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Why employees want to work in vilified industries
- haspoken 4y agohttps://archive.ph/F1dEM https://archive.ph/F1dEM
- hunglee2 4y agoa great of this I suspect is post hoc rationalisation - we find a higher order rationale to explain our choice (presuming availability of choice) of employer, in order to preserve our self perception of being a moral actor, when we likely made the decision mainly on practical grounds. Engineers might also have this mental process to make - would you work for Palantir (example) and build spyware for the CIA? You might for the money, and then explain to yourself that its for good of country
- schoen 4y agoWhen I clicked on this Economist article, there was actually a CIA recruiting ad displayed (!!).
- hunglee2 4y agohaha very good. And then...no surprise. Pretty sure natsec and establishment media have already a tight relationship
- the_only_law 4y agoLast time I saw a CIA job it was for a very niche skill set and they pay range was not reasonable for DC.
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoI imagine the Google engineer thinks "well, at least I'm not at fucking Facebook." And the Facebook engineer thinks "well, at least I'm not at fucking Palantir." And the Palantir engineer thinks "well, at least I'm not at fucking Tik Tok." And the Tik Tok engineer thinks "oh man I love video processing almost as much as I love malware, and I fucking love malware."
- benreesman 4y agoFucking lol. You should make that a meme with the grizzly bear in the snow. Slight correction: at least when I was at Facebook, we said: "At least I'm not at fucking Uber." Palantir didn't even have an on-site sushi chef, and I've heard that the agave hibiscus iced tea there wasn't even real agave. ;)
- Ekaros 4y agoI think TikTok engineers think. Hey we aren't doing any more spying than Google et. Co...
- vintermann 4y agoI remember one high profile ML engineer who went really ballistic on his peers at Facebook due to holding them responsible for Trump's election. He worked at Google himself.
- the_only_law 4y agoShit I love malware, maybe I should apply to TikTok.
- smabie 4y agoI think that's definitely true of some people, but I think for a lot of people just helping the world isn't super important to them. I'm a pretty practical person and don't think what I do is really helping anyone (though I don't think it really hurts either, though I'm sure many would disagree) but don't really care. I find what I do very mentally stimulating and it also has large upside potential. That's simply good enough for me.
- hunglee2 4y agoyep that is a perfectly reasonable (and perhaps in the end, most moral) position to take. It is probably a healthy thing to refocus on your immediate self, or at least oscillate between that and taking a wider view upon occasion.
- cbanek 4y agoIs it money? I can't tell since I'm paywalled. But I feel like it's got to be money. You have to pay people MORE to work in bad industries, since there are a lot of people who won't want to work there. You can pay people less in fun industries, even if there is a lot of profit. Like video games. Look at Blizzard.
- franczesko 4y ago"The most basic reason for that is a classic free-market narrative. If you believe in freedom of choice, and companies having the licence of society to operate, that is justification enough to work there. This may not seem especially purposeful: many employees would regard operating legally and serving customer needs as a requirement rather than a source of pride. But it is a perfectly coherent position"
- flarg 4y agoI've been approached a couple of times about working in the tobacco industry and money is definitely part of it, but there's also a feeling that there's less competition so the role will be more stable, and a lot of self justification from hiring managers to make you feel less guilty.
- cbanek 4y agoI mean, yeah sure there might be less competition but that's not the whole game. I think it's much more the moral question to be honest. The real way to figure it out is to look at the number of people applying to good and "bad" jobs, and the amount of money they make. So compare tobacco to say FANG, or whatever. Then compare Blizzard to FANG. Let me just say now, Blizzard will be the least, even though they have the most applicants. I know this because I worked there. Let's look at another "bad" job I've been approached about and gave it a thought about the money but then didn't bother because of the moral question: hedge fund trader. This is something that you don't want to give any random person, a bad programmer could easily sublimate millions of dollars before you know what happened. On the other hand, there's probably a lot of people who would kill for a job that would pay that much. I didn't even call them back, and their emails got so desperate that they said they'd pay me out of the rest of my SpaceX stock vesting. Maybe should have taken that one. I'd be at least 4x richer. And they were offering $500k/year in cash salary, and I assume there was probably some kind of perk for performance, as is typical in hedge funds. But yikes. I hate that shit.
