Ask HN: I joined a big co, like the team, hate some policies, what should I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I joined a big co, like the team, hate some policies, what should I do?

136 pointsthrowaway173205151 comments

I recently joined a big tech company. The work is interesting and the team seems skilled and well run. But the larger company has done some really sketchy things where they mislead users in the name of growth. They also have policies that help entrench it beyond what is fair. They are in an industry where the leader has a big natural advantage, and they are in that lead by a large margin. They'd seem like they'd rather win a dirty fight than lose a fair one. Most days I feel a combination of frustration and shame working for them because of this. It seems that the policies follow from the leadership and company culture, and they have been doing similar things for awhile.

I am not sure what I should do.

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>But the larger company has done some really sketchy things where they mislead users in the name of growth. They also have policies that help entrench it beyond what is fair.

This could be the story of literally any large tech company today. Airbnb got its start by spamming people offering vacation homes for rent on Craigslist [1]. According to The Facebook Effect [2], Facebook was almost entirely dependent on its contact importer/spammer for its growth in its early days. On days when Hotmail blocked them for spamming, new user sign ups dropped by 80%; it was only after they cut a deal with Microsoft that included an agreement to not spam-box their emails that they continued to grow.

When you look behind the curtain of successful modern startups, virtually all of them were built on mountains of spam and bad/unethical/illegal behavior, which they then publicly decry and block on their own platforms after they become influential enough to do so. If you have issues with this, Silicon Valley probably isn't the place for you. There are plenty of tech jobs in other areas - but look away from startups, because most are employing/willing to employ extremely aggressive techniques to win.

[1] http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facebook_Effect

As a user I found Facebook's contact importer to be useful, and LinkedIn's to be deceptive. Zynga was a terrible spammer /on/ Facebook, but Facebook eventually cleaned that up (too slowly, but they did).

Google's growth was organic and based on a very high quality search product. The spammier search engines all basically died off.

So I disagree with your premise that Silicon Valley success is generally based on spammy or unethical behaviors. Yes there is way too much of it, but no, it's not a necessary part of success.

Google is an extremely rare example of natural growth. Many found Facebook's contact importer in its early days to be deceptive (and many more still do). Their growth to more than a billion users was almost inevitable - as long as they could spam dozens or hundreds of people for each new user. LinkedIn is yet another example of success-by-spamming, and Facebook's "cleaning up" of Zynga and thousands of other smaller, similar businesses built on Facebook is an example of what I was referring to when I said that companies block the very kind of behavior that got them to where they are once they are big enough to do so. They do whatever they have to do to get through the door, then they shut it behind them.

Is spamming/other bad behavior "necessary" for Internet success? That's an interesting question. I can only think of a small handful of successful Internet companies that magically went viral without such aggressive "growth hacking". The overwhelming evidence is that "necessary" may be a strong word, but "highly unlikely without it" is probably an accurate description.

Define "early days". The early days I remember everyone was waiting in anticipation for the moment their university (and later on, "Network"/company) would be on Facebook. There definitely wasn't a contact importer in those days, because the entire platform was exclusive.

I'm talking about after they went to open registration.

Google took the opposite approach, which was to play the iconoclast that was not evil and once they won the market, to start being shady and use dark patterns everywhere.

> virtually all of them were built on mountains of spam and bad/unethical/illegal behavior,

This simply isn't true. There are a few who did that, but they're the exception, not the rule.

Shady unicorns: Uber (too many to count), AirBNB (spam), DropBox (lied about encryption/security), The Honest Co (lied about product quality)

Not Shady unicorns: Xiaomi, Palantir, Snapchat, SpaceX, Pinterest, Spotify, DJI, Intarcia, Stripe, Vice, CreditKarma, CloudFlare, BloomEnergy, Fanatics, Slack, Blue Apron, GitHub, Domo, SurveyMonkey, BlaBlaCar, Lyft, MongoDB, Buzzfeed, Cloudera, Automatic, EventBrite, Evernote, Warby Parker, Docker...

The narrative that "everybody cheats" is just something that cheaters tell themselves, so they can pretend that their behavior was warranted.

That said, it's worth discussing these things before applying to a company, because dishonesty creates massive risk in the company, so if you hear and answer that sounds like 'downandout's, you need to devalue that company, because their lack of ethics creates risk for that particular company, and it creates reputational risk for you.

First, I don't think anyone that read my comment would objectively say that I was endorsing such behavior, as you seem to imply in your comment (for the record, I wasn't). Second...you're honestly saying that CreditKarma, Buzzfeed, and Vice didn't grow through spamming? CreditKarma (and everyone else in the free credit space) contracts with affiliate networks to drive new customers, whose affiliates do every shady thing imaginable (and then some) to get commissions. "Free credit" offers thrive in these networks - they occupy the top spots in the best performing offers lists because they pay $20+ to affiliates for each "free" signup - and they are primarily promoted through fake job offers on Craigslist and other job boards. Affiliates tell people they're hired for XYZ job - they just need to complete a credit check by going to <insert affiliate link here>. CreditKarma probably isn't directly doing this, but they know full well that their affiliates are.

Buzzfeed spams the crap out of Facebook. Eventbrite & Vice had some spamming issues in the beginning as well. I'm not sure about Snapchat's growth story - they may have been a rare example of natural growth, along with Google. Most of the rest of those you're talking about aren't really the kinds of pure internet plays that are relevant to this discussion. No amount of spamming would have made Xiaomi, Palantir, SpaceX, DJI, etc any more successful, so they didn't employ these techniques.

You made an "edgy" but incorrect generalization based on sparse anecdata. It was good for your comment karma, but it's silly to stand by it.

AirBNB's CAN-SPAM violating email was clearly unethical. A media company showing up on Facebook more than you would prefer is, at worst, mildly annoying. There's an important difference.

