[Bakary]

The end result of their work is to increase the power and success of a surveillance company, one of the most successful and powerful surveillance companies in the world if not the most, so how could they possibly not be involved or morally responsible? They don't exist in a vaccuum where their work is magically independent of their employer. This is typically the sort of cognitive dissonance I'm trying to highlight.

Can you imagine someone saying "Nah I'm not responsible for what the Russian army does, I'm just paid by them to help with logistics"?

[muaytimbo]

Logistics is in direct support of, and enables, Russian military action in your example. Designing a propeller for a flying vehicle does not further surveillance.

[Bakary]

If I lay out the reasoning more precisely and in the simplest terms, maybe it would then be easier to identify which part might be the stumbling block here.

1. An employee of Google makes propellers for Google.

2. The sum of their work benefits Google, either in profit, new assets or some other way, because Google isn't employing them just for fun

3. As an adtech company, surveillance and datagathering are at the core of Google's activities and modus operandi.

4. The growth in power and reach of Google thus directly implies increased surveillance

5. As per 2., The employee currently dedicates their working life to making Google more successful and powerful

6. Therefore the employee furthers surveillance and datagathering, even if their contribution might be small

[muaytimbo]

2. and 4. are not necessarily givens.

Perhaps the product this engineer works on does not pan out, maybe he unwittingly makes the company weaker by siphoning capital on a project that eventually fails. This seems to be a common case at Alphabet.

It could also be the case that reinvestment of capital from the engineer's efforts is in a line of business orthogonal to surveillance. Indeed a company making flying cars and engaging in surveillance is clearly already not contributing 100% of their working capital to expand their surveillance capabilities.