- missedthecue 4y agoI knew someone who works for a major tobacco company. Nothing fancy, his job is basically just to ensure convenience stores and shops in his sales region stay stocked with his firm's brands. I don't know anyone who is more loyal to their employer than he is. My uncle was also a corporate pilot for a major defense contractor. He worked there for 30 years. His wife had a advanced breast cancer but they kept him on payroll for two years while he took care of her until she passed. He was able to back to work and stayed there until he retired. Perhaps these companies have to show more loyalty to their employees to stay competitive while cleaner industries can afford churn. This can cause employees to show the same loyalty in return.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoChurn makes for more efficient companies and stronger employees. When you have 20 year veterans who stayed in a single place for 20 years, you have no exposure as a company to new practices developed in other companies. You have no exposure to what performance level your employees could be achieving. And as an employee, your own skills are not well developed by being stuck at a single place for 20 years. Churn makes salaries adapt more quickly to market conditions too. That's an advantage when the Fed is dumping capital into the market with QE. The disadvantage is yeah, there's chaos sometimes and loyalty doesn't exist. But you need some exploration AND exploitation too, else you get stuck at a local minima.
- superchroma 4y agoIt also eliminates chances of a singular long term vision being executed. I'm sure the success statistics of long term visions aren't great, but when it hits, it hits, I think.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoI think that comes down to having strong leadership (which you would want to minimize churn in, because the timescales of executing projects as an IC are an order magnitude different from executing on strategic goals). E.g. Amazon, Costco, Patagonia, etc. If executives could finish meaningful goals in a few weeks like ICs can, I'm sure they'd be switching every 2 years too.
- oifjsidjf 4y agoFeeding your family is your #1 priority. Everything else is a distant second. The survival instict of a human overpowers all others, any other discussion on this topic is just empty intellectualization. Do you really think any sane human would be like "Sure my kids won't be able to go to college, I'll work 2 shitty jobs and our house will be taken away by the bank, but hey, atleast I'll be able to brag before my collegues how good of a person I am".
- rolisz 4y agoC'mon, at least in tech there's plenty of jobs that feed the family without having to compromise your conscience.
- nradov 4y agoEvery large tech company does some shitty things. Every employee compromises their conscience. It's just a matter of degree.
- arbitrary_name 4y agoAnd degree matters.
- cedilla 4y agoWell, no one would frame it like that. Also, very few people are in that false dilemma.
- atemerev 4y agoNot everyone is working in tech.
- fstokesman 4y agoI can't think of any type of job that is both vilified AND one that you could take on the cusp of destitution. And at least for me personally, setting the example to my kids of integrity being one of the most important characteristics you can develop, is a top priority. Taking a position in an evil industry doesn't top that.
- Hard_Space 4y agoFor six months one time I rented a room in the massive London house of a psychiatrist who had just spent a year working for the UK government. Though he never went into detail about what it entailed, he intimated to me at times that he had made an absolute fortune in that period, which had enabled him to buy outright what was practically a mansion in one of the most expensive areas of one of the most expensive cities in the world. Yet he hinted to me a couple of times that he was haunted by what he had done in that year. I shall always wonder!
- zeristor 4y agoSo not NHS work then?
- Hard_Space 4y agoI'm thinking not.
- perfecthjrjth 4y agoMaybe, he was part of an interrogation team.
- badpun 4y agoCIA hired psychiatrists to conduct brainwashing experiments on unwilling subjects. Maybe UK government also tried that out.
- MexicanJoe 4y agoI work in a vilified industry (gambling). I work there as they pay a very well, excellent medical insurance for my family, and other benefits. We mainly make our money from rich people, so if they loose money gambling. I don't worry about it much.
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoIs that true? I've been curious lately about the economic breakdown of customers for stuff like casinos and lotteries. Do casinos make more from whales or gambling addicts? I imagine it might vary by the casino.
- MexicanJoe 4y agoIn our case it's certainly the whales.
- the_only_law 4y agoSay what you want about smartphones, but I swear I’ve never seen people as glued to a screen as in casinos.
- higeorge13 4y agoIt’s usually the whales.
- dijit 4y agoI think it's a fair rationalisation, but what you're missing is the perhaps thousands of very poor people who give you a large portion of the little they have. Of course this looks like almost nothing on a margin sheet, but it's still lives that are destroyed. You could argue that it's their money, their choice, but gambling itself always sells better to poor people, the hope that their luck could change and they'd be out of poverty. Some companies (perhaps not yours) target poor people specifically with their marketing and messaging. Betfred/PaddyPower in the UK for example are almost exclusively located in deprived areas, in fact you can usually tell the economic status of a section of city by how many WilliamHills and PaddyPowers there are.