Ethical people do not need to leave Silicon Valley. Dishonesty is not prerequisite to success. Your claims are wrong.

>Ethical people do not need to leave Silicon Valley. Dishonesty is not prerequisite to success. Your claims are wrong.

Again, you're implying things that I simply didn't say.

>A media company showing up on Facebook more than you would prefer is, at worst, mildly annoying

You're right, that's not spam, but that's not what I was referring to either. I'm not going to write a massive explanation here of the specific Facebook spamming techniques employed by Buzzfeed et al, but suffice it to say that they are actively and aggressively spamming to "prime the viral pump" with certain stories.

It was clear to me that you weren't making an endorsement.

Not Shady unicorns:...Palantir...

This is a stretch.

In the same sense that a C-section is a "stretch".

I paused at that one because I don't like the state's intelligence arm, or it's sub-contractors.

However, I decided it was ethical for the context of this conversation, because to my knowledge they don't lie to grow revenue. They claim they'll charge a huge pile of money to analyze data, and that's precisely what they do.

Until the past couple of years they were almost entirely dependent on government contracts from shady three-letter agencies, and most of the work required a security clearance (now it's a little closer to 50/50 government contracts and Fortune 100-type companies). Not to mention they were literally funded with millions of dollars from the CIA's venture capital arm. Suppose they had been shady - I'm not sure we'd know about it. You probably should have had an 'inconclusive' group somewhere in the middle and they would have at least fit there.

Sorry, but, many of these companies are not as ethical as you claim.

Xiaomi sent user data to China without consent. [1]

Palantir proposed an illegal campaign agaisnt Wikileaks [2] and its very industry is by its nature fairly dubious and shady, though that doesn't mean it's doing things that are strictly illegal aside from what is known.

Snapchat ignored and didn't fix various privacy and security issues. [3]

Pintrest operates in a dubious copyright gray area. [4]

Spotify pays artists very little and most money gets sent to record labels. Even labels see almost nothing. [5]

Like Uber, Lyft engages in unethical treatment of its workers. [6]

I can go on. The badness of these things varies significantly. Not all of them indicate a company is totally unethical. But I think the assertion "most Silicon Valley companies are doing at least some illegal, scammy, or otherwise unethical things in order to get ahead" is completely true.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/xiaomi-under-investigation-for-...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/style/uber-facebook-and-ot...

[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2?...

[5] http://www.hearya.com/2012/11/28/david-macias-enlightening-l...

[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/Lyft/comments/2y16r3/lyfts_highly_u... (aggregates news articles)

> Spotify pays artists very little and most money gets sent to record labels. Even labels see almost nothing. [5]

How is that shady? They have deals with the appropriate companies.

Exactly. That's not shady, that's just how their business works and labels are not blind from that fact.

It's unethical to exploit artists for the profit of streaming companies and record labels while simultaneously hailing yourself as a godsend for said artists.

> Not Shady unicorns: [...] Palantir

Good God!!!

Vice is incredibly shady and unethical in my opinion. They champion local DIY scenes and lament the loss of music venues yet their new offices are directly responsible for the closure of 3 venues in NYC (they were all part of the industrial zone in Williamsburg where Vice chose as HQ). They don't publish stories that conflict with their branding partners corporate narrative. I know people who have been fired because they wrote poorly of their brand partners.

Almost every company is mendacious and shady.

Your list of "not shady unicorns" betrays a certain naiveté on this topic...

I love the sense of ethics here. "it's OK, everybody is doing it".

NO MATTER WHAT you must not say anything and maintain a smiling facade, while letting the hatred smolder inside your dark heart. Make trivial yet self-reinforcing observations around the office that feed your echo-chamber of a mind. After work down a quart of whiskey to soothe broken dreams, while watching HBO shows depicting glamorous life that you will never have. Extra bonus if you lash out at people who love and care for you.

In 5 years all this will feel natural to you like the rest of us, and your stock options would have fully vested by then.

Well at least I'm not the only one.

I would very much like to hear the full version of this story, has it been written up anywhere?

No matter what the company size, you will find that the culture and the actions taken by the organization follow the leaders. This is rarely something you can fight... you need to make a personal decision of either accepting the areas in which you disagree, or leaving the job.

Personally, I find ethical problems are the kind that would make me leave. Business disagreements and technical differences are one thing... but I can't support something if it directly conflicts with my personal ethics.

So if I were in your shoes, I'd frame the question in exactly that way - is this just a disagreement in style for you, or an ethical conflict?

As OP says, fighting fairly would probably end the company resulting in no job.

This tends to be my experience, nice people find it very hard to start and run successful companies. The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

[edit] I keep getting down votes for stating my experience and opinion. I have no idea how the voting system on HN works. Should I avoid personal anecdotes?

I don't think it's a binary thing where you are either playing totally fairly or completely unethically.

Most of the businesses have to make tough decisions to survive, not all of them are fair (to users, employees, etc). However, the difference is in attitude about such decisions and frequency of them.

>> The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

Making as much money as possible is just a goal that some people set and do everything possible to achieve that. It's no different than any other goal. You don't need to absolutely maximize the monetary output of your life in order to be happy.

>> ou don't need to absolutely maximize the monetary output of your life in order to be happy.

For me personally I totally agree. I have switched careers and taken a big cut in wages to give me more time with my family.

I have to assume that a middle of the ground company exists, but again, in my experience I have not worked for one. Some have been cottage industries happy clappy the world is kind and karma is real and others who think the customer is a chump and we can screw them out of as much money as possible.

Companies like that definitely exist. I work for one: we make a great product, work hard to make our customers successful, and charge enough to make our business successful as well.

I don't know of a universal rule for finding companies like that. But you can definitely recognize them when you see them in action.

I'm curious about why you think that earning money professionally, or as a business, is a problem.

