[brailsafe]

Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room".

Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form.

Sure, you could spend some time ensuring accessibility standards are being met, but really you shouldn't unless someone complains, because although you think it's good practice, you're being paid to put visible results on the screen, unless you can make a business case for it that's sufficiently compelling and rewarding that it's worth pursuing. You'll lose your job for not getting the thing shipped, but probably won't for it not being theoretically good enough, unless you're a real doctor or real engineer

Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative), and figure out what you're really being told to do or asked to do, and keep your effort to that. Don't go above and beyond, it's out of scope and you're better off sleeping. Not joking. If you can't do that, you might struggle to stay employed, and it's not worth your personal risk.

At work, keep your opinions to yourself, nearly all the time, they're rarely important, just get the work done and go home, work isn't that important either, don't pretend like you're saving the world.

[sneak]

> What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form.

This is wrong, and how you end up with flying drone face recognizing skullpopping murderbots. "I just work here" is an abdication of adult responsibility to self, family, and society.

It's not some idealistic stance, it's the truth. It's how we ended up with concentration camps in the USA multiple times, and why many companies are gearing up to build more right now.

[GolfPopper]

I think you're both right and wrong. You're right that avoiding responsibility for the outcome of one's own work is wrong, and is how you end up helping to make the world around you a horrible place. At the exact same time, the previous poster is also right - you stick your head up because what your employer is doing is wrong (maybe not "personally enabling concentration camp right now" levels of wrong, but on the path to it all the same) and you will end up seeing your career and the lives of those who depend on your destroyed (as you lose the ability to keep body and soul together) without making a damned bit of difference to the final outcome.

In America, we've built our culture around collective abdication of responsibility for anything and everything, on almost any axis imaginable. The only way anyone with wealth and power ever faces justice is if they injure those with even more wealth and power.

It's easy to say, "if enough people just stood up for what was right, things would change", but how do you get from here to there without asking countless people to sacrifice their families on the altar of "maybe it will get better if you do, but don't count on it". At least in America, I think it will take widespread pain among the public before risking change becomes worth it.

It's awful to think about, but I think that's the heart of it: we (Americans) have built is a system where it is so easy to go from having everything (by historical standards) to having nothing (by current standards) that hardly anyone is willing to risk rocking the boat, even as it sinks and we all drown.

[brailsafe]

Yes, it's a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless. There is very little worth risking everything for, and most people's everything is pocket change to anyone who has the real influence. Make the best choices you can, but realize when it'll cost much more than it'll gain.

[Aeolun]

Absolutely, and 90% of people will happily do so. So your personal ‘line in the sand’ is just completely and utterly irrelevant (aside from your own satisfaction)

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I think this stance is mired in the big picture but ignores small altruism. Neighbors who sheltered jews during the holocaust didn’t alter the system, but they saved real lives. Clandestine action for the better, in line with one’s convictions, can be genuinely worthwhile.

[brailsafe]

That's a fair point too, I was mostly talking specifically about work culture though, and intensely agree with doing good things for people on an individual or community level. That's exactly what you can control and has a real impact. Do it at work too, just do it within your sphere of influence, don't have a savior complex.

[Aeolun]

Sure, but that relies on you being able to do so by yourself. If you are trying to hide the jews in a barn with fifteen others and one of them talks, you may have done a good thing, but it was ultimately meaningless.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that stand anyway, it’s just frustrating and doesn’t bring any actual benefit to the people impacted by the thing you refuse to do.

[brailsafe]

I think GolfPepper had a decent interpretation.

Yours is a particularly extreme example I guess, but I didn't say it was a happy reality, I don't agree, and I agree.

It's not your job unless it's your job, but otherwise it's not your job, that's basically it, and sometimes in life it's your job to make the war machine, or if it's in your power to not make the war machine, then don't. If you're taking care of kids, it's your job to take care of kids, not have a moral stance on what your labor is going to. You're not the Angel of Death, and ideally you should do whatever you can to not be. These are the tricky bits of life.

Edward Snowden stuck his neck out, and while he may have won a virtue medal and might be chilling these days with a wife and kids as Russians, what he probably should have done was nothing, that's a sacrifice you make for an overvalued sense of personal heroism imo. Now he's beholden to Putin.

If you've already ascended some ranks and can make decisions that are good for people more broadly, great, that's part of your job.

[aguaviva]

Now he's beholden to Putin.

Sucks for him, and it can't possibly be good for the US either.

But the Obama administration should have known better before pushing him into that hole.

[aoanevdus]

> Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative), and figure out what you're really being told to do or asked to do, and keep your effort to that. Don't go above and beyond, it's out of scope and you're better off sleeping. Not joking. If you can't do that, you might struggle to stay employed, and it's not worth your personal risk.

Generally good advice but I would caveat it. Sometimes the org doesn’t know it wants something, or doesn’t know that you are the right person to ask. For example, I’ve had good success when finding ways to save millions of dollars. And other, more domain-specific things that make management happy.

Granted, you don’t need to do this if your position is stable and that’s enough for you. But if you are early in your career, trying to move up, or just want to be on the keeper list when there are layoffs, simply doing what is asked may not be enough.

[derangedHorse]

The two most important lines of your comment:

> you shouldn't unless someone complains … unless you can make a business case for it that's sufficiently compelling and rewarding that it's worth pursuing

> Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative)

If there’s moral questions surrounding your employment and no structures to tackle them, then quit.

If there’s a way to garner support for a proposal in a way that will incur a significant cost to the organization if rejected, then leverage those closest to the top who you believe will understand this.

Basically, “If you come for the king, you best not miss”

[MichaelZuo]

It’s more nuanced then that. People don’t want others pretending to be superior to them, if they are not actually that much better.

e.g. A literal supergenius can behave very erratically nearly every week of the year, 40 years straight, and still achieve notable successes in life, such as Kurt Godel

But a regular genius pretending to be a literal supergenius and trying to do the same, is well at best going to be perceived as a clown.

