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Do you struggle to find ethical work?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#61

Post by BenoitP »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #37
dusted wrote: post #7

Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion). I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. My belief is in bettering…

> if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. I downvoted you for this. I considered not doing it but figured someone else would downvote you anyway.

But upvotes and downvotes are a form of regulation (global same enforcement for everyone), and not a form of market liquidity.

They'd be market-liquid if HN learned an embedding of who-upvotes-what and created a bubble for each user where each sees the comments they'd upvote.

In facebook/instagram/tiktok/linkedin your comment would work.

(On an unrelated not, I sort wish HN would do that for posts; as I'm not interested in 95% of what makes the HN frontpage. Please bring me back hardcore technical content, please let me ignore societal/self-development/CSS/drama/etc posts. No judgement but I just don't care about that content.)

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#62

Post by ailef »

konschubert wrote: post #16
courseofaction wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't even give someone else the chance to not build a weapon.

well, there are mutual disarmament treaties. Like the ones that are being cancelled by russia right now.

Or the ones canceled by the US, like the ABM and the INF treaties with Bush and Trump.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#63

Post by aeze »

I faced a similar dilemma which led me to leave a big 4 consulting firm to join a non-profit focused on a mission that I could get behind (substance use, my family has had a history with it). I don't regret the decision at all.

I took a massive paycut, but I feel better - and I'm still writing software.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#65

Post by Nullinker »

I also have ethical standards for employers. I do feel like it has limited my career in some ways and that I did not accumulate as much wealth as I could have had if I had different standards. I do have the peace of mind that I can tell myself that I tried to make things better, of course there is more I could have done but I have accepted that there are limits to what to expect of yourself and others.

I did struggle finding work that would actively make the world better, and have limited my ambitions in that regards. I now settle for not actively making things worse.

I now work on software for accountants to automate and streamline workflows for them and their customers so everybody can spend less time on doing accounting and filing their taxes and just do whatever they are trying to do.

One benefit is that avoiding exploitative businesses also seems to have a good correlation of avoiding toxic work environments.

I am still often disappointed that many people seem to totally absolve any responsibility by deferring ethical decision making to whatever organization they are involved in. It's a chilling realization after interacting with someone to realize that their ethical compass just does not seem there, and they are completely unaware or OK with that.

I remember so many history classes in school where we would learn about how average people became involved in horrible things, and the few people that would stand up against it and face hardships because of it. Maybe the lesson was not that you should strive to be one of those people that stands up for what is right, but that it just the way it is that most people don't would rather keep their heads down.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#66

Post by KptMarchewa »

master-lincoln wrote: post #48
KptMarchewa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on a some level. I just would think of not gimping the whole country by banning bad things when our enemies don't do this. For example, Germany and shutting down nuclear power.

So you want the enemies to do this first? How realistic is that. Sounds like you are ok with a stale mate

Either both, via some treaty for example, or no one.

Nuclear treaties were working up till some time.

Generally diplomacy works, but you need to have both the stick and the carrot. "West" has been using only carrots for way too long.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#67

Post by KptMarchewa »

prmoustache wrote: post #47
dusted wrote: post #7

Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion). I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. My belief is in bettering…

Cons: - regulation by legislation is super slow. For example, disposables vapes should have never entered the market in the first place. They are an environmental nightmare, don't have any half decent purpose. Yet it will take years if not decades to ban them. - We already have too many laws. Legislations are like licences. The best ones are the simplest ones. Once you need lawyers and legal advisors and protection t…

"too many laws" is an ideological view, not fact. 99% of laws govern specific situations. It's like complaining that Linux has too much lines of code, disregarding the fact that giant majority of it touches some drivers or architectures.
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