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Comment by ButterBiscuits | Hacker News Reader

> There's nothing wrong in working at a FAANG for the money

Sure, if you believe that making more money is the only thing that matters in this world. If you take this logic to its extreme you can justify anything if it makes you rich. You're simultaneously criticizing a system while defending your participation in it.

There are lots of things wrong with working at a FAANG for the money. If you don't like how Amazon treats their warehouse workers, don't work at Amazon. If you don't like how Facebook perpetuates fake news, don't work at Facebook. If you don't like Google's search monopoly, don't work at Google. Just because the world is a shitty place doesn't mean you can excuse yourself for being a shitty person.

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Total comp and work life balance are all I care about for my job. I put in my 40 hours so that I have money to pay the bills, support my family, and have some fun hobbies. The only reason I wouldn’t work for FB is the poor work life balance.

At the end of the day my family loves me and they have a comfortable, happy life, so I’m fine with internet commenters calling me a shitty person because of my employer.

You're making a similar argument rich people make to defend their wealth: they earned it, they're comfortable, and they don't care what other people think. Not caring about anyone besides your immediate circle is the problem, so you bragging about it just means we'll never agree.

You're touching on a very complex topic spanning across areas of social life, ethics and morality, economy, family, etc. Lumping that all into "well they're evil and if you work for them so are you" is an easy out. Believe me, I know where you're coming from, but that's not how it is in the real world. It should be, but it's not.

There are too many variables and that line between right and wrong is not well-defined in this matter. Using an extreme version of your logic, you should strip yourself of all currency and material possessions. Yet you're on here, possibly even while you're supposed to be working. Do you think the companies hosting ycombinator.com are clean? Maybe they're using AWS resources. You're using devices from those very companies you despise right? You're probably using electricity from a power company that is exploiting people in some way or maybe you bought solar panels from a company that exploited people to fabricate those panels. You see, that moral line can be shifted all over the place.

I grew up on food-stamps and I was in debt for a very very long time in my adult life. Poverty can be very traumatic (and very motivating to never go into it again). Money is certainly not the only thing that matters in this world and that's not what I said in my post. It is very important in living a sustainable life in America (and elsewhere). A single ER visit can ruin your life-savings for example. I work for a FAANG because I'm uncertain about the future and that scares the hell out of me. I have a family. I have several chronic medical problems. There's a realistic possibility I might be too disabled to work next year or the following year. Layoffs are starting to ramp up. I don't want that money, I need it to ensure my family can survive the problems that are surely to come in the not too distant future. I don't want them to endure the hell that I went through. I don't think I can bare it mentally. So yeah, I'm working at a FAANG for the "TC". I don't give a shit about innovating some new UI library or whatever else people think is cool in tech. I'm not even sure I have that ability if we're being honest. Even if I did, this whole thread is about a post that highlights exactly why it's hard to do that now. I work here so I can survive and that's it.

If you believe Facebook is terrible, isn't taking a high-paid position there and gamifying their internal processes in your favor while not helping a floundering business plug the holes in its sinking ship the real way to take direct action? If several hundred people independently did this on their own (and perhaps not even intentionally), it could have a meaningful impact in taking down one of the worst corporations in human history.

You're essentially promoting the old "bringing them down from the inside" defense, which next to "I was only following orders" is the biggest lie we tell ourselves in order to sleep better

That feels like the wrong model to me.

I don't want to work for FAANG for various reasons, but their negative externalities are either things I'd have no connection with or be in a position to push back against.

Sure, the bosses may say "do it anyway" and my only counter would then be to leave, but I expect most people in FAANG aren't actually connected to $relevant_controversy.

At least, that's my impression from (mostly) the outside.

That sounds like a rather depressing, unfulfilled existence to me. It's like someone getting a job with a military defence contractor, then sitting at their desk doing crossword puzzles for a decade.

Not only don't work for them, but surely also don't even use their product/services.

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