- ekkeke 4y agoI would think it depends also on your sense of responsibilty. For some people, the person building a missile has as much responsibility as the person who fires it. Other people might look at it as being entirely the fault of the person who fired it, and therefore there being nothing wrong in building it. The latter would not really care about whether he's building missiles or selling tobacco as the buck stops with the end customer.
- Ekaros 4y agoWhile the true fault lies on the voters and the funders of politicians who ordered those missiles and strikes...
- c_o_n_v_e_x 4y agoMaybe this is specific to natural resources but as someone who grew up in area that was economically based on a vilified industry AND started my career in said industry, the VI is regionally normalized when all of your friends, family, and neighbors also work in that industry. The people doing the vilifying are generally outsiders and thus dismissed. People in coal country work in coal, people in places with a lot of oil work in oil, etc.
- colechristensen 4y agoBut unless a person doing the vilifying actually purges all, say, petroleum products from their lives, they are just as much the participant as someone who works for BP. Coal only recently became possible to eliminate from the US power generation question, as a result of other vilified US gas production. Lots of people like to vilify, it’s not often helpful.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jjk166 4y agoPurchasing internet service from comcast, the only internet service provider allowed in my area, in a day and age where internet service is necessary for nearly all aspects of life, does not make me an active participant in comcast's bad business practices. Likewise purchasing products which can not be readily substituted or purchased from a better source does not make anyone an active participant in the decisions of the company supplying those products, especially when the unethical practices go beyond what is necessary to produce the purchased good. I'd love to take an electric train to work, but somebody lobbied to have a highway built instead. I'd love to drink from a renewably sourced bottle, but somebody flooded the market with cheap petroleum derived plastic. I'd love to just fill my gas tank from an oil company that didn't actively lobby for lax environmental and safety regulations, but alas there is no such option. None of these actions are necessary for producing the oil products I consume, and my purchases are not endorsements of any of these practices. The false dichotomy that you must either boycott a product or endorse it is nothing but corporatist propaganda.
- colechristensen 4y agoI worked in defense for a while and have zero problem with it. Someone else might vilify it, but it just seems naive to imagine that eliminating all of it is even remotely possible. I have a much bigger problem with my skills being used in the past to work on advertising tech.
- threatripper 4y agoWe need a strong military with modern weapons systems to keep us safe. Else we will get a very bloody transition phase where a stronger military will take over. The moral burden does not lie with the tool but in how it is used.
- vintermann 4y agoSee, here's a better analysis of the question than the Economist's. I bet the people optimizing ads or pay-to-win game addiction say something similar, "at least we're not making killer robots". Maybe one of you have a better point than the other, but either way, we know this is one of the ways people rationalize it.
- maximus-decimus 4y agoOr maybe different people have different values.
- defterGoose 4y agoOr maybe we just can't feasibly weigh the relative harm of two evils with broad network effects...
- neilv 4y agoIn a university lab that had sponsors/prospectives and VIPs coming through for demos almost every day, one time, visitors from a major name in tobacco were being scheduled. An official said something about students not having to meet with these particular visitors if they really objected, and voiced the example that some students may have had a relative die from lung cancer. I volunteered to demo, with my price being that I then didn't have to meet with visitors from one particular tech company. (Who in the past had stood out, as individuals, as uniquely non-collegial, out of everyone who'd come through.) So, I met with the visitors from big tobacco company, and they all turned out to be nice and humble, a bit quieter than average. One bit that stuck was when I started demoing a Web prototype, with an example that included an article about cats (mild dry humor about cats being standoffish, or something like that). There was a slight genuine earnestly plaintive note in the voice of one who interjected, "I like cats...". Which of course was ambiguous, but which made me instantly wonder whether the student before me had given them the cold shoulder, or they otherwise felt defensive or hurt. I thought the tobacco company people were fine, and I wouldn't read too much into where someone worked. Today, when I hear of someone working at one of the companies that I dislike, I've stopped thinking "what is wrong with that person, to work there", but more hoping that whatever evil might be in the DNA of the company doesn't end up treating that particular employee poorly.
