45
votes
What's your line?
When do you decide you can no longer ethically work somewhere?
What would be your line?
Would your ability to do harm reduction or meaningfully change the situation make a difference in your decision?
Have you acted on these stances before?
I left the television station I worked at once they were bought out by Sinclair Broadcast Group. I don’t know how well they’re known outside of America but Sinclair is an extremely right wing company who has been (not so) stealthily injecting their views into local news and trying to make it seem as if it’s local sentiment. They’re extremely insidious and evil.
I will admit it took longer than I’d like to leave, but I work in a relatively specialized field and jobs are mostly gotten through networking. During that time though, I did speak to several media outlets that were doing stories on Sinclair at the time. I was quoted (anonymously) in a few articles giving them some background on how this story went down. Not anything major or amazing, but it’s something.
So I guess that’s my line?
I only know about them because of the chilling "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy". Not working for them seems to be a pretty reasonable line.
That was the first time most people had heard from them.
Good for you. I'm constantly shouting out the danger of Sinclair to friends and family who genuinely don't know they're watching propaganda. Its very cool that you walked.
Every time I try to say anything they just tell me that my news is propaganda lol
John Oliver did a thing about Sinclair -- to the point that this Canadian learned how shitty they were. I don't blame you.
15-ish years ago (give or take) I was working for a social networking company that wasn't doing so hot and had gone through a few rounds of layoffs while was there. Some of my ex-coworkers hit me up to join them at a company that one of them had started after leaving and got acquired by a big advertising company. They were extremely vague about the kinds of stuff they were doing (basically just said they were developing "browser extensions"), but it would come with a pay bump and it was definitely time to jump off the sinking ship I was currently on, so I accepted. Here are some of the things I worked on while I was there:
I knew the whole time that all of it was bullshit and I was being a shitty person. The straw that finally broke the camel's back was that one of the higher-ups had discovered some Chinese malware for Windows that was somehow able to steal browser cookies and silently install apps onto the user's iOS phone (the same way we were already doing for Android by stealing Google Play cookies). I was trudging through the decompiled source code for the Chinese malware and just thinking why the fuck am I wasting my time and talent on this horrible bullshit. I refreshed my CV and wrote up a cover letter basically begging someone to save my soul, and that landed me the first job I applied for (which was in the medical/genetics industry and such a breath of fresh air compared to all of my prior experience). It got me out of Florida too, which was a not-insignificant additional bonus.
After that whole experience my line has tightened up a lot. I don't want to spend one more second of my life working on something that makes other people's lives worse instead of better.
Thank you for being willing to talk about this. While I tend to not see it so much on Tildes, such 'sharing of sins past' so to speak can come with the risk of ridicule. It can be quite easy to sit in judgement of such things, especially if the person doing the judging isn't in a position of worrying about their next rent payment or what they can afford for groceries.
I appreciate you for being willing to speak to this subject. Life often throws us into shitty situations where there is no clean 'right option' if we want to have a roof and certainty of our next meal.
Glad for you getting out of that situation in a way that kept you out of dire financial insecurity. The medical/genetics job sounds cool!
Honey?
Pre-Honey by a long shot, but essentially the same scummy business model. The hook for ours was if you shopped with our toolbar, you wouldn't pay any more than normal, but a "small percentage" of your purchase price from "participating merchants" would go to "charity" (we were never any more specific than that).
Me. That’s me. I’m Charity. That’s where the money goes. In Charity’s pocket. Technically not a lie.
—Charity
Yes babe?
/noise
Most recently, I gave official notice that I would quit if my employer asked me to do work for an ICE-operated healthcare facility. Turned out I wasn't the only person to protest, and the salesperson shut that bid down in a hurry.
I did quit a job where I was asked outright to abet a federal crime by destruction of evidence, but that was more of a "last straw" than a hard line given that the crime in question was related to copyright infringement by software piracy.
I passed up a job offer because I didn't want to assist with the damming of floodplains, damaging local ecosystems and pushing flooding downstream to poorer communities to the benefit of property developers.
