[kaladin-jasnah]

As a new grad, I think a lot of the companies that have respectable goals to me only hire at the senior level. So what am I supposed to do, go do something I deeply disagree with for a few years so I can eventually work on something respectable?

[SoftTalker]

Yes, if that's the viable path. The world isn't a perfect place, and you still need to eat.

Also, you can do your own job with personal integrity regardless of what others are doing.

[kaladin-jasnah]

To be fair, I have done things I don't really agree with in the past morally and I couldn't really stand myself or grow as a technologist. The lack of morality in what I did made me work slowly and poorly. So it makes things hard.

[neilv]

Congrats on graduating.

Like everyone else at the moment, you're living in interesting times.

AFAIK, there are not enough respectable companies for even the senior engineers.

(And you may have already noticed that a lot of companies are run by people who make a half-hearted effort to drape the company with positive PR language. But they'll soon hint at their true intentions with their actions. Even in a brand new startup, you can simply look at equity allocation, to see what the founder actually thinks about warm-fuzzy ideas like social equality and valuing others: compare their allocation of wannabe-billionaire founder shares, to the token amount of peanuts in stock options that they think the first hires deserve if the company is successful.)

The good news is that a lot of people are looking for high total compensation, or career stability, as higher priorities than respectability, so... less competition for the respectable jobs.

One idea: make a ranking list of companies based on how respectable you think they are (recognizing that most have downsides), and then see how close to the top of the ranking you should focus your energies. Do a first shot at this ranking early on (and revise over time based on actions, not overtures), and you might check yourself when a company with low respectability ranking approaches you.

When you find a good company, let people know.

[kaladin-jasnah]

Well, the result of my search is that I'm going to join a PhD program instead (and seemingly not doing something that is a brains-for-cheap scheme to optimize Meta's AI accelerators). I also more or less gave up my interest in doing operating systems as a career for now in the process, as it felt like a mountain to build the embedded systems skills I would need to do something that was "good."

[twoWhlsGud]

Look for companies with big fierce customers. This gives you an ally when you go to your boss to try to get the company to do the right thing. I moved from big tech to big manufacturing a couple decades ago, and it's the best move I've ever made, for exactly that reason.