[dozerly]

Your options are:

1. Find another job 2. Don’t find another job

You can’t say “where else can I work” like you have no agency over your life. Everyone chooses every day to do what they do that day.

You don’t get to be morally absolved because you’re choosing the easy path and you’re “stuck”. I’m sure there are plenty of places that pay less that would love to have talented remote employees.

[tempay]

The key point here is the “pay less” part. I know people that have turned down offers from meta that would 5x their salary and their personal situation would notably improve from at least some of that extra cash.

The OP is a bit preachy and maybe some employees really don’t have any other options even with accepting lower salaries, but the majority should at least realise the golden handcuffs their bound by even if they choose not to act on them.

[InsideOutSanta]

> there are plenty of places that pay less

This exactly. I value working from home and not working for a company that actively makes the world hell, so I make a quarter of what some of my peers at FAANG-adjacent companies make. Which is still a lot more than I realistically need.

[duskdozer]

Is there any place you look or way of looking that has you in that job? I'm currently happy with my ethical and remote job myself, but I question if it will be around in 10 years, and I especially hate job hunting.

[budsniffer952]

I might agree with this.

But I also think all of the people criticizing Meta should post where they work. I'm sure plenty of people here work for ethically dubious companies, and make the same excuses.

Glass houses and all that.

[test6554]

I don't blame someone for working at facebook, but I don't think most of you realize how cash money a FANG company looks on your resume to IT managers at the lowly normal companies. Go work in financial services, insurance, retail, go be a contractor and work/travel until you find what you like.

[ra0x3]

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect

[dozerly]

In a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc.

It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response

[kortilla]

> Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc.

You don’t work at Anduril to make bread, at least not as a software engineer. It’s a long hours startup with worse pay than FAANG in high CoL areas. The people that work there fundamentally believe in “improving the defense of the west”.

It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If you want to bag on people in the military, go ahead. But they are not in the same category as people just doing things for convenient good money.

[Planktonne]

> It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military.

If the motivation is 'improving the defence of the west', it's more equivalent to joining a fringe paramilitary organisation; the dogwhistle is clear.

[least]

People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one.

Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize, rationalize, and forgive themselves for.

It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment.

[jazzpush2]

I agree. That said, a cursory glance at their post history shows they donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.

In any case, it's quite simple. If you work at Meta, you certainly have other options. Similar-tier companies pay just as well, and lower-tier companies will interview you readily.

We're not talking about someone scraping by here - working at Meta is a choice, and takes hard work to get into. That does not absolve you from the damage the company has done to the world. If you work there, you contribute to it (no matter how small the capacity) and you benefit from it literally through wages and share ownership. Your vested interest is in the company growing. Historically, that has meant via very dark patterns.

[kortilla]

> donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.

Have you considered that the harm of the loss of 6 figures can completely destroy local charities?

This quickly devolves into effective altruism and the problems that come with that but it’s very easy to end up in a situation where you think the net good you bring by keeping a local abused women shelter open far outweighs the negative consequences for working at Meta.

[ryandrake]

I think there would be more empathy if Meta were the only company in the world where it was possible to work. That's "stuck." This is not.

I've quit jobs over ethical boundaries. It's not an easy decision, and "integrity" doesn't quite pay rent, but helped me to sleep better at night and let me live with myself.

[pishpash]

They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers.

[InsideOutSanta]

It's both. We can point to individuals who make terrible decisions and also acknowledge that there will always be such people as long as the system incentivizes them.