It's quite amazing how stunningly bad 80 years or so of "flood management" techniques that amounted to "push it downstream as fast as possible" have wreaked havoc on ecosystems.
Rivers and creeks were meant to meander and soak up things. You want small amounts of flooding everywhere to prevent flash flooding wiping out communities.
Unless, of course, you value said communities about as much as the average person values the homeless person begging at an intersection.
I worked at The New York Times from 2019 to 2024 (genuine apologies if I bring this up too much here, I can try to tone it down). I joined the organizing committee for the burgeoning tech union there in 2020, about three months after the organizing compaign started. After we voted to unionize in 2022, I was a shop steward.
By the end of 2023, I had seen several truly vile situations, in which outright bullies in upper and middle management went out of their way to make the lives of the union members that reported to them absolute hell. This was almost uniformly directed at women, many of them trans or genderqueer, many of them the very, very small number of women of color in tech at the Times, and many of them neurodivergent. Even at a tech org like the Times', which was way more diverse than any other tech org I have worked at or seen, the overlap of those demographics is suspiciously small.
After the union member that I was representing as a shop steward was forced out of the company with a PIP that contained some of the most egregious, bullshit requirements I have seen to this day, I just felt totally dead inside. I was completely burned out, and had no desire whatsoever to continue providing value for the psychopathic, careless nutjobs running the company. It took one more short stint at a tiny video game startup (it was a dumpster fire, who'd have guessed?) for me to learn that my requirement for compassion and care and thoughtfulness in my workplace was just not something that would be met at essentially any company that was hiring software engineers.
Now I have a small, cooperative collective. Our bylaws bar us from hiring employees or long-term contractors. Anyone we work with must be an equal, part time owner. I feel tremendously spoiled — I genuinely don't know what I'll do if I'm ever forced to move back into the more standard form of employment.
You don't have any writing about your experiences starting a collective, do you? Currently living through my giant corporation employer employing some of the dirtiest, dumbest tactics. I was "lucky" not to be laid off, I suppose, but idea of working together without the corporate overlord, without fear of ending up under a corporate overlord, is really appealing.
Hmmmmm no I don't, but that would probably be nice. I'm definitely happy to chat or answer questions any time. Our Operating Agreement is also public, if that helps at all: https://handlewithcarecollective.github.io/operating-agreement/
Ultimately our collective works because we trust each other, and our operating procedures rely on and reinforce that trust. Everyone has access to everything, we split responsibilities evenly/based on availability, we all take the same rate. Everyone has equal share of the company and one vote on all decisions requiring a vote, which pushes us to be very deliberate about who we offer partnership to and how many partners we have.
It's... Really nice
That sounds amazing. Absolutely jealous as I struggle with the morality of offering my labour in return for the privilege of having a roof and food.
How do you as a collective find and get customers?
At the end of the day, the power structures that organize our labor and resources are capitalist (and, unfortunately, also patriarchal and racist) in nature. I strongly believe you shouldn't feel guilty for participating in that system — you didn't create it, but you do need to, like, survive in it.
It's kind of different every time. We have a lot of deep expertise in collaborative rich text editing, which became very popular like right as we were starting, so we got several clients just by posting on the ProseMirror job forum. I also write a lot of deep dive technical blog posts, which occasionally net us clients. And sometimes we get clients from just cold emails — I recently emailed Libro.fm to tell them about an open source project I work on that I thought they'd be interested in, and they replied asking if I was available for contracting!
I will say, we're trying to get another client right now and not having a ton of luck (anyone need some contractors? We're very good!), so it's a little hit or miss. But some far we've been able to meet all of our members needs!
I worked briefly for a small MSP. Contracted IT for other small businesses that couldn't afford or need their own in-house IT. While I learned a lot during my 18mos there, there was shady shit going on. Like for example, replacing a router with issues at one client, then being told to visit another client and replace their also maybe broken router...with the maybe broken router I just swapped out. Obviously the first client got charged full price for a brand new router. But so did the second client. For a used router that might not even work.
