Ask HN: Have you not accepted or left a job because it was immoral? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you not accepted or left a job because it was immoral?

20 pointsdataviz100048 comments

“A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.” [0]

Not only is there no reward, nor can you ever expect a reward, for doing the right thing, it also often comes at a personal cost.

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_%28Thoreau%29

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I didn't refuse a job. I just didn't do the bad part ...

Only time this happened to me was one of my first jobs. I worked phone tech support for a consumer PC manufacturer in the mid to late 1990s.

The company decided their 3 year hardware warranty was suddenly now 1 year. They decided this retroactively... I thought it was wrong. I spoke up to my boss, they agreed and passed our thoughts up the chain, but after that it was all yes men so we never heard back.

I was just some on and off again college kid and figured, whatever, so despite the new rule change if I thought they should get hardware (I had access to their original warranty data), they got hardware. I mentioned it to other coworkers and they did the same.

Few years later the company relented after they were sued. Nothing ever came of my actions as far as anyone noticing, or at least not enough to care, pretty sure my boss knew.

Otherwise all my jobs are pretty run of the mill legal activity.

A recruiter once asked me, before talking about anything else, if there were any software development jobs I wouldn't consider doing. I said something along the lines of "nothing involving gambling or the military" and I think that was as far as I got before he politely ended the call.

I guess it's better for both parties to be clear at the outset. We should all think about where we draw the line.

Those are pretty much the criteria I specify. Although I don't so much mind working on defensive tech, just not offensive. Also no tobacco companies.

Ultimately if you're working on weapons tech you don't get any say in how the technology will be used, there are very very few things that can only be deployed defensively. Because defending an open line in a war theatre can totally be an offensive action. On the flip side plenty of military offensives have been justified as preemptive defense. Not only the lines are blurry, they're not under your control unless you're actually in the chain of command.

Sure, if you work on weapons tech itself, but there are other technologies used in the defence sector.

I'd need specific examples, because without those I don't see how other deeper supply chain techs are different in any way.

As it so happens, there is no "offense sector." Any defense tech can and will be used for offense.

Not exactly rejected a job since I didn't have a hard offer, but every time Facebook/Meta recruiters want to talk to me about job opportunities I turn them down.

Meta is pretty much the only big tech company that I actively boycott. Nuked all of my account years ago and I have never looked back. Amazon is the other big tech that I refuse to work for, regardless of role / department / location.

Yes, after working as a dba for a law firm and discovering that I was the administrator for thousands of lawsuits against tobacco companies. In many cases the victim had already died of lung cancer and the suit was being brought by family members. Many of the families’ income was near poverty level. At the same time, the law firm was in a plush nyc office building. I spent day after day feeling like I wanted to throw up and finally quit.

Wait, what about it made you want to throw up? Was it that the proceeds from lawsuits were being garnished by the law firm rather than going towards the families?

Is it not assumed that they were defending the tobacco companies?

Yes, thanks for the clarification. One of this law firm’s main clients was one of the big tobacco companies. Also this was in the mid 90s before the big tobacco settlements.

ohhh, yea I terribly misread that

Fwiw I read it the same way as you!

"Not Accepted" -- If you know anything about industry or the world, you can't go through a listing of ten tech jobs, without immediately rejecting some jobs from consideration, because they're morally/ethically icky.

(Just yesterday, I paused, and then sent a recruiter notes on why I wasn't interested in a couple companies they'd selected for me. Not to be That Person, but because I wanted to help them find what's interesting to me, and also to invite them to push back if my initial assessment of a company was off.)

"Left a Job" -- This is much harder than not accepting/considering, but it also happens. A couple variations:

* I'm guessing the most common way might not be deciding that you have to leave because of something immoral, but you're forced out before then, because you don't play along with the immoral or whatever is leading up to it. (This reason could be coming across as goodie-two-shoes risk, or refusing to so some immoral thing, or actively working to reverse/prevent some immoral thing.)

* Something immoral might be going on, but there are additional reasons to leave. Such as (predictably) people behaving immorally wrt customers or society might also behave immorally wrt employees/colleagues. So you might leave because the work environment is hazardous, your coworkers are backstabby, or you were cheated out of a bonus... even before you decide that the business of kicking puppies is wrong.

Company I worked for was taken over, and they treated the old owner very badly. So I left at the point of the handover. Never regretted it.

Yes, my wife left a school because it was being run by a drunk woman; I did not accept a job at a _defense_ contractor (Lockheed)because they could not assure me my work would only be for defensive efforts

Isn't defence just a euphemism for war? I don't think many people assume they actually mean strict defensive efforts when countries talk about Defence Forces etc.

Sometimes, war happens to you even if you don't want it. Having no defenses doesn't mean you and your family are safe.

That's kind of weird. Everyone knows the best defense is a good offense...

Ender’s Game

The enemy portal is down

Long story short... I'm at a temp job I basically just started and the foreman, business owner, and I are standing on the sidewalk.

A huge black dude, who probably can deadlift 500lbs, comes up to us and asks if he could have a job. This place desperately needed workers...

The owner with no hesitation, "we dont hire ni..." and it didnt stop there. He listed a number of other slurs as well.

