started after leaving would have buried their original employer.
> If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way
Assuming that the new company will displace the old one.
However at a large monopoly like google/facebook/amazon, if you want to change the world, you need to first change the company.
The vague thing about "damaging my career" is a bit nebulous.
I was bought out, so most of my remuneration is in stocks. There is almost no incentive for me to "build out my career" year. So I have no issue with calling out obvious bullshit/stuff that goes against publicly stated principles.
If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a company that scale.