Say that I with a couple of friends could, in 9 months or so, develop a system that would, for JC Penneys (say), save $10M or raise their sales by 1% (I think they are between $10B~$15B in annual revenue, so this would be around $100M+ revenue and at 5% margin (for example) worth about $5M to their bottom line...)

I think it would be reasonable to charge them $1M+ for this work.

One might argue (they would argue!) that 3 guys for 9 months should NOT be $1M+ -- that we were being greedy. But, I would argue that we are creating significant positive value after our fees.

Would you agree with their reasoning and disagree with mine? If so, that's fine - but I am curious as to why.

I don't think you're interpreting the parent post properly -- he or she is simply saying that, for some people, maximizing income is a primary goal; for others, income is just a tool for achieving other goals (family, hobbies, travel, etc). Nothing wrong with either one as such.

Also, you're not charging enough for your hypothetical services. What you really want to do is discount your pricing to, say, $500K but collect on revenue as part of a fee-at-risk deal, assuming you're that hypothetically confident of your hypothetical value-add.

Yes, this.

Some people will look for careers in industries that are known to pay more (e.g. finance), even though they don't like or even hate the industry.

For others, they just prefer a job that they actually enjoy and just enough income to support their life style and have a good level of financial safety.

None of them is unethical or wrong, just different personal preferences.

That makes sense. Parent was correct - I was not reading you correctly. Thanks.

Thank you. Apparently you are right - I was not reading parent correctly.

To your 2nd point, I constructed my hypothetical badly, but regardless, I've learned that I (personally) don't like to depend on the client for accurate monthly or quarterly reports, and then have to do some anti "Hollywood accounting" measures on it, or deal with the inevitable re-org's required re-calculation. I completely understand what you are saying, but if possible, I like to make sure that the client is getting somewhere in the ballpark of at least 10:1 (pro forma, reviewed and agreed to by client) and call it a day. If I had a slightly different personality, your way can be a very (!) good way.

Say what's honest, and imagine that Californian ideologues [1] are no different from the "religious." [2] Then the downvotes are perfectly expected and normal. It's boo-ing.

Anyone who wants to verify this (and isn't close friends with executives) should speak with salespeople, maybe lead devs... rank-and-file devs tend to be poor sources since they're often like mushrooms, left in the dark. Even salespeople in fairly scrupulous companies often discuss the systematic lies. (Lies which should conform to some rules in order not bite the company in the ass later.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

[2] Particularly since markets are the dual to religion; a rupture that created egoism and altruism.

The downvotes probably have more to do with the perceived ideology the downvoters read into (or from) your post.

And I have to say I was also tempted to do so.

Non the less I do believe a counter argument being more productive.

I for example know a lot of companies having a great founder and a great culture as well as values. And are (at least in the founder's eyes) quite successful.

OK they are no Google. But none the less I like working in one of these.

I downvote fairly rarely, I think, but I always downvote complaints about downvotes!

Thanks for sharing...

It takes a certain amount of bad will to read an innocent question of an inexperienced user as a "complaint" worth downvoting...

I think a question is a different thing from a complaint, even when posed by an experienced user.

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted. My take on downvotes is that they are best reserved for comments that detract from the conversation - ones that are mean, sloppy, or misleading.

While I don't necessarily agree with your comment I'm glad you shared it. I appreciate hearing different opinions and ideas.

When people down vote to express disagreement with a well-articulated idea it makes HN a worse place. It silences dissent (by pushing it down on the screen and fading it).

Couldn't agree more. I've been noticing this a lot recently, where I and others get downvoted for earnest, articulate comments that do nothing but express a dissenting opinion.

I think HN needs to explain that downvoting isn't "I disagree with this sentiment", it's "I think this is a bad comment that detracts from the quality of the conversation". I suspect new users might not know this since it's different from many other sites.

Why do you think that's what downvotes mean around here? pg explicitly disagrees with you, and his opinion would seem to matter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

I don't think his opinion matters more than anyone else's opinion. What's more, he's not an especially active member of the community these days.

Luckily I clicked through and discovered the pg's opinion was not what I thought it was, and I consider myself to be a fairly knowledgeable user of HN.

Regardless of what the intention of the up & down vote buttons are, what matters is the reality of what the userbase interprets them to be. I've always been under the impression that a downvote on HN is only for inappropriate discourse (as it is supposed to be on reddit, but then maybe I should go double check that belief as well), rather than disagreement.

There's a subset of HN users who react poorly to any criticism of the morality of capitalism in general, and tech startups in particular. Basically, people who've fully bought into the notion that disruptive technology is the one road to humanity's bright future, and if people are hurt in the process, that's just the cost of progress.

It's not everyone on HN, just a significant group. You shouldn't take it to heart.

Also, it's not uncommon for comments to get downvoted several times in the first few minutes (by people skimming New Comments), and then brought back into the black later on by more thoughtful readers getting the full context.

I think you're getting downvoted because of this quote: "The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage..." Nobody feels guilty for making a lot of money. It's the how to do it that people's opinions differ on.

I love the reframing angle. Sooner or later we have to realize that we can only control our life and how we show up in it. Frustration, anger, and resignation are our choosing. Faced with this situation, you have one of two choices. You can decide to avoid it and hope it goes away, or you can decide how you will engage it. I speak from experience in this department and would love to work with you as part of a free challenge I have thrown out to my fellow software developers. http://goo.gl/forms/pa3tkykjoyBmcCn52

Was going to enrol in the course but I hate coming up with new passwords. Please have a Google login.

OP, my personal recommendation is to run for the hills. if you have the money, quit now and do a thorough job search. I recently took that bold step and I'm glad i did.

I can't recommend this enough. find a job you really do have the best of both worlds, and stop settling for advantage/disadvantage positions.