- threatripper 4y agoIf you think of the lower ranks, for example IT admins who ensure that the computers are working smoothly, what's the difference between company A and company B? What do they experience? In most cases they do the same work regardless of which company they are in. The company culture in how people treat each other and how the work is organized in general is what they see. If you have a company with a clear internal structure, a clear product vision and well adjusted workers, then I suppose that work for IT is quite fine. So, I think for 90-99% of the employees it doesn't really matter what the product is. Their work is the same and a well organized company makes it pleasant. So it's not hard to imagine how employees can be happy there. For the higher-ups who make the decision to create and sell products that hurt or kill people I see more of a moral dilemma. But I suppose they are compensated well with money and would have difficulty to find a better job elsewhere. Not sure if they feel the weight when they go to sleep.
- jeanlou 4y agoReally? Working for a Chinese company is the same as working a tobacco company?
- missedthecue 4y agoI feel like I personally know different groups of people in my own life who would say either one is worse than the other.
- imgabe 4y agoI was a sub-consultant on a few projects for Phillip Morris, the tobacco company. The primary consultant was an architect. He ran his own firm and explained that where he worked before he went out on his own, PM was a client and they basically kept his old company afloat during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and prevented himself and a lot of his coworkers from being laid off, so he felt some gratitude for that. The headquarters / factory seemed like a really nice place to work, all things considered. There was a great cafeteria with discounted, healthy, fresh food. Everything seemed clean and well organized. Apparently the pay / benefits were good for the area. It also smelled heavenly. (I quit smoking many years ago, but fresh tobacco smells good, not like cigarette smoke.) I think for the most part, businesses exist because they serve a need people have. If they don't, they go out of business. You can rail against fossil fuels, but people still need to drive to work and heat their homes and there aren't other good options that are available yet on a scale that can replace everything. Until there are, we're going to continue having to use fossil fuels, so vilifying the people who provide them doesn't do much good. I do wonder how anyone justified working at Purdue Pharma, though.
- jerojero 4y agoWhat need does the tobacco industry serve that was not created through addiction and marketing? The oil industry knows about the damage they've been doing to the planet for decades. But not only they ramped up production but also lobbied hard against any form of regulation that might affect their business. The result of this is not that we have a need for it, but dependence. People work to be able to give themselves and their families a good life, everyone wants to be happy. That's it, what other justification is needed? Most of these industries might have been born from a need but their whole goal as they develop is to get society to depend on them so that the need is not covered by better (less impactful) industries.
- imgabe 4y agoYou could ask the same thing about alcohol, or gambling. But people have been doing these things since before there were industries for them, so there’s apparently something besides marketing that causes humans to want those things. The better way to combat these “evil” industries would be to fulfill that need as well or better in less destructive ways, making the industry obsolete.
- vintermann 4y agoGood question, but poor answers. There's not much in the discussion of it, and what is, is really shallow (these industries are legal so that means it's fine to work for them! this also happens to be the ideology that funds the Economist)
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoSo... I took at job at BP. I’d rationalised it as me being paid stupid money, and probably not contributing much because most software projects and large non-tech orgs are stupid wastes of time lead by non-technical people with insufficient skills in building software and I’d just be a cog in some SCRUM machine. Then nature decided to warn me of its power by breaking my ribs on both sides while I was trying to learn to surf about a week before I started. But the killer for me was really learning that BP’s original name was British-Persian and is the main reason that the democratic government of Iran was deposed, the Shah re-installed and the Islamic Revolution happened leading to the regime that exists in Iran to this day. The combination of physical pain, sudden awareness of deeply troubling political context and a warning from nature caused me to re-evaluate and take a contract with a crappy bank instead. Although to be honest, the realisation that I was actually going to be working on something useful and well-thought out also caught me off guard. (I do normally work extremely hard to have a positive impact, but had rationalised my involvement as being likely to have no impact.) I actually know the work environment at BP would have been much much better than the bank. Perhaps at those companies, bad managerial practices get exposed very easily, because the employees won’t stick around? Perhaps they can also afford to pay more due to the reduced competition in ‘evil’ industries. A good work environment and the ability to support your family without constantly getting involved in death-march development definitely goes a long way.
- zeroth32 4y agoWhy they would not work there? Most people are happy to get a job that pays rent and living expenses. Have you seen rents recently? If you can choose your employer based on some arbitrary criteria, you are quite privileged!
