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by JumpCrisscross 76 days ago
> every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good

This isn't remotely true in my experience. The senior folks I know at Meta, for example, pretty much concede they're ersatz drug dealers.
1 comments
bombcar 76 days ago
It should perhaps be generalized as "employees usually match the general consensus of their peer-group". Before everyone considered Meta to be ersatz drug dealers, they'd report that they feel what everyone feels.

Google was "do no evil" until they had to choose between that and making the money. The culture has to be not only professed but tested.

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surajrmal 75 days ago
Depending on what part of Google you work for, you can absolutely feel good about what you do. The vast majority of employees don't work on ads or adjacent areas. I've never seen another company actually care for non profit related externalities so much. People talk about it like it's the same as Haliburton or Oracle and that's not true.
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bombcar 75 days ago
The snide response is "of COURSE you can care about non-profit related externalities when your giant evil ad business is bringing in absolute dump loads of cash".

And there's something true there; few companies are Snidely Whiplash evil (maybe the lawnmower but even that is just what it is) - and having large amounts of cash affords you options in many areas.

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