From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company.

In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that writes my paychecks?”

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petterroea 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect you are right. It reminds me of the whole "at the government you can hack legally" argument used by government intelligence agencies to recruit hackers.

I think a lot of skilled engineers want interesting challenges where they break boundaries, and being in an environment that wants you to break those boundaries allows them to legitimize why they are doing it. That is, "someone else is taking moral responsibility, so I can do my technical challenge in peace"

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zaphirplane 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ?

I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job

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neilv 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know a lot of people who won't work for some companies for ethical reasons.

Though, sometimes the exact reason is muddied, since companies that are perceived as unethical in how they behave externally are often also perceived as unethical in how they behave towards employees. So you might object on pragmatic grounds of how you'd be treated, before you ever get to, say, altruistic grounds.

Also, sometimes fashion is involved. For example, many people wouldn't work for company X, because of popular ethical objections to what they do being in the news, but some of those people would probably work for an unknown company doing the same things, without thinking much about it.

But often it's just "I don't like what company Y is doing to people, and I wouldn't work on that, even if they treated employees really well, and it was really fashionable to work there".

(See, for example, the people who refused to work for Google after the end of Don't Be Evil honeymoon phase, even though they generally treated employees pretty well, and it was still fashionable to work there.)

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fernandotakai an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ?

i was offered a high paying job, with relocation to a 1st world country (at the time, i was living in a 3rd world country with high murder rates), to a industry that i consider quite shady (and it's not military and not around killing -- i have no issues with both of those). i politely refused.

most of my friends, at the time, told me that they would've have accepted without even thinking, but for me, it's just not worth it.

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chanchowancho 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes! I once met a highly paid contract tech lead who had walked out of a lucrative contract with a supermarket after he became aware the new credit card product he was working on was to be exclusively targeted at customers in poor areas.

The moral fortitude on that man!

I applaud his actions, but genuinely do not know if I would have the stones to leave my job if I was in a similar position!

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Marsymars 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well kinda trivially, asides from secular ethics, you'll find that typical Muslims decline a number of jobs/projects for ethical reasons.

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mattclarkdotnet 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know lots of people who had the offer to work in gambling but chose not to take it for moral reasons

	▲	yetihehe 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I had an offer to work in gambling as a young inexperienced student, fortunately they didn't hire me because I was too inexperienced. I can imagine how my career would move if my first working experience was in such company. Some people might be like that.

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itsdesmond 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a real long look in the mirror moment.