[trimethylpurine]

Do you have kids? If not, I agree with you. Make the hard decision and take a loss. And thank you for your sacrifice.

If you do, I can't agree with you.

Also I wouldn't compare software development for a marketing company with a violent disagreeable effort. There's bad and there's worse, objectively.

Anyway, not saying you're wrong, but I'm not so quick to judge someone by a job that they probably hate.

Or to wrap 100,000 people in the same blanket. We're all individuals. No one should be judged by the actions of others.

[bionsystem]

There are companies I wouldn't candidate for, even with kids I think, although it's hard to say, I don't have kids, and apparently there is a mind-shift happening when you get one. Oracle, Palantir come to mind. But maybe not Microsoft, I don't know about that one. It's probably bad, but maybe not "I prefer to watch my kids starving" kind of bad.

[mcmcmc]

Having kids is also a bullshit excuse. Choosing comfort over conscience is your prerogative but you’re just teaching your kids the same values.

Yeah, tech monopolist that enables genocide to contemporary gestapo isn’t an equal comparison. But my point was that you can’t ignore the moral hazards of employment by handwaving “gotta eat somehow”. There are a million ways to feed your kids. Saying you have to work a high paid job to feed them non-GMO certified organic produce from Erewhon because that’s the only standard of living you can possibly survive with, that’s a choice.

I also want to reiterate that I’m not judging the people who choose to work there. I’m just saying that by signing the employment contract they accept the reasonable public perception that the products they work on are shit. And to some marginal degree, they are complicit in all their employer’s wrongdoings.

[trimethylpurine]

Your commentary doesn't come off as honorable or righteous in any way to me. It comes off as self centered and self righteous. As if we all owe it to you to put you before our children.

I don't know if that's your intention but that's what I'm reading.

I genuinely hope you don't agree with that reading, because I doubt you'd have a nice life with that outlook. You'd be very unlikable.

[mcmcmc]

What I’d consider unlikable is implying that someone might have no choice but to work for Microsoft in order to provide for their family. It carries with it an air of privilege and condescension implying that working a lesser job or for lesser pay would be insufficient to provide for a family’s basic needs.

[trimethylpurine]

What lesser job? People are unemployed after six months. Meanwhile MS hired other people for less to replace those that left. Nobody won here.

It's not about "lesser" jobs being actually lesser. The point is that you don't actually have a choice. Big companies that nobody likes are in control of the economy and you can't do anything except join the unemployed until you get rehired from the pool of desperate people willing to do their bidding.

(All of this with a grain of salt. Not literally everyone is in this situation, but there are certainly many who are.)

I'm just saying, maybe don't be so quick to judge.

[mcmcmc]

I’m not sure why you’re so set on taking away free will.

> you can't do anything except join the unemployed until you get rehired from the pool of desperate people willing to do their bidding.

So there is a choice then. Does unemployment kill you in some way? Is going to a food bank a death sentence? Can you not adjust your lifestyle spending to match a lower salary if it means getting a job sooner? Is there no way to save up for periods of unemployment so you can be choosy about your next job?

Everything you do in life is a choice.

[trimethylpurine]

It's not a choice. Making kids eat from a food bank and sleep in a shelter is morally inferior to working at Microsoft. You're saying, repeatedly, that they should make your morally inferior choice and they deserve to be judged if they don't. Only a monster could call that a choice.

Look at yourself: >Having kids is also a bullshit excuse. Choosing comfort over conscience is your prerogative but you’re just teaching your kids the same values.

Your conscience tells you that children should be forced to sleep in shelters and eat from food banks just so that you won't have to see ads when you use Microsoft Windows.

Please DON'T teach anyone your values. Your moral compass points to the trash.

I'm out bro. Cheers.