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Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect

• dozerly 3mo ago
  In a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc. It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response
  • kortilla 3mo ago
    > Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc. You don’t work at Anduril to make bread, at least not as a software engineer. It’s a long hours startup with worse pay than FAANG in high CoL areas. The people that work there fundamentally believe in “improving the defense of the west”. It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If you want to bag on people in the military, go ahead. But they are not in the same category as people just doing things for convenient good money.
    • Planktonne 3mo ago
      > It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If the motivation is 'improving the defence of the west', it's more equivalent to joining a fringe paramilitary organisation; the dogwhistle is clear.
      • kortilla 3mo ago
        They are an extension of the US military. Their weapons do what the US decides. Anduril does not offer military services like blackwater or whatever.
• least 3mo ago
  People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one. Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize, rationalize, and forgive themselves for. It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment.
  • pishpash 3mo ago
    They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers.
    • InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
      It's both. We can point to individuals who make terrible decisions and also acknowledge that there will always be such people as long as the system incentivizes them.
      • pishpash 3mo ago
        How many of index fund investors take a short position on Meta to cancel out that share? That's pretty easy to do. If it's nobody then everyone is "such people" and it is meaningless to single out any one person. Just acknowledge that there is no moral high ground for anyone. You either provide labor or capital to the enterprise, which is worse?
        • InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
          I reject the idea that a person who doesn't do literally everything they can to improve the world is the same as one who actively makes it worse.
• jopolous 3mo ago
  It’s okay, I put my thoughts out there and I appreciate the feedback from other engineers. It’s actually kind of motivating. I’d interviewed at several places over the last few months and something out of my control always came up and halted the process (remote work closed down, hiring freeze, etc), so I’m definitely feeling a bit down about job prospects right now. I needed some people to remind me “no, don’t be complacent, keep trying, there’s stuff out there and it’s worth the effort to continue looking”