I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened.

Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.

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pinnochio 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree it won't fix the problem, but marginal drops in labor supply and skill can still have an impact.

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tombert 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've quit jobs and been laid off from jobs and I will admit that when I do, I always kind of hope that the company goes bankrupt the day after I leave because I was so important. Companies I've quit or been laid off have gone bankrupt, but it took years and sadly I don't think there's any way for me to draw a logical connective of "no tombert -> company fails".

I've never quit a company on purely ethical grounds, but I have turned down interviews and offers because of them. They're probably not going to go bankrupt just by not hiring me, but I like to think that making it incrementally harder to find talent slows down their progress of doing evil things, if only a little.

That's probably still a delusion of grandeur on my end, but we all should have an ethical line that we won't cross; most of us end up working for monsters and/or assholes, especially at BigCos, so your options generally boil down to "work for an asshole who's doing evil that you can live with" or "go live in a Unabomber shed". I guess it's important to make sure that "the evil thing you can live with here" isn't just any act of evil.

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small_model 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or someone with a backbone, i.e. willing to enforce the law.

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SoftTalker 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone

Or who simply had a different point of view than you.

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mindslight 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, a point of view without an ethical backbone, at least in the context of American society. I suppose they could be a Chinese or Russian national considering it ethical to harm the United States, but I don't see a point of drawing that distinction.

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kortilla 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Being blanket against CBP is a position without an ethical backbone. It’s just a childish burying head in the sand. Every semi stable country enforces its immigration laws and checks passports of visitors. Claiming the US doing so is somehow unethical is completely misaligned with a sustainable welfare and government services system.

	▲	mindslight 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The problem is not the roles, but how those roles are carried out and the complete lack of accountability. It's difficult for citizens to believe that government agencies are noble endeavors when we see ever-creeping anti-Constitutional scope, and rampant unpunished criminality among their members. It would be fantastic if this weren't the case, of course. Unfortunately the only check mechanic we the People seem to have is to consider them hostile entities best avoided until they're drastically reformed.
	▲	Hikikomori 13 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't see masked thugs harassing citizens in other countries. Maybe the problem isn't that immigration is enforced, its how they are doing it? Both Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump.