One of humanity's greatest weaknesses is cognitive dissonance. People can convince themselves of just about anything. And in some ways intelligence is a burden here. A fool will just do something with a reason of 'f you, that's why.' It's only the clever man that will even bother rationalizing the villain into the hero, and we're great at it. An interesting thought experiment is to ask people if they'd be willing to push a button that would randomly kill a person somewhere in the world for a million dollars. They'd have no direct accountability themselves and their action would be unknown to anybody else.

People will rationalize themselves into declaring this moral even though it is obviously one of the most overtly amoral actions possible. One friend I have, a rather intelligent guy otherwise, was even trying to create a utilitarian argument that he'd donate some percent of his 'earnings' to life saving charities meaning he'd be saving more life on the net. The fact that if everybody thought and behaved the same way, the entirety of humanity would cease to exist, was a consideration he didn't have a response for. Let alone the fact that he just rationalized his way into justifying near to any deed imaginable, so long as you got paid enough for it.

I’ll be honest and say it’s made me question and reposition some of my friendships with a number of these friends. Some joined well before we knew the fallout of how AI has affected and impacted society negatively, some have joined in recent years because they were offered 2x their currently already high comp package, and others will take any job they can get (who, admittedly, I judge far less as I know they are just needing to survive in a HCOL city).

My dim view is more on the AI companies being absurdly overvalued, with too much money to know what to do, which feeds downwards into compensation packages, which lure in “innocent” individuals who can’t say no. It’s not been a healthy market to be vulnerable in, most companies outside AI are just not getting the same funding or can compete at all - and it’s a shit storm.

You're missing the point. They're just lamenting the contrast between what their friends say (fuck tech, no kings) and what they spend their workweek in service of.

It's not complicated: if these friends would take a non-society-destroying job at equal pay (who wouldn't?) then their values aren't driving the decision, money is. Fine, that's a choice adults get to make. But then own it and actually justify it on its merits, don't just retreat to "who are you to judge."