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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

There is a need to begin calling out Facebook and Google employees directly for their role in harming society, especially because they seem ready to rise up whenever one of their peers is mistreated.

What would be your strategy for holding a mirror to these people and to make these jobs undesirable?

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Is there a need for that?

Why don’t we call out bank employees for all the fraud and deception leading up to the 2008 crash? Car makers and oil companies employees for polluting the earth? Farmers for allowing run off into rivers? Pharma employees for relentlessly jacking up prices and pill mills poising countless people?

The reality is most employees have virtually zero impact on the direction of their company. The Zuckerbergs of this world will retreat to their private island estates in Hawaii till any backlash blows over.

If only employees had some way of joining their collective voices to create an actual power structure that could bargain with executives and shareholders.

Probably a bad idea though, we should just keep assuming that the founders lucky enough to reach critical mass will do the right thing for the world even when they are incentivized not to.

>Why don’t we call out bank employees for all the fraud and deception leading up to the 2008 crash? Car makers and oil companies employees for polluting the earth?

a lot of people complain about those all the time. In Iceland they even put them into prison.

>The reality is most employees have virtually zero impact on the direction of their company

I don't think that's true. Software workers, in particular at those large companies in senior positions wield quite a lot of influence. It's right that they're not owners of the firm, but they're in short supply and they command a lot of power. That said, even your average lowly developer has a very simple choice to have more than zero impact. Don't help them build these systems.

Agreed -- though likely to be a minority opinion on here unfortunately.

Although I do feel for those who began at Google when they still ascribed to the Don't Be Evil mantra -- at some point you have a responsibility to look around you and recognize the work you're doing has become part of the problem.

What are you even saying? Facebook and Google engineers are just writing code, just like (presumably) you. Very few of them make any key decisions, and most of them work on good things. For every engineer working on disallowing FB signout on oculus, there are 10 writing tools for small businesses to more easliy share their pages, helping people stay in contact with loved ones.

We (rightly) don't go after Northrop Grumman engineers when the US decides to bomb Yemen. Put down your pitchfork and show some compassion.

It’s always interesting when I see HN on the verge of grasping the importance of worker solidarity. Ironically by following political philosophies of “self” empowerment, tech workers have ceded all real power to their majority investors.

You’re both right, but your argument is one logical jump away from “they were just doing their jobs”

Compassion is the reverse of what you're thinking. If you make bombs in modern day you're a murderer. We have no active world war, no real threat to our borders, and any basic level of research shows those bombs are used for proxy wars over resources and land in foreign continents. If youre in a position to design bombs you're in a position to work anywhere else too. No excuses for behavior.

Rising totalitarian nation across the sea with an ever expanding military, infinite resources, and a desire to expand reach around the globe.

"JuSt StoP MakinG Bombss"

Provide evidence that were at any risk of WW3. In the U.S. Those bombs are exclusively used for proxy wars and are made in significant abundance to continue that "war". They're not for any other purpose. If your intent is actual defense, sure, but we don't have that reason.

Working for Google and Facebook is often a choice, with a highly desirable outcome. People rarely become engineers at Facebook because they just couldn't find a job at a different company.

Those engineers could decide to build similar tools at a company that does not aid, you know, genocide. Those engineers could also decide to not continue working for a company that normalizes mass surveillance.

When you decide to work on your awesome things at companies like Facebook and Google, you are propping up megacorps that harm society, and that's your choice.

Regarding compassion, I'm looking forward to the next mass walkout of Facebook engineers, condemning the spread of hate and violence that their employee enables.

I have a (good faith) question for you: since it seems as though many large corporations accumulate skeletons and incentivize negative behavior, is your position effectively against large corporations? Or is there a counterexample? Is this a complaint against the FB(/IG/SNAP/whatever) style feed, or do you feel this is endemic to any communication platform at scale?

Outside of the US, many (perhaps most) educated and politically-aware Westerners do look down on people involved in the Military-Industrial Complex.

Nobody civilized wants to "go after" them of course, but make no mistake - it's not something you'd want to brag about while overseas if you're trying to make friends.

This is true even in friendly places like Europe, Canada or Japan. Make of that what you will.

I find tech workers on HN, and other places, to be incredibly privileged and Entitled. Some of the responses you’re getting show it pretty clearly.

This won’t get positive traction here but whatever: I was in an elevator in Austin a few years ago for a conference.

Older guy, mid 50’s maybe, gets on and says “oh are you a googler?” Me: “Are you? Him: “Yeah I’m in XXXX group” Me: “That’s disgusting, Google is an evil company and you should quit”.

Dude was visibly shocked, and I got off the elevator and never saw him again. If more people told the employees of surveillance capitalism company’s just how terrible they are for working for them they’d have a lot harder time recruiting.

I feel like the tide is shifting.

Original Google said “Don’t be evil”, and the employees stood up for the integrity of the company when needed.

Now, Alphabet as the large company did not bring over that motto, and in fact Google has now removed it.

And if the things we see publicly are accurate, the employee’s faith in Google is shaken.

so you were a total dick to a random person and you're writing this story like you're the hero?

I believe that’s being rude for no actual reason.

There is a clear reason - to make them uncomfortable. Nobody forced them to work there, and it is obvious to everyone what kind of future they are building there. If you exchange your soul for a good paycheck, this is just what you get.

The alternative is "Oh, you work at Schutzstaffel? That's cool!". That he has done is morally correct.

Google has an absolute overabundance of people lining up to work for them. Telling the moral people that they should quit just results in a company filled with amoral people.

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