I worked with an awesome team, but the company was sketchy, and something tells me you're in the same industry i was... E-commerce. The team was awesome, and i still have real friends there because of it. but the management and business ethics were terrible, not to mention that non-technical folks were making technical decisions that overrode us. the hard part of leaving is that i felt trapped, that if i left, i'd be unprepared for the positions i wanted. but thankfully i was wrong.

i decided that i'd really take the time to interview companies as much, if not more than they interviewed me. asking questions i had come up with that would spot companies like this. I even cut a few interviews short because of these questions, but it helped me clarify what i wanted, and where i would be happy.

to measure out my results:

  * was already well paid, new job paid 40%-60% more(range for discretion)
  * new company actually cares about code quality, testing etc. 
  * mgmt leaves tech decisions to us.
  * better, more flexible hours.
  * smarter people than myself, things to learn, and people to learn from.(education wasn't big at my last position)
  * a bit more stressful, in a good way. I feel like i have more responsibility, and that i truly own what i do.
  * path for career growth. i can see where my next steps lead me

yes some of these are subjective, but thats the point. these are the things i wanted. you might have different needs, but i'm confident that this approach will make you happier, more in love with your career, and less jaded like i was.

Best of luck OP.

"Run for the hills"... unless they pay well.

I'm not sure where you all play, but I play in big Corp, with my own ethics and make a strong impact. You don't have to tow the line, sale ially if you kick ass.

If you do indeed have values / ethics that STAND OUT (as opposed to just expressed on forums / on your sleeve) and you're a solid PRODUCER, nothing else matters. Go get it man!

My experience (15 yrz in big Corp operations and now IT) is that your ethics / values "get out" on their own and make a deep impact; IF you're skilled at what you do.

What does the phrase "sale ially" mean?

typo for especially?

I'm guessing autocorrect for "especially", with the "c" fat-fingered to a space.

Ah gotcha thanks, I didn't make that leap.

"Toe the line"

I've had a similar experience in big companies. While you're learning and you're challenged technically, all is good. Once you master most of it and start asking the deep questions about how exactly you're helping the world (and sometimes more importantly, the means for that), that's when trouble starts.

E.g. "kicking ass" improving infrastructure performance and having fun, then your boss asks you to delay (or never implement) certain improvements because it will be hard to justify the body shop headcount next month.

To others reading this thread (especially people new to industry), the line "You don't have to tow the line, sale ially (especially) if you kick ass", while it seems completely reasonable (and you would think literally impossible to be wrong, is very often wrong.

Politics, and quite often outright fraud (disguised as something else, it's not at all difficult to obfuscate decisions when it comes to software), are very common in all businesses. The idea that you will win because you are correct is not necessarily true. It's probably a pretty good strategy at small startups, it could very well be career suicide at larger firms.

If you are on the fence enough to ask here, don't quit immediately and instead just start interviewing elsewhere now. Once you have some solid offers lined up, you can make a more informed decision.

In general a large corporation is -- surprise surprise -- going to be made up of a lot of people. Some of them are going to be really passionate about doing the right thing, some of them will be happy to do what it takes to get ahead, and a lot of them are just going to want to do their job, get paid, and not worry too hard about the bigger picture. It can feel bad to be at the big evil and feel like you're being corrupted by being a part of it, but you always have the option to do what you think is right. You can stay there, work hard, and push back against the culture and attitudes you think improper. Maybe you'll make a difference. Maybe you'll give up. Maybe you'll try hard but no one will listen, and meanwhile your hard work will benefit the wrong people. Maybe you'll get fired after people get tired of you telling them how bad they are or after you refuse to do something that crosses the line.

>Once you have some solid offers lined up

Does this actually work for people? My experience interviewing for software engineering roles is that it's a time consuming and tedious process. I can't imagine juggling a full time job while interviewing with more than one company at a time.

My one experience doing it has only involved one job change/interview/offer, so I'm not sure what the typical experience is.

After I grew dissatisfied with my first job out of college, partially because I'd just been there five years and wanted to try something else, partially for ethical reasons (the new owners were hosting fundraisers for Jenny McCarthy), I sent resumes to three companies, got a callback from one, did a phone screen, took a day off work for the interview, and then got the offer a few weeks later. Gave three weeks notice, took a month off, was at a new job about three months after I first decided to leave the old.

> Gave three weeks notice, took a month off

This is absolutely not a typical experience. In most cases, software companies are very hesitant to give you more than 3 weeks.

Bear in mind that at almost(?) every large company out there the mission statement (written or not) is really

"Our Mission is to make money for our investors and the executives who were able to negotiate their own contracts and who control how we do business. We make money primarily by (selling products|providing services|entertaining people). Where we can do so without impacting our fiduciary responsibilities, we may attempt to do the 'right' thing - particularly in situations where we can get positive press or customer relations out of it - but that's a preference not a responsibility and may be considered part of our marketing budget."

This may seem cynical, but it's basically the way it has to be at any publicly-held company and most privately-held companies that get VC funding. If you tell investors "We're going to put social responsibility/open source ahead of repaying your investment or providing you with profits," good luck finding investors. Entities that put social responsibility, etc. higher are generally called non-profit, not-for-profit, foundation, etc. and I'm not aware of any that could be described as "a big tech company."

Bingo!!

To paraphrase Mark Suster from his Both Sides of the Table blog, are you ready to learn or earn?

If you're early in your career, and you are benefiting from working on hard engineering problems with a competent team, then I would advise you to try to enjoy the ride and then switch jobs once you think you've learned all you can from your team.

As others have already explained, businesses are very frequently amoral and short-term-profit-driven. I went through my jaded-at-the-world phase, and by now I've mostly made my peace with that aspect of capitalism. I've learned that the world is often more complex than I had imagined. Sometimes, companies have to claw their way to survival through questionable means, but may still have a net positive effect on the world after enough time. And sometimes not...

If this isn't your first, or even third rodeo, and you're ready to earn instead of learn (c.f. Mark Suster) then life is too short to be unhappy with where you work. Use your skills to build something your care about in a company you respect. My $0.02

1) Are they asking you to directly get involved in the sketchy/misleading things that they are doing?

