You have personal responsibility for your actions as a developer.
If you are using your skills in a way which primarily benefits the super-rich and is a net negative to society, you should take this opportunity to reflect on that: yes.
If you are using your skills in a way which primarily benefits the super-rich and is a net negative to society, you should take this opportunity to reflect on that: yes.
Building a personal app for Bill Gates shouldn't make you feel guilty.
Being a net negative drain on society through your profession should make you feel guilty regardless of circumstance.
Also, as always wealth is not a zero sum game. Just because someone has 100X the wealth you do, does not mean that they stole from you, or that you are poorer. In fact your standard of living has probably increased.
While this makes us sleep well at night, please consider that the top richest are often connected to:
- Externalizing costs to countries with corrupt/authoritarian governments
- Tax evasion
- Companies backed by strong governments' tax money (theft by the state), later privatized for pennies because the government is broke and/or corrupt
- Banking, which never follow free-market rules
- Oil and mining companies, which aren't taxed proportional to the intrinsic environmental and social impacts
While wealth doesn't comes from theft, wealth concentration requires a dose of unethical behavior and not observing some people's fundamental rights. When you're at that level of capital it's an entire different game.