Often, we got free ethernet cables and other things like HDMI cables from clients. Maybe we were simplifying or cleaning up their networking closet. Or we replaced their desktop monitors, but they already had HDMI cables, so we just took the ones that came in the box with us. Technically, if we used those at another client, we were supposed to track it...because then the other client would get billed. Like, WTF, we didn't even pay for those. So a lot of times, I wouldn't track them if I was using some "extra" cables that I knew I got from another client (if it was from our actual inventory, then I would track it).
Also, sometimes felt like things we should've fixed for good the first or second time...We left unfixed and just did workarounds that lasted for a day or two, because we could generate billable hours. Now sometimes it was definitely the client being cheap that didn't allow us to, for example, replace something that would fix a problem once and for all. But there were times I felt like it was us not pushing the solution because we could make more money this way.
When a place I used to work at for a long time, a non-profit, came calling, wanting me to come back, I jumped. It was a no-brainer. Never had any major ethical concerns at the non-profit.
But had they not called, would I have left the MSP on my own? Eventually. But it was also early 2021, when we were still in the grips of the pandemic. Not exactly the best job market around then. Regardless, I wouldn't still be there today.
I briefly owned an MSP, and I'm pretty convinced that the successful ones who have stuck around for a long time are almost universally shady.
Its such a low margin business, and especially starting out in the SMB space, no one wants to pay for anything.
I would have clients come to me with problems, pitch them projects to solve them, and then have them say "too expensive. Do it for 1/4th that".
If I was in a position to tell them to fuck off, I would have, but I was growing a business, so I frequently told them that I could do a really substandard job that would likely fail for that price. They always assumed I was just making things up to make a bigger sale, so they always went with whatever the cheapest possible option was.
The solution would inevitably fail, then we'd have to burn billable hours to fix it, which the client would eventually say they werent going to pay for, since "we were the ones that messed it up".
It was a neverending losing battle. It sucks because the entire business model from the start was for us to use heavy use as infrastructure as code and automation to reduce the amount of man hours it took to do support, and invest that time into continually improving our platform and automation. Clients were supposed to pay one yearly contract cost, and everything IT related was covered. No licenses, no hardware capex, no billable hours, no salaries, and so on.
From the very start we ran into issues because every single customer wanted to nickle and dime every single service, and if we were truly billing them the cost of customizing each service, they would have ended up spending more money in the long run. We didn't do that though, because customers would just not pay, threaten to leave, threaten legal action and so on.
It was such a miserable time, I sold my share in the company a year in. It really soured me on a lot of small business owners.
These were profitable companies who's owners were quite wealthy, and they weren't willing to invest in the main tool that let their companies be profitable. Their employees were miserable because of things constantly breaking, their customers were frustrated, but they didn't really care.
The only way I could see consistently making money with that kind of customer base is to rip them off, which I was never willing to do, so my choice was pretty clear.
Due to a variety of reasons I haven't been able to finish my higher education or university degree and enter the workforce. I suffer from mental illness and am working my way through it.
What irks me is that people so easily forego their rights for minor gains. Concretely, this means that I've slowly gained the inability to see the value in work at all. Most of us will gladly waste away hours for a meaningless company doing barely anything to better humanity, all under the guise of having to cover costs of living.
This to me is just another form of slavery. You not being paid what you are valued for is the premise and theory behind capitalism but I cannot see myself working for any company that doesn't align with anything that won't benefit humanity in the long run.
Selling electronics? They're all produced in China, convince me otherwise. Cheap furniture or interior? Hardly contributes to a livable, sustainable future.
We are blindly churning out so much CO2 so someone can have a slightly different experience. It's obscene.
So where do I draw the line? Fairly early on.
I’m on a very similar boat… and can’t figure out how to reconcile it with real life. I still have bills to pay, stuff I’d like to acquire and do to fulfill my desires. But for that I’d need to enable all of the above with my labour. I haven’t found a workable compromise so I wonder if you have?