If yes, I think you should flat out refuse to do it, and start looking for another job asap.

2) Are their competitors playing fair?

Moral purists may disagree with this, but if the people being hurt by your dirty tactics, are themselves fighting dirty, I think it's fair game. There's no reason why the weaker side should handicap itself against a stronger opponent who's fighting dirty.

3) Can you do more good than harm, from the inside?

One way is by repeatedly raising this issue for broader discussion, when opportunities arise, and shaming people into more ethical behavior. Another way is by being a whistleblower. Edward Snowden did a lot more to champion privacy by working for the NSA and then being a whistleblower, than by refusing to work for the NSA at all.

----

If none of the above give you sufficient grounds to stay, then look for other companies to join in the medium term. There's no reason to rush and quit, without getting another good job lined up. And in the meantime, as a new hire, you're not really an important part of the company anyway, so you don't need to feel guilty about "enabling" anything. During your exit interview, if they ask you why you're leaving, consider telling them honestly that you don't feel comfortable working for a company that misleads its users. This just might be the most impactful thing you can do, in terms of persuading the company to change its ways.

Lastly, kudos to you for making ethical behavior a priority.

Slightly OT: For a decade, software engineers have been facing such a huge demand for their profession that their perception of a 'job' got a bit distorted.

For most of them and those who chose popular stacks it's usually quite easy to get a job. Or any job. This gives them superpowers and enables them to ask for a lot--high salaries, tons of perks, free food, freedom and maybe a company with the right vision, leadership and policies.

But what they forget in all this abudance of options is that a job is a job. You can call it career, give it exciting titles and enrich it with stock options, it stays a job. You can work at Google, at a fancy office, with super smart coworkers and free a-la-carte-food everyday but it is still just a job and you are not free. And even Google has its dark sides the employees accept. Let's not start to talk about Facebook, Microsoft or Apple.

Maybe one company has shady growth tacticts (btw which successful company doesn't have them? Even Google abused all their properties to push Chrome), the next one lacks free food or uses an aged stack. Remember it's always a job. And if one doesn't like it, he might try to find a better option but shouldn't be suprised about new drawbacks. Or he could try to start his own company. A perfect one where everything is perfect for everyone. Then one will realize that many things are more complicated than they seem.

There's no perfect job.

I think this is not OT at all. This is the answer to most job related should-i-stay-or-should-i-go or what-should-i-do questions.

It. Is. A. Job.

If you can't accept that you're in a job and the feeling of entitlement shines thru, that would just be whining in my book. And yes, HN, lots of that in here.

We have a job to live, we don't live for work.

I recently changed career to become whatever I found honest just in case it would make my life different.

Well, being a human beings seems to come with a handicap we almost all have moral compass. And most of my job in IT have been in the dark side of my compass recently.

Right now, I maybe risking my body moving heavy loads with poor equipment and security, commercial making occasional mistakes forces us to do 12h continuous loading of trucks else the company bankrupts and none of us are paid BUT from my perspective it is a great improvement.

Customers are sometimes saying thanks. Coworkers are sometimes saying thanks, and boss too. We are working as a team and when everybody does his/her job correctly we have satisfactions.

A satisfaction I was missing.

And when the day is over, the job is not in my head anymore.

I can once again live a normal life, we don't scam customers, we don't break their goods, we are the most honest we can giving the stupidity of some regulations and of some dishonest customers.

And fuck, being able to feel proud again is worthy the quasi state of misery I live in.

Sometimes, money does not matter as much as feeling you are not wasting your life doing something that makes you something you will come to despise.

Feeling an honest human again worth every single $ and all my savings I lost in the conversion.

Suck it up or quit. You're not going to change what sounds like the central strategy of the company. And if you complain about it, your superiors may very well see you as weak and unwilling to do what it takes to win. So either keep quiet, work hard and get paid, or leave. If you're really that concerned, blow the whistle on your way out. But don't expect to get hired again after doing that.

Can't OP, and others in his situation, blow the whistle anonymously?

If there is something that is actually unethical going on, then you should consider leaving, but you need to be more specific on what those things actually are. "beyond what is fair" and "really sketchy" are pretty subjective. It's fair to say a company's culture is too competitive, but it's not clear this is the case since you feel the company is well run.

If you and other coworkers are treated fairly, then you are probably being a bit too sensitive / idealistic. Relax and view it as a challenge: learning how to deal with people that you view as too aggressive/competitive. It will serve you well in life.

Again, given the lack of detail that's my best advice... Note that I've worked at a company that stole code and got sued, so I have some experience in unethical companies and leadership.

>>> Relax and view it as a challenge: learning how to deal with people that you view as too aggressive/competitive.

You make a very good point here!

Every company has issues and decisions that you don't agree with for variety of reasons. So looking for some perfect company will make your life much harder than it should be.

It's just that you have to draw a line what's acceptable and what is not.

Having experience in industry (or just general professional experience) can help a lot because it allows you to compare the issues and set the line. I know that because I was wayyy too idealistic and naive at my first full time job :)

Well, looks like you are not in a position to change these policies. Therefore, if you regularly feel "a combination of frustration and shame working for them" rather than just a short period of negativeness / sadness that goes away quickly, it's not likely that it will get any better later and quite possibly worse. So quitting seems like the only option, doesn't it?

I'd just add that regardless of your decision, try to take a step back and see if you could have spotted these issues earlier, before joining so that you'd be less likely to repeat this mistake in the future. Maybe there were some red flags that you missed or downplayed?