- _8j50 4y agoLet me provide my take since I qualify: I don't vote with my employment or even wallet mostly. I don't accept solutions that don't address the root cause of a problem. If an industry is harmful then isn't it a government's role in society to regulate or disband that industry? We live in a society and it isn't the duty of the common man to regulate corporations, in a society of rule of law it is the government's role to do that. Many people that want to work at a company that makes a difference or whatever are speaking from a position of luxury and leisure. When you grow up seeing poverty and your loves ones suffering needlessly and even then you are still much more privileged than those in 3rd world countries who literally die from starvation and have to hold their babies and rock them to their last sleep before dying of malnutrition you can appreciate a bit more what employment means. I have a responsibility to do well for myself more than anything else. And next to that to care for those that mean most to me. My employment is a means to those ends. I have my priorities set right. Tobaccon? Climate change? Pharmaceutical industry (glorified drug dealers), crypto (pro scammers) you name it I will work for them if it is the best way to acheive my goals. Most industries, including tech do a lot of things that are harmful to society because they too have their priorities straight with profit being number one. I live in the US which is arguably the most poweful government on the planet. We can talk about politics and political participation to enable laws and restrictions that prevent harmful practices borh by corporations and individuals but my employment is a business relationship and as such my priority is profit. I do not for one second buy into the bullshit "we care" crap from corporations which is maliciously incentivized to prop up social causes and weaponize businesses as tools for socio-political conflict. It is your job as a voter in a democracy to convince your peers and elect officials that affect change. Period. If that isn't happening then I am open to discussion inculding and up to using violence to enable change. Stop thinking as a half minded capitalist and practice proper politics where the root cause lies. Money affects politics so do well and if you care that much spend your money and free time on political causes. You can even work in indistries you dislike so you can understand your adversary from the inside out well so you know exactly what policies to support politically. Look at tech for example, you can avoid working for google because of their anti-privacy practices or you can work for them and do your job really so that when you support a poltical candidate or attempt to convince your fellow citizens you are an exper insider on the subject matter! That's my perspective and I am open to discourse and discussion on the subject. My counterpoint to those of you who avoid working in harmful industries: so long as you live in a democracy how are you any less responsible for allowing harmful industries to continue to harm? Do you do your best politically to affect change? The what else can reasonably be expected from you? Are we to live as hermits that come our from our eco friendly progressive isolated bubbles only to complain about the left and the right before casting a vote on election and day and retrearing back into our bubbles??
- throwaway22032 4y agoMost of the time it's just that your concept of "vilified" doesn't match theirs. I don't see an issue with smoking, with gambling, with oil and gas, with porn or really any of this stuff. It's just not that big a deal to me. And yeah, I know that tobacco companies intentionally make cigs more addictive. Everyone with half a brain does. By contrast I think that privacy is more important than all of the so I'd never work at GooSoft. Outside of hyper judgemental political circles generally no-one really cares what you do. Journalists seem to really get off on claiming that their opinion is "the" opinion, though.
- s1k3 4y agoYou nailed it at the end. It’s traditional media and social media that vilifies these industries and companies. Which if we know anything is not a common opinion held among most people… it’s just the loudest and most polarizing. Everyone has beliefs that put them against certain companies and industries but it’s quite varied and hardly anyone is the same.
- origin_path 4y agoWhich is ironic because a lot of people vilify the journalism industry.
- __derek__ 4y agoMy very unscientific impression is that GooBook get a lot more negative media coverage than tobacco, gambling, oil, porn, etc., companies. Which might fit with your conclusion: GooBook is the competition, while the others are either customers or locked out of mainstream advertising.
- t_mann 4y agoWe could ask the reverse question: how many industries aren't vilified in some social circles? Heck, even the people who gave us Covid vaccines received death threats.
- yawnxyz 4y agoI did a job for a "famous fried chicken chain" in the US once, and the end-goal was to "increase consumption of 'heavy users' from 3x a week to 4x a week". They didn't even bat an eye at their use of "heavy users". Maybe that's why I'm now working in the medical space...??
- the_omegist 4y agoAs many comments said, not everyone has the same list of "vilified" industries. I wouldn't expect to find a vegan working at KFC or a very religious person in the porn industry. But it's only based on their own moral & principles. Not something intrinsic to these industries. What I will add and what I find ironic is : the "journalists" at the economist virtue-signaling with such articles from a position of moral superiority when it can be argued that one of the biggest pollution of our time is mental pollution, with the kind of articles their colleague in the publishing/media industry are doing...