I walked off the job and quit without even telling them. 80% because i dont want to beaten up by a very fit black dude. 20% for 'doing the right thing.

Here's the weird thing... this is Windsor Ontario, Canada next to detroit(80% black). The Slave 'underground railroad's destination was mostly here. There's loads of black people and being a nazi or whatever is extremely rare and bizarre.

Left a job where the made me change a SQL stored procedure that changed the emergency number phone routing by hand in production, with no test setup. Main reason to leave the job was ethical. Then, they also paid me half what I deserved

I once got fired in retail for refusing to oversell a pensioner that didnt need what the sales manager demanded we sell her.

Image recognition for cameras on tanks and ships using Nvidia Jetson. Job ad wasn’t very informative, and didn’t even mention they were military contractors. In the interview they kept using kittens as the example of something you wouldn’t shoot. And that I shouldn’t worry, because they only sell these systems to the good countries. Had me sit and read the employee manual for 30 minutes at the first interview. They had a strict “no porn at work” policy. Fortunately the other place I interviewed offered +15% on salary.

Out of curiosity, is the porn at work policy less strict at the job you accepted?

Even if you agree with not watching porn at work on principle, it's weird to have it as an explicit policy. It's like if the employee manual has a "No stealing the office supplies" or a "No office fight-clubs" policy.

> Even if you agree with not watching porn at work on principle, it's weird to have it as an explicit policy. It's like if the employee manual has a "No stealing the office supplies" or a "No office fight-clubs" policy.

No personal use (with incidental use exceptions for some items, and often exhaustive examples of what is and isn't incidental) of company property and zero tolerance for workplace violence of any kind policies are pretty common, IME.

Sure, and if there was a policy of no sexual harassment including openly watching porn, wearing sexually explicit apparel, or discussing your active sex life and a policy of no using your employer's internet for personal matters other than direct communication with family and friends, especially calling out watching porn, pirating digital media, or playing videogames as examples, that would be one thing.

It's having an explicit, naked, unadorned policy specifically stating "Don't watch porn on company time" not in the context of an umbrella policy that's strange. Much like having an aside "Also don't start a fight club please" or "By the way, don't stuff your bag full of office supplies" would be weird.

They’re common expectations, not common policies. Whenever there’s a policy, it means someone did something, and they had to make a rule.

No sunbathing on the roof.

No eating the office supplies.

I’m certainly going to create a

  No office fight clubs
           - Management

and hang it in the next office I visit.

I’ve never worked anywhere with a “no porn at work” policy. In my country we let people figure out for themselves how to spend a restroom break.

Felt like these guys had had an incident, and now every candidate then has to promise to sleep with their hands above the blanket.

I turned down a website development offer when I learnt it was for pay-day loans (interest is haram).

Well, an Islamic, Sharia-compliant bank will make money on you by purchasing the good and loaning it to you at a higher price.

This is a hidden riba (interest)

This post seems to have been unlinked somehow. It's not marked flagged, but I can't find it within 20 pages from front page (where I first saw it), nor in either of the 2 "ask" pages.

    Ask HN: Have you not accepted or left a job because it was immoral?
    14 points by dataviz1000 2 hours ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments

Yes, I have left a job because there was immoral and violent behavior going on against vulnerable co-workers and due to long-established power structures, change wasn't really possible.

On a broader level, I've made a choice long ago to try and not work in domains I consider morally questionable.

"Not only is there no reward, nor can you ever expect a reward, for doing the right thing, it also often comes at a personal cost."

That's too cynical. I take personal satisfaction in not taking such jobs, and that's no small award.

No, but I did have a bit of a conundrum once.

I was politically opposed to ACA/Obamacare in the early stages. When it launched, the website had big problems and crashed constantly. It was a huge embarrassment for the administration. I was working in a support/diagnostic role and was invited to participate in a multi-company tiger team that was on the problem. ( The only time my work efforts were covered in the nightly news! )

I dug into the task as well as I could and made a small contribution. I gave it my very best effort.

The fact that I opposed it at the time, but gave it my best effort is one of the proudest moments of my career.

My game studio with a 10 year history pivoted to NFTs (a decision from the founder) and went out of business 2 years later because of it, laying off 37 people. Most swore we would never work in crypto again and many stayed unemployed rather than interview with crypto companies that recruited us.

Three folks did get hired fairly quickly. The took a job in another NFT game startup. Ugh.

A tobacco company offered me quite lucrative work, but I didn't want to support it. And I was a smoker at the time.

Absolutely, although it never got as far as an actual job offer before the rejection. A couple of minutes of online searches should be enough to highlight any horrible behaviour before even applying.

We had a high 6 figure brief from a tobacco company (looking to break into vapes) a few years ago. Was easily ruled out within 20 minutes of discussion.

I once cut off an interview as soon as the interviewer told me the job was building and maintaining a porn site. Never made it to an actual job offer.

Left the NFP space because of the waste and graft.

Left another job because it basically required me to lie to customers.

Does being fired count?

So true.

Yes, I left a job after it turned out that the company was basically a massive email address harvester, personal information data broker, and spam company. Bunch of very slimy people for the most part.

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