Defens industry, law enforcement, and surveillance are all instant dealbreakers for me whenever a recruiter reaches out to me. And sadly that seems like the vast majority of positions for which recruiters are looking for candidates.
That or AI shit.
I’m so tired of the tech industry.
Look man, making missile killing lasers is just way more interesting than building another pointless SUV to a price target.
Not an engineer, but I have I have Asian parents, if I were an engineer and worked for a genocidal dictator, they wouldn’t care, that’s success anyways.
So… yea…
people value success over ethics
welcome to life
society…
Do you think your Taiwanese background plays into that kind of thinking?
Also if you have any disabilities, like if you have depression. Oh your parents are gonna be so cruel to you. You are a “useless eater”.
What the fuck is this life. Why?
I wasn’t even supposed to be born. Why the fuck am I here. This fucking suffering.
I’m from mainland China (currently residing in the US), profile pic is because I hate the 5-Star Red Flag and the politics it represents.
Probably something with Asian cultures’s obsession with the idea of “success”. Like… my parents literally wouldn’t care if I became some corrupt government official as long as I don’t get caught. Success is worshipped, failure is shamed. I talk shit about trump, and like my mom said “at least he became president, can you do that?”
I’m like: “naturalized citizens can’t be president”
omg immediately less than 1 second later, mom goes: “but Gary Locke became Governor” (Gary Locke is a Chinese American)
And like you know Mamdani won, immedialy after, she told me “an immigrant managed to become Mayor, you are an immigrant just like him, why can’t you do the same?” bruh… maybe I could if I didn’t get so much emotional damage, mom.
Like they worship success, regardless of if they are “good” or “bad” people.
If you try to be a good person and you “fail” in life, you are considered worse than the bad person in power making a lot of money.
I’m like just so close to killing myself, even though I really wanna live, this is too painful, depression is too painful.
My parents are slowly killing my ethics and empathy, like one day I might just not care.
Either you die young with your morals intact, or you seek success and survival, and you corrupt your soul…
This world is cruel. The world wants you to be cruel to be able to even live a comfortable life.
It’s almost winter, I thinks it’s freaking cold today.
My university is practically owned by weapons manufacturers which sucks. Idk if that’s the norm or not
Tools don’t kill. It’s the ones wielding the tools that do.
A black home bomb is harmless until someone uses it to wipe out an entire solar system.
Yeah, but we all know what those bombs do, so many don’t participate in building them.
Gods, I’m considering Job hopping and I saw Lockheed was hiring for my role, less experience, less certs, full remote, and quadruple my pay.
I had to block them on indeed and LinkedIn. I hated that I was considering it.
I sometimes wonder if we all truly have a price for our souls. I felt similarly when seeing positions at health insurance companies, pay was high enough that I paused despite how much I despise them.
yeah they’re an option in my area and I’ve made the decision several times to not look at any positions they have
To quote Casually Explained:
"The only real question engineering students and new grads need to know the answer to is ‘When is it ok to violate your moral principles?’
…
Exactly. It has to be at least 6 figures."
This is why I focused on graphics hardware for so long… Then some arsehole came up with running AI on GPUs.
Yeah, I got started in silicon thinking cheaper, faster, more power efficient chips would be a net benefit to the world… Then we became a social media surveillance state and AI dogshit is just the icing on the cake.
Now I drink to forget we’re boiling the oceans to ruin society. One day this capitalist hellscape will end.
series of increasingly large dominoes where the smallest is “NVIDIA releases CUDA” and the largest is “the entire global economy has become dependent on running a useless computer program that tricks stupid people into believing it can do anything worthwhile”
The groomers in the MIC have claimed soooo many kids who just wanted to make video games. Gross and sad.
I have no ethical qualms with those who make weapons. Horizontal communities need the means to defend themselves against external domination. The dilemma is, under capitalism, dominators employ weapons against those unable to defend themselves thereby realizing the idea of Hell on Earth.
think it’s hot today?
No
I don’t work for them because I chose not to, but honestly, work for them, don’t work for them, it’s not like they’ll lack for employees. If you write that line of code that eventually blows up a hospital or someone else does, it will still happen. You’re not going to stop them by turning down job offers. You’re going to need to change politics.
This argument is deeply flawed, and I’ve heard engineers working on arms projects using it to justify what they’re doing. That, and the “I just build it, it’s not me pulling the trigger” are trotted out to soothe dying moral consciences all the time. There are far too many bright minds being used to create death and suffering.
The fact that by partaking in this industry, you form a critical part of the decision and event chain that leads to bad people killing innocent people is important, morally, and completely unchanged by whether it not someone else will do it. So it does matter if you turn that job down, and not just for your own conscience. If enough people turn down these jobs then that will change politics. And those that do choose to take them need to face up to their responsibility in enabling and perpetuating horror.deeply flawed
Direct me to the flaw.
Will someone passing them up make ANY difference to what they’re doing?
The flaw is explained in what I just said.
- If you turn them down, that reduces their talent pool.
- If you turn them down you are no longer responsible for the suffering caused by their products.
- If enough people turn them down they will have to reassess their approach.
Ultimately, doing something evil just because you decide someone else would do it if you didn’t, so you might as well benefit doesn’t make it any less evil of you to do that thing. In fact, it makes it worse.
It will still happen is a bit of a fallacy. It’s one less person doing that job but I agree that one person won’t make a meaningful change
However the thing that changes is that if you reject that job you reduced by 100% your direct contribution to people killing missiles. Someone else will design that missile but at least you won’t have to live with the guilt that you did
Now, if it’s between that and a much worse life, I won’t blame anyone. But it’s a choice that everyone has to make for themselves. Personally I have possibility to reject those offers, and so I do.
I totally agree, not taking the job can mean a HUGE thing to you. It just won’t affect the company whatsoever.
I don’t do it because I don’t like it. I worked for DOD years ago, on non-dangerous stuff but it wasn’t something I wanted to personally support.
They aren’t immune to supply and demand, the job market is the agreegate of us all deciding what we will put up with to stay alive.
I may be an engineer, but I am still too fucking stupid to get a job at an arms company
It’s easier than you’d think. The applicant pool doesn’t tend to be the best and brightest.
One of the guys I went to college with is an amazing programmer and had such a great understanding of C that hes why i got as far into CS as i did, couldn’t get a job after grad because 1) Covid and more importantly 2) he’s insufferable.
He got a job making $100k a year for I wanna say Lockheed because he quote “Wrote good looking code”. That’s all they needed because Tue DoD already told them that the project he was hired for was not going to be adopted, but they were still contracted for minimum 2 more years of development and Lockheed would be in breach of contract if they weren’t making progress even though it was already Dead.
The Military industrial complex is JUST a grift to put tax dollars in private hands.
There’s a monumental amount of waste in there. I’ve seen a department order a truckload of equipment from compUSA, a reputable vendor, and it shows up with open brown cardboard boxes of used equipment. Staff SGT rubber-stamped it. Somebody made bank. Shit like that was ALWAYS going down.
That’s why I work at a legs company
I just use my skills to make gooner games. My soul is pure. To heaven I shall go. Unironically.
Thank you for your service.