Be the change you want to see. Do your job in the most ethical manner possible and articulate your thoughts on your job, not necessarily the company, and perhaps it will spread. Counter-culture can be as effective as revolution. If the company doesn't change, you did what you were asked by your company (your job) and what was asked by your ethos.

indeed, this is a path that is less frequently travelled. some people are wired in a way that they like fixing things from the inside. it takes a ton of emotional and psychological strength/aptitude though, so not everyone enjoys this approach.

a good book that addresses some of this is Driving Technical Change. some people you will never change, and those you can ignore. if there are enough people that you can influence you have a chance to make a difference. as long as you're strong enough to not let the negativity bring you down, this all can be a rewarding path...

Leave.

It's that simple. Don't work for a company that isn't ethical. It doesn't matter if your team is great if you still have to get up and help do something unethical.

Also, be real. There are many great teams in the world, your current one is not the only one, find one at a company doing worthwhile things.

Don't pay your rent, forget your kids, live in a fuggin dream world... "it's that simple".

Come on bro. Unless you are in some rare Netherlands / Amazonian fair trade, employee owned, tech company who pays in angel farts, you live in a capitalistic economy.

YOU determine your own credo, your own ethics, your own constitution. Live it inside the Corp. Make that money and be a good person.

And while your at it, look up the etymology of "corporation". It's absurd to think man could "give life to a corpse in order to make money" after running that mandate through everyone's "ethics filter" first.

Ethics and values are driven by the humans not the Corp.

Dude, he's in tech. He can fall out of a tree and get a job before he hits the ground.

Finding another job with ethical practices isn't hard.

You can't steer that boat from the galley. I don't think there's any long-term harm in jumping ship after a brief engagement as long as that doesn't become a pattern on your CV. Depending on the length of time there, especially if it's a job right out of college, you could even just not put it on.

Consider seeing a trained counselor to talk through this.

I am not a trained counselor, but:

It doesn't really matter if the policies are legal or ethical. If you feel ashamed of your work most days, that's not a good situation, and you should probably look around for another job.

You should also consider that "behind every great fortune there lies a great crime". Pretty sure there is some work you can do which you would not be ashamed by, but it may take some extra effort / screening to find it.

How sketchy? Every single company I worked at did things that can be considered questionable just to grow. There's no fair fight in industry - good guys lose and get forgotten.

But there's of course a limit to that, and once illegal things start to happen - quit. But if that's a "regular shady" stuff everyone does, you may have problems finding company that won't do it (well, you can find companies that are much subtle internally about it, and you won't know what they do).

This submission originally got hit by a spam filter and then was rescued by a user who vouched for it. We rolled back the clock on the post when we saw it, but I suppose it may take a while for the OP to realize that they ended up with an active thread.

You should probably quit.

Before you do though, ask yourself if these "bad" actions are due to the fact that it's a large organization and these kind of things will always happen there or if it's actually ill intent.

Since I don't know which category (as I don't know the details) I would guess it's really just a question of the former rather the latter.

Size alone will make you rub some people the wrong way, make mistakes that have consequences and so on. Even a company like google who had the whole "don't be evil" had to change that because they learned that being evil really isn't something you necessarily want to be but in the views of others your actions might be interpreted like that.

Personally I am of the view that most organization even the really large ones are mostly good but will purely from their size make bad decisions here and there. You cannot not have that because size is power and power demands sacrifice.

has done some really sketchy things where they mislead users in the name of growth

A company that rips off its users will eventually rip you off.

Note though, that if the users are sophisticated enough that they should be able to read and understand a contract, and your company is following their contracts, then they are not ripping anybody off.

I am not sure what I should do.

Start interviewing and looking for another job. When you find a better one, quit.

It sounds like these issues are pretty big for you and not so much for your team. If I were in your shoes, I'd be worried that staying would impact my moral compass and I'd start thinking such things were ok. If you've joined pretty recently, no one will look down on you for moving on after discovering that they're misleading customers. I was in a similar situation myself and decided to stick it out, which was a big mistake.

I'd be happy to have a chat and see if there's a space for you somewhere in my network. Life's too short to do morally-dubious work. Contact info's in my profile.

Quit, if you can. Those policies will not change. There's a good reason why that company plays dirty (winning), and the executives are not interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter. Nobody else is, either -- which is why they still work there -- so good luck "banding together".

(Unless you're a relatively high-level being with some political cachet, which, given you're new and having asked this question in the first place, you're probably not.)

I worked for a similar company right out of college, when I was young(-er) and naive(r). Those 18 months barking up an amoral tree would be handy to have back.

That frustration and shame are going to affect your productivity sooner or later which in turn affects your future job prospects. Compartmentalization can work for some people, but it sounds like you have a real ethical boundary here. Our industry generally has a great deal of mobility, there are definitely great companies out there which require your skill set and have a great company culture, you don't have to settle for less.

Also don't trivialize the psychological impact that this can have on you, especially if you find yourself thinking about this off work hours.

At the end of the day there's no such thing as a perfect place to work, even in regards to ethics of the company. You need to spend time seriously thinking about the company's behavior and your own personal values (and also judging the company's behavior fairly and not necessarily too harshly, no individual person is perfect and company's are imperfect as well), questioning why you feel a certain way, whether it's justified, and how much it's justified. And then you need to make a decision on your own, keeping in mind that you do have the freedom to choose where to work. And also remembering that the work you do is much more valuable than the compensation you receive, so when you work for a company you are making a very serious and very significant contribution to them, you're supporting them, and by extension you are supporting what they do. If you feel that your employer is acting in a way that you cannot support, then you need to go somewhere else.

It's very easy to see ourselves as swept along by the tide of history, moved by bigger forces all around us. But we are those forces. Every action we take every day is like a drop in the ocean of history, and maybe sometimes our drops end up adding together to make something great, or maybe they make something that is hurtful. Whether or not we can individually turn back a tide that might be perpetuating or creating hurt or evil we can decide whether or not to contribute to it ourselves, and that makes a difference to our lives and incrementally to the world at large as well.

You should have thought twice before joining Facebook.