I want to say I'm fortunate enough to receive benefits currently without the need to look for a job as long as I struggle with my mental health and work on that. But that constant pressure to 'be of service to the economy'- is a tough cookie to crack for sure.
As far as my influence goes it's mostly just voting for left wing ideologies and hope for the best. I'm on the fence about becoming politically active or become part of an action group, taking matters into your own hands etc.
As for the rest of my days I spend them in online worlds where I can feel helpful to those without asking for a favor in return.
Giving is the greatest thing we can do in life. Pay it forward. To see people paying only themselves and selling others on the idea that only if they do as them will lead them to happiness is using money as a religion.
I've been pretty fortunate that I've not ever been in many positions where I was asked to do unethical things for money. That being said, I can think of a couple of mild things.
I used to work in consulting, and the company was very strict on allowable overhead hours. Unfortunately, the system was also very slow at setting up project numbers for when we were opening a new project. Previously, we had been instructed to put billable hours on overhead, then move them to the project once it was opened. Accounting hated this, because it resulted in a lot of extra work for them, so we were instructed to stop. When I asked my boss what I should do instead, he told me to bill to another project, then we would just move the hours later. I refused to do this, it was just wrong and unethical as I was concerned. So, I was routinely in trouble (for years), for having too much overhead time. Even though the hours were eventually moved, it was always recorded on my KPIs as overhead time. This most certainly did have an impact on my career progression and resulted in lower raises. I didn't think much on it at the time, but looking back I'm super pissed.
Also in the same consulting field, this incident contributed to me quitting. It wasn't the final straw or even the biggest reason, but it certainly accelerated the process. Part of my job as a consultant was advising private companies on what they needed to do to meet compliance. One of my coworkers came back from a meeting one day, defeated. He had told the client what to do, and instead the client had responded, 'how much is the fine if we don't meet compliance?' My coworker told them, the client laughed, and responded 'the cost of doing business.' None of my clients had told me this yet, but I had noticed a trend over the years where they were becoming increasingly less likely to implement my recommendations. I concluded that I had probably also had clients that thought this way, but never told me. There are of course good clients as well, but it made me feel as if my job was useless, and just there for a client to check a box. I left the field about a year later.
I got a new job at a construction company and found that I was expected to fluff the numbers and under quote to get customers on the hook, the real costs would get added in variations later, when they couldn't walk out. Super dodgy and it wasn't really clear to me where under quoting stopped and fraud kicked in. On top of that we were talking house building, not always for people with a heap of extra money, and not defrauding big construction companies or something with less moral peril.
It took me a bit to work it all out but I lasted only a few weeks, gave a few days notice and left. I hadn't thought about it before I started but asking me to lie for you seems to be a hard line of mine.
Gross. My dad was a general contractor in his twenties back in the 80’s and would often drastically under bid and then spend weeks arguing with the client about cost overruns and coming out of his own pocket to pay crew for certain days or buy materials until the client could get him the money to buy supplies.
I could never figure out if it was because he genuinely thought he could do it for the original quote and was just a hopeful idiot or if it was a tactic to ensure he got the job; I honestly presumed, knowing him personally, that he was just really bad at figuring out the value of his labor. Mostly because there were about as many instances where he came in ahead of schedule and under budget and had to drag his feet a little since he never put a bonus clause into any of his agreements if that happened.
He quit contracting in his early thirties to pursue his dream of being a rich and famous big shot in Hollywood. That was nearly forty years ago. I’ll let you know if he ever makes it.
When I was younger I worked for a large company that wrote software for call centers.
I thought the application was cool at the start but the more I learned the worse it got.
And then the new features started coming and they were so gross. I felt horrible thinking that it was actually humans who the software was targeting.
I was too young and naive to make a real move out myself, I ended up being "made redundant" aka fired. But it was because I was refusing to engage and doing basically no work on purpose.
If that was today I'd be job seeking immediately.
