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Comment by elliotto | Hacker News Reader

I don't think he's morally bankrupt. I am disagreeing with his attempt to handwave away a moral analysis of these organizations as 'cynicism'. I think these analyses are really important.

I don't live in the US. But if I did, and I was capable enough to be a successful software engineer, I would try to work for an organisation that was not implicated in abhorrent behaviour. If I was to work for one, I would not attempt to dismiss criticisms of it as cynicism.

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I feel you missed the gist of my argument, which is that anyone who lives in the US in 2025 does a similar sort of "morality calculus" as someone who works for Big Tech. To be honest, I think living in the US is worse.

I think there are reasonable things to expect from someone's morality calculus. Leaving the country you were born in for moral reasons is a complex and life changing undertaking and beyond reasonable expectation for anyone not extremely politically motivated, let alone resourced enough to do so. Not working for a company whose moral values you disagree with (when you have an extremely lucrative skillset) is a smaller and more reasonable ask.

I'm also not really asking that people leave these roles - everyone has their own path to take. Just that they don't make posts dismissing criticism of these structures as silly cynicism. Or else they will have to contend with me writing a comment disgreeing with them.

Big tech companies are large. It's very possible to be working on things that are generally great for society while others in the company are not. Fighting from the inside for the behavior you want to see gives you an outsized influence on the outcomes you want to see.

> Fighting from the inside for the behavior you want to see gives you an outsized influence on the outcomes you want to see

A lot of people say this, while collecting 6-7 figure cheques. I've not seen that much evidence that it is correct - certainly, I might as well have been pissing into the wind, for all the effect my influence had on the direction of various FAANG

If you are just a lower level IC, your influence is small. However if you can climb to higher level 7+ or enter management you will have a lot of control of roadmaps you own. If you're trying to influence organizations you're not in you're also going to have quite limited influence, but participating in dogfooding programs and filing bugs is still more influence than you would have externally.

I do agree that it's not easy even given the correct conditions.

That's a straw man.

The cynicism the post is talking about is the argument that your chain of command doesn't want to make good software but you do, not anything related to the use of said software.

oh that's a pretty nice summary of the points in the article, and while it seems to have sprung a nice discussion about interesting topics, the whole thread seems to have not understood the author as clearly

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