"People are what they eat, companies are the people they hire." -- Anonymous

There are a lot of good comments here, enough to get you to an answer I think. Personal integrity comes at a cost, and you describe a situation where your personal integrity is in conflict with the company's policies. It is true you should always be looking for a new job, thinking about what you want to do next what you like in a company what you dislike. One of the reasons for leaving is that the company's ethics and yours are too far out of alignment.

Here is the really tricky bit. Companies that are unethical get a reputation for that, the longer you stay at that company the more someone will believe that you're ok with that stance.

So three things;

1) Lead by example, speak out about unethical behavior to your peers and make your own choices in line with your values.

2) Look around for a company that is more aligned with your values, that is much easier to do while employed though.

3) Develop some questions you will use when you interview to understand how leadership treats those questions. Things like "Tell me about a time when your management suggested something against the best interests of the customers/users, and the response to it from your organization."

Good luck.

interesting comparison, people::food <--> companies::people

in some companies I've worked for it's quite accurate

Vote with your feet. If you can get hired there, surely you have other options.

one way to help frame the question to yourself is: is the company "enron evil" or "apple/google/microsoft evil" and evaluate where your personal tolerance might be on that spectrum. (obviously enron evil is an extreme).

also, do other people on your team feel similarly and therefore would likely leave in the next year or so?

for me, of the answer was closer to enron evil, and the team likely won't be around in a year I would probably be looking to move on.

alternative method : do you go home and agonize about it and vent to your close friends / partner constantly about the issues you struggle with? if si, might be a good indicator to get out. I once had a job like that and when I left my wife couldn't belive the difference in my after-work anxiety levels (which surprised me!); that's when I really knew I did the right thing.

Didn't they collude to suppress salaries? They also made non-general-purpose computing mainstream and acceptable.

Are there legal issues for the company? If so it seems like you should be talking to the company's lawyers about what to do. Certainly don't put anything in writing because you might have to testify about it in court one day.

If there are possible legal issues for you, then you need to get your own lawyer, because the company's lawyers aren't your lawyers.

Putting that aside, if you want to make a change to a management decision then you'll have to be making a presentation to management that's heavy on facts (evidence of risks and bad consequences) rather than about how it makes you feel. Since you're looking to change the status quo, the burden of proof is going to be on you and your allies (if you have any).

If that actually succeeds then it's evidence of strong leadership. But in the more likely case, it's time to look elsewhere.

Don't do this. Company lawyers are there to protect the company. This is the fastest way to get into trouble. If you are going to seek legal advice then make sure it is as far away from the company as possible.

I think I made that distinction. If you're talking to the company's lawyers it's because it's not personal - you're just trying to help the company.

Even when you make a distinction to help the company. It only works if the whistleblower is high enough and has the backing of the rest of the leadership. If a regular employee does this the best outcome is they get fired the worst outcome is it turns into a drawn out court battle and the employee loses.

It is the same with HR. HR is not there to protect employees. HR is there to protect the company and the easiest way to do that is to get rid of troublemaking employees even if they are making a valid case.

I don't know how it works at other companies, but at least at some places, the in-house lawyers are a resource that employees can use to get business-related legal questions answered. Yes, they're on the company's side, but that doesn't mean they'll consider you a "whistleblower" or a "troublemaker" for asking a few questions.

Seems like you're making this into a company-versus-employee dispute when it hasn't reached that stage yet. And better to avoid turning it into that.

From the author's tone it is pretty clear this is a pervasive problem. It is highly unlikely company lawyers are not aware. In fact they most likely were consulted for the exact same things the author is concerned about. It is naive and borderline stupid to think you can innocently bring up the issue by asking questions and not face any negative repercussions.

In that case it should be an easy question to answer. "You've probably considered this already, but I was wondering about the legal issues around [...]. Is there anything we need to worry about here?"

If nobody is willing to consult the lawyers about their area of expertise, why have them?

I don't think I'm getting through to you. In the interest of self preservation the author should stay as far away from company lawyers and HR as possible. In fact if you are facing a moral or ethical dilemma then no company resource will be of any use. Company resources will actively hinder you. I will repeat, it is naive to think otherwise.

I'm not sure what you mean by "self-preservation". If you mean keeping your job - well, other posters have suggested quitting. If just talking to people gets you fired, you probably don't want to work there anyway.

Of course, that assumes a certain level of privilege. For someone who can't afford to quit and find another job, things are different.

No way.

If you talk to an attorney who isn't paid by you and bound by privilege to you (ie corporate counsel) to address a problem that you have, you now have two problems.

If you're a member of a trade union (and if not, why not?) then the union will probably have legal services that you can access.

Every big company will cross your feelings of what is right or ethical every now and again. I would chalk this up to the simple fact that a big company is composed of many different people, with different ethics.

Day-to-day, what really matters to your experience is the direct team around you. You're a little enclave inside a larger organization, and may never really interact outside said enclave.

But, we also like to take pride in what we do. If you are ashamed to work for the company, that will probably eat at you. You might learn something that changes your perspective that leads to changing your mind, but the company probably won't change.

What do you mean by "fair?" Business isn't about being fair in the sense of fair play ("chivalry"). Do you mean your employer is engaging in illegal monopolistic practices? Is advertising fraudulent?

I could see it being monopolistic, though it would be debatable.

They don't follow the golden rule. They do X to other companies, while actively preventing other companies from doing X to them. If X is okay, then it should be a two way street. If X is not okay, then it should be a zero way street. Either of those positions I could be happy with. In no case of good behavior is X a one way street.

How linked into the company are you? Are you linked into the dirty growth hacks? Is the CEO linked into the culture and aware of these 'sketchy things'?

Below I will attempt to recruit responses from my hacker news connections.

Sounds very American to me. What's the problem?

You make it sound as if Tech is some way insulated from the practices required for a business to exhibit constant growth.

