[wallacoloo]

the job market (especially if you’re an engineer considering Norton) is so flush right now, you could choose a hundred other positions with similar workload and benefits. when you choose to work for a shitty company under such circumstances, it shows that you don’t care in the least for the other people with whom you coinhabit the planet. that’s antisocial behavior, and human society relies upon a certain amount of soft punishment for antisocial behaviors. yes: you should be thanking hiring managers who turn down candidates who have no regrets about past work at toxic companies, because those hiring managers are preserving our society at the margins.

[chickenpotpie]

The job market is still complicated and not that easy. I know quite a few people that ethically disagree with their job and have been trying to leave for over a year and the phone is just not ringing. So now they should just be banned from working anywhere else? What are the supposed to do? Quit and starve?

[wallacoloo]

> you should be thanking hiring managers who turn down candidates who have no regrets about past work at toxic companies

"no regrets" is an important part of this. though it's not quite the precise word i'd like, since your friends could well not regret their choice to stay given the circumstances you outline. what i want is for our culture to fight against antisocial behavior: to encourage the everyday person to give sufficient weight to social impact when making decisions.

"sufficient" is subjective, so as a starting point replace that with "non-zero" and i think we come out ahead: the toxicly selfish (or socially ignorant) are encouraged to behave at least mildly pro-socially, and the friends you mention who tried to leave evidentially gave non-zero weight to their social impacts -- even if they failed -- and would pass such a test.

the world is gray and i don't want a purity test. but that's not a license to ignore our social responsibilities.