And it gets even more lopsided as you go down. Someone merely very smart pretending to be a literal genius is never going to earn anyone’s respect around the table.

[Joel_Mckay]

Lets be honest, most faculty members eventually become simple Ectoparasites on student work, or ruminate on problems they stopped making progress on for decades.

As someone prone to idealism, you need to careful of the external consequences of work that runs into conflict with institution politics, government goals, and foreign/domestic intelligence services (professional thieves.)

I am probably just a clown, but often had to consider the escalation of coercion stages in the context of personal resolve. You will be evil one day too... Best of luck =3

[trinsic2]

How does this have anything to do with standing up to harms? Im sorry this is starting to sound like the philosophy that the Nazi regime operated under.

[MichaelZuo]

How does ‘standing up to harms’ relate to how other people assess you?

You can say anything, stand up to anything, etc., at a meeting but have differing underlying motives that is unsaid.

[catlifeonmars]

IDK, that seems like a pretty unfulfilling job. A lot of jobs are like that, but not all of them are. Staying in your own lane is boring.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

<< Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room".

While I agree and even accept this answer in theory, I have a hard time putting it in practice. Just today it seems I unnecessarily ruffled some executive feathers by pointing out some -- otherwise clear -- issues no one dares to mention and I am wondering now if that was even worthwhile. After all, I am not paid for extra for it. Regardless of the choice made by executives, the only thing that would change is the amount of support work I would do for it.

I know for a fact that 9 out of 10 it is better for me ( and my career ) to stay quiet, but sometimes I just can't stay out of my way.

[trinsic2]

Sounds like 1981. Good luck with that.

[coldtea]

>Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form.

Up to a certain point. That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials. After a point there's also dignity and morality, not just "keeping the job".

[passing_by_and]

That only happened because they needed some show trials to pacify people. A few were picked to take the fall and the rest were quietly brought to universities and government labs all across western powers. The United States has a proud tradition of totally ignoring all the agreements that came out of those trials.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they needed some show trials to pacify people

Which people? The Europeans were occupied or liberated under effectively caretaker governments. Americans didn't need pacification.

> the agreements that came out of those trials

The trials inspired some agreements. It didn't create any, other than the precedent of holding leaders accountable for crimes against humanity.

[foul]

> Which people? The Europeans were occupied or liberated under effectively caretaker governments.

They were occupied but they weren't entirely busy: while "low" people were happy to kill ex-Nazi collaborators themselves, it's the post-war governments (all of them, USA's included) who needed, with those trials, to manifest a re-establishment of the rule of law once again. 80 years later we can see it's been a hypocrite farce in every part of it, but it saved lives, those that were worth of living, although spared Nazis, fascists and sometimes communists too.

[JumpCrisscross]

> who needed, with those trials, to manifest a re-establishment of the rule of law once again

Do you have a source for this having been the motivation?

I’m admittedly most familiar with the French and American perspectives. Those weren’t concerned with pacification but creating an international sense of the rule of law and legal basis for the occupation and restructuring of those societies.

[refulgentis]

No.

[mistercheph]

What modern corporate employee wouldn't (haven't?) sleepwalk into perpetuating horrors on innocent people and then really and truly believe it when they say "I was just doing my job..." I am not excluding myself, we have not magically solved the social/political circumstances that lead to the second world war, and we are doomed to repeat those mistakes if we take for granted that those structures just fizzled away because we blood sacrificed millions of people and then the victors did a rain dance over the burial mound.

[maeil]

> What modern corporate employee wouldn't (haven't?) sleepwalk into perpetuating horrors on innocent people and then really and truly believe it when they say "I was just doing my job

Plenty? All whistleblowers, and the magnitudes larger group of people who were not able to whistleblow but did instead decided to quit their job for ethical reasons?

[riku_iki]

> That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials.

that's just winners were punishing losers.

In alternative reality, those who dropped nukes were facing trial in Nuremberg.

[coldtea]

>that's just winners were punishing losers

Whether it's winners punishing losers, or e.g. the FBI/FDA/DEA/IRS/whatever punishing some company exexutives and employees, the potential for this to be a bad defense remains constant.

[riku_iki]

when it is winners vs losers, your line of defense is irrelevant, since winners decide rules of the game. We can partially tell the same that FBI/FDA/DEA/IRS punishes regular Joe much more harshly, compared to CEOs which almost never goes to jail unless he stole from other rich/in power.

[totetsu]

Not trying to troll here, but, what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?

[JumpCrisscross]

> what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?

Nuremberg had nothing to do with insurrections and revolutions. It also judged the Nazis according to standards that didn't exist when they committed their crimes; the ICC was created after Nuremberg as an imperfect system. Imperfect, however, is still better than nothing.

[yieldcrv]

Given that this highly improbable outcome involves two separate coalitions of countries invading yours from both sides, “read the room” is a safe bet for all parties to make, including last minute flights to Argentina

[coldtea]

If only I had used this outcome only as a highly understood example, as opposed to as the exact sitution that will befall the person I responded to... oh, wait!

[yieldcrv]

That’s cool but it’s something I think about a lot

Like how some well known companies are implicated because of government contracts with that short lived regime in the 1930s

and its like thats not really a deterrent because you don't really know what a government will do, and accountability requires a multi coalition invasion, losing, and subsequent leaking of state records

the threshold for that to occur is so high, like for one, that government has to actually lose, and the one everyone is mad at typically doesn't

makes more sense to contract with all parties in all countries and just collect the checks

I think that specific example is a perfect choice to undermine the specific lesson you were aiming for