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Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

>> The reality is that these early “techno-utopians” were keenly aware of these risks. They founded organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, not because they were convinced that everything was going to be great – but because they were worried that everything could be terrible, and also because they saw the potential for things to be better.

Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries to CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to hackers' ethics and technology morality.

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> Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries to CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to hackers' ethics and technology morality.

I think it's more than the money. Many engineers view FB and Google as kind of a rite of passage in tech. Ex-Googlers and ex-FBers are highly regarded. Your startup is safe hiring them because they have been vetted already.

I turned down an opportunity to interview at FB in 2008 when they were just starting to build their native mobile team. I was even offered a free flight from Chicago and was told I'd get to meet Zuck. Some of us have refused to work for companies that exploit user data and have always put ethics first. But "person who refused to interview at Google" doesn't sound as nice as "ex-Googler" to most.

I turned down a phone screen at Facebook.

About a week later, a tech recruiter called and asked me if there was any sort of company I wouldn't work at. I said, yeah, I wouldn't want to work in any social media company. He challenged me by pointing out that the money and prestige has to be tempting, right?

I told them Facebook contacted me the week before and I declined.

The hem and haw, followed by 'uhhh.... well" and silence was revealing.

To be fair, I have zero chance of getting into Facebook, especially for what they contacted me for.

Isn't "fake it 'til you make it" a common mantra among CS grads entering the work force in the US?

>>But "person who refused to interview at Google" doesn't sound as nice as "ex-Googler" to most.

You could have gone a bit further, and been a "person who refused a job offer from Google". That, imo, would carry more weight.

It's similar to the way some companies specifically look for newly admitted Stanford/Harvard/MIT students, then pay those students ridiculous sums to give up college and work for them instead.

Anyone can say they refused a job offer from Google. It's puffery unless you can substantiate it, and substantiating it is awkward and smells of praise-seeking.

> Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries to CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to hackers' ethics and technology morality.

I still believe that there are enough hackers who would be willing to work for a much worse salary if they could obey hacker ethics and morality. Of course this implies working at a place that is much cheaper than Bay Area. But even under this premise: Where is the money supposed to come from to pay an even much lower salary reliably?

>I still believe that there are enough hackers who would be willing to work for a much worse salary if they could obey hacker ethics and morality. Of course this implies working at a place that is much cheaper than Bay Area. But even under this premise: Where is the money supposed to come from to pay an even much lower salary reliably?

I think this is essentially the role Mozilla fills in the SF/SV ecosystem at least. Everyone knows Mozilla engineers are equally or greater respected than anyone from Facebook or Google. The problem is there's only room for one Mozilla. There simply isn't enough donations to support more.

Mozilla makes bank mainly as a non-profit company, not via donations: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/

Which i am very happy about, they are still on the right side of history in my book. The recent issues with tracking and marketing channels have burned me a bit, but there is still good will left. I hope they don't fuck it up

My guess is that many of those hackers willing to take much lower salary for ethics and morality are either already rich or do not have the burden of supporting a family yet. It's already hard for someone to take low salary job when plenty of much better paying jobs are available, it'd be way more harder for someone to do that consistently throughout their life.

Come on, a "much lower salary" compared to a Google or Facebook salary is still a pretty good salary compared to a lot of other jobs. I don't make Google money (I also don't live in the Bay Area) and I need maybe a quarter of the money I'm making. If I had a family I might need half.

You might be surprised at how much family changes things. You have to factor in:

- Assuming two working parents initially, either lose one salary or pay >$1000/month on child care per child until school (unless you're lucky and grandparents live nearby)

- Larger house, larger mortgage. In the UK at least, you probably end up looking for one in the catchment area of a good school which means even more expensive, or go private which is a lot more expensive.

- Kids are just expensive. Clothes, book, activities, clubs, holidays, books.

- College/University fund

And yet a lot of plumbers, bus drivers, cashiers and people with other jobs that pay a lot less than whatever a software developer gets successfully raise children.

Those jobs still exist in large numbers in places with low costs of living. Programming jobs generally only exist in places with high costs of living, where someone with any of the jobs you listed (except maybe plumber; those folks make bank) would be struggling to get by, and wouldn't think it was wise to start a family.

> You might be surprised at how much family changes things.

Every expensive hobby that you start probably changes things a lot. Starting a family has the disadvantage that you cannot simply stop it if money starts to lack.

as anybody who tracks my every move, reviewed my transcripts, or listened to me rant can tell - I was never going to get a job at a top-tier tech company. but making six figures at a big solar company for a couple years, was awesome.

I quit when I realized that they were really selling a financial product to large banks by securitizing the solar tax credit... not solar to save the planet.

so, yeah... ethics. and convenience. and as much as I wanted to save the world, I knew that wasn't my way.

i hope other people can get themselves out of debt, and out of that machine. for me though... it's stressful af to be trying to make it on my own.

Question: does securitizing the solar tax credit increase or decrease solar deployment? I don't know enough about the market to say, but I do wonder if you may have missed the forest for the trees.

> does the credit work?

clearly the folks responsible for renewing the solar tax credit thought so.

> but forest & trees!

imo, neither the solar tax credit, nor the oil & gas R&D credits are valid uses of public funds. so I quit.

Oh I was confused. From your original comment, I thought your goal was "solar to save the planet" and that your ethical issue was that it was primarily a financial play and only secondarily about increasing solar deployment. But from this comment it sounds like your primary problem was with taxpayer funding for a subsidy, which, fair enough, if you don't believe in subsidies, you shouldn't work for a company whose business model relies on them.

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