If you don't care about the crime, don't do it.
Ask HN: Should I testify?
41–50 of 250 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#42You are what defines your career, not the other way around. There are a lot of companies out there, some will see testifying as good, some bad. If your choice is true to yourself, and the company you want to work for really doesn't like that, I'd say eventually you will not go along well with that company and this acts as a "fail fast" filter.
Finding a good career path may take quite some time, but working for the wrong company can cost magnitudes of more time.
For most HN readers, including me, the answer is an obvious "testify", because we see it as a big plus. Do you want to work for people who see it as the right thing to do, or people who avoid it?
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#43[deleted]
Not that I disagree with your suggestion, but the testimony is the thing that helps determine guilt (or innocence, for that matter).
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#44Let's be realistic: there are many companies that won't hire you after this. The question is, are those the companies that you want to work for? It's a tough choice, of course.
You mention that the company you worked at is popular here on Hacker News. So let's assume we are talking about Apple or Google or perhaps AirBnB. So from now on, when people look up your name, they will see something like "Testified against Apple".
A lot of companies will quietly remove you from consideration, if they see that you have testified. And, sad to say, this might exclude you from a lot of the better paying jobs in the industry.
All the same, you have to ask yourself, how will you feel about yourself if you don't testify? What kind of world do you want to live in? What sort of tech industry do you want to live in?
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#45You don't need career advice, you need to degauss your moral compass.
I really respect you, but that's spoken by a person relatively unlikely to need to convince someone else to hire him again.
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#46Tell them to subpoena you - then the choice to testify is not yours any more. You'll have to. But you can tell future employers that you were forced, if you'd like to.
This!
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#47First off: You already have google results, this one will probably not be on the first page, and you can easily push it down further.
Secondly: A good employer is interested in your current abilities to fulfil the role they need, and will ignore unrelated information.
I've worried about having anti-commercial anti-proprietary statements on my google results, but I've never had a problem getting job offers from proprietary software companies.
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#48Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#49I would not. Even firms that are not doing anything blatantly illegal steer clear from whistleblowers and the like. A recruiter that googles you and finds you testifying against a former employer may just pass on your resume.
In terms of career, there is no possible upside to this; I don't think anyone is more likely to hire you because of this. And, there are plenty of downsides. What's good for society may not always be good for the individual.
Why wound't an employer want to hire someone who is honest and complies with the law?
Re: Ask HN: Should I testify?
#50Tell them to subpoena you - then the choice to testify is not yours any more. You'll have to. But you can tell future employers that you were forced, if you'd like to.
Perfect, unless they're threatening to prosecute you as well if you don't cooperate.
Otherwise, explain the situation to the prosecutor and detective and ask to be subpoenaed. They'd likely be happy to comply.