Want idealistic tech? Get the cuff out of big Corp OR... practice perception management. Do "you" (aka be yourself without compromise). If you have ethics / ideals to uphold, do so in a way that creates value for the project.

Show how your values / ethics provide value to the project. Be dope. Produce results with your values / ethics in front of you. Production can't be disputed.

This is one of those real-life-is-this-way kind of things...it's usually hard to change company culture because it reflects the nature or behavior or actions of somebody right from the top. Things won't change unless the person managing things changes. The best thing to do is to enjoy your job as much as you can and keep your little part of the world clean and maybe consider changing jobs if it makes you too unhappy or forces you to compromise on your view-point of how things should be.

Start by voting for people who want to enforce our existing laws against fraud, leveraging monopoly power, and who might treat public utilities (any business with a network effect) (whether shiny or not) as public utilities and regulate 'em like our great grandfathers did.

There aren't many, but there are a few.

"I'm enjoying my work with the Imperium and they seem well-organized but some of their policies, like mass death, fer instance..."

Rather won than lose? Sounds like every big business I know.

By "fair," do you mean "legally defensible in court" or "morally upright according to middle class values?" Turns out, successful large American companies go for the former; if you want the latter, then you probably need to look for a smaller colorant, ideally founded around a mission. Non profit and government work can also be good for that.

I had worked at a different large tech company for a long while and never had the feeling that they treated their users or competitors this way.

Have a look at Peter Drucker's classic "Managing Oneself"

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Oneself-Harvard-Business-Cla...

Drucker takes a firm stand on this issue. He advises to "put values first"

Quit, and be honest about the reason.

Obviously, best to find another job first.

(I have done something like this at two companies, for similar ethics reasons.)

There is nothing like fighting fair in business. So long as it's legal you are good to go. If it's not legal, run! I like companies that are passionate about their product, customers and crushing their competitors. Lots of businesses with amazing products have gone bankrupt in the name of playing fair.

How much time do you devote to studying what is and isn't legal?

Is there any value or sense in revealing to the general public some details about the company's dodgy practices?

Are you asking sincerely, or as a passive aggressive commentary about OP's query? If the former: I think, yes, if whistleblowing can motivate change that would prevent fraud.

If the latter, OP didn't disclose anything about a specific company.

It was a sincere question.

How should I have phrased it to avoid ambiguity?

You can't, because sarcasm is a thing and it's often impossible to detect in writing from people you don't already know.

Go into business for yourself.

Truth be told, no matter what the circumstances are that is the correct answer.

Learn. Know there is a next step, elsewhere. Prepare and be pro-active.

Nothing like seeing some of what you don't like and don't want to accept, to help you define your own boundaries and what you do want.

Good luck!

Whitout being more specific I would say that, in general, fighting the policies works even worse than ignoring them. Try to become somebody who can dictate them.

It's called "business". The question to you is, how are you going to get into a position to create your own company that is built on your values?

Life is really, really short. Always stand up for what you believe, you'll be a much better person for it. Don't have regrets on your deathbed.

When I was employed, I considered that I was working for the Founder/CEO/Director so one of the most important things for me was to be inspired and in-sync with him. He was the one I would make richer, so I had to be happy and proud to make this person richer.

This has never been my intention, but it turned out that that one of these persons became my investor. The takeaway is that focusing on the mission and culture will always pay the highest dividends (even though these dividends may not be money initially)

That being said, I have no problem with unethical, but do have a problem with dishonest and deceitful. Sextoys are unethical, cold calls are unethical etc... I agree with those saying that a company needs to get the ball rolling. Organic growth doesn't start a business, it makes it sustainable.

Think about the healthy food business. Being healthy is simple : eat raw fruits, eat raw vegetables, repeat. Yet even an "ethical" company will need to add many refined ingredients to push the expiry date farer, and differentiate on colour, taste, etc... They need to literally add poison to health. Is that unethical ? If you say yes, then all healthy food companies should be fresh fruit market sellers in order to remain ethical.

There's no such thing as ethics in business. But there is integrity and mission. Integrity is standing for who you are. Sometimes standing for who you are requires kicking people in the noise in bars, other times it requires remaining silent in front of the greatest outrage. Individual actions alone cannot define an identity, therefore no single action or act should be flagged as always bad or always good. Good has been defended with violence (bastille day), bad has been defended with silence (slavery).

>What should I do

Do not focus on what they do but on why they do it. It wouldn't be wise since a company never is where it would like to be. Quite frankly, ask a 5min meeting with your CEO/or a very senior manager, this is the kind of chat they usually love to have. And perhaps nobody ever told him. In addition to feeling relieved you will also score, they'll give you credit for that. Simply, don't sound like you think you are better than them, and don't lecture them. Just voice your concern, and be honest, curious, and humble.

Companies only act through their employees. You are an employee, so you either need to fix the company or stop being an employee.

What could you do? You're an employee. Nothing. Try talking to them.

Introduce new tools, not policies to your big co;

So you are working for Oracle, OP?

It's okay throwaway173205 - Lot's off Googlers are becoming disillusioned by the failure to "Don't be evil".

Alphabet/Google retired its "Don't be evil" motto last year.

http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-evil/

So now is it simply allowed or is it actively encouraged?

Either leave or put up with it.

How long have you been there?

Quit Uber

The OP's company isn't the leader, so Lyft would be the company to call out.

Aren't they?

> They are in an industry where the leader has a big natural advantage, and they are in that lead by a large margin.

Could be AWS.

It sounded like an app targeting end users, possibly a mobile app that sucks up all the data on the device. AWS is unlikely because I don't think anyone could get away with fooling a large segment of the developer population for an extended length of time. Even if they could, why would they? AWS is their golden goose, engaging in shady/unethical practices would mean no more golden eggs.

Thought so too

AirBnB?

Sounds more like LinkedIn.

Definitely Uber

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