I drew a line on social media and nuked them all when it became apparent to me how much of a time sink and un-social experience the whole thing had become.
My red line I'd now pretty hardcore - friends ask me to join their WhatsApp and I'll do my best to stick to Signal or SMS. It's not worth it. I'm off Instagram, I'm off Facebook in any means until way.
Aspects of it sucks but sticking to principles is worth it.
I'm currently job searching as a software engineer and my hard-nos are: no crypto, no defense industry, and no LLMs*
The asterisk on "No LLMs" is that removing every job listing that refers to AI at all would cut my pool to something like 5%, so I'm trying to draw the line at "no companies formed entirely around creating or offering an LLM as a product"
Do you mean no LLMs used for development? I’m curious about what percentage of companies are actually not using LLMs to write a majority of their code at this point. Have you been able to get any sort of read on that during your search?
It's tricky - if I aimed for "no LLM usage at all" (a state I'd much prefer), I'd get zero hits anywhere. If the job description specifically mentions particular tooling or "agentic development", I'm much more likely to give it a pass.
Just finished a job search as a SWE / EM.
I won't work on gambling and I won't work on weapons or anything closely connected. I'll admit that I'm in a privileged position but I have declined interviews for defense companies, even if they were just in "logistics".
I also refused a recruiter in the adult entertainment industry which I wasn't necessarily against as a whole but their product just kinda squicked me out, and I could see how it could harm people.
I work for a big blood sucking insurance company (dealing with property insurance, not healthcare). Been doing this type of work for about a decade or so. Contrary to what many online people like to think, the entire time I've been here, our company's philosophy has always been to find ways to provide coverage under the policy, not deny. Not every case is straight forward (though many are), but when in doubt, if there's any sort of reasonable justification to provide coverage, we always look to do so.
If my company started to have a shift in policy to look for ways out of coverage, I would quit on the spot.
Insurance is often a daunting thing to navigate for a lot of people. If I can at least provide some sort of helpful guidance and make the process have as little friction as possible for people, that's what I strive for. Thankfully my company's mindset is the same (at least in claims. Don't get me started on the number of gripes I have regarding the other departments).
Outside of my current job, I would never work on anything related to gambling or advertising. I find both to be a blight on society and I want to remain far away from them.
I'd never do work that directly hurts people.
My employer directed me to lie to a government customer. The govt rep was someone I had a personal relationship with. I submitted my resignation instead. I did not refer to the real reason officially, nor did they. I still talk to some ex colleagues, some know the details, others could certainly guess. I might be able to stop the company from further unethical activities if I turned whistleblower, but I was content to get out.
Dishonest industries, Offensive weapons.
I had this line tested about a month ago. I work as a development consultant, and I've done defense projects in the past. However, this one was an Augmented Reality CQB military and police training program. My previous defense projects were in communication and logistics, something I am fine doing for the German military. (would be a different story with the US military, to be clear). Thankfully, my manager asked up front if I was ethically OK with the assignment, as they do for every defense contract. I told them Id need a day or 2 to think about it. Well, I thought about it and decided that, with defense, I would be OK doing anything non-combat, and might even be OK working on defensive combat systems, systems that cannot or are impractical to use against civillians. (For example, an anti-air system can only really be used against aircraft that come within range, and the pilots of such aircraft are certainly soldiers.) However, I would never work on anything anti-personnel. No artillery, no infantry weapons, etc. I know my line is... more in favor of the defense industry than some, but I do feel like a defensive millitary is needed in this day and age.
As far as dishonest industries, I patently refuse to work on AdTech or anything else in that vein.
I don't really have an explanation of my ethics here, just an arbitrary line in the sand I've drawn to make myself feel better just because I was chasing a paycheck. The company I currently work for has definitely caused some harm in the world but since I work in a completely different organization that worked to connect people and make their lives "better", I feel better about myself working there. My previous company was a bit better since it was a purely enterprise-focused software company but my current company is a consumer-focused company that just so happens to make tools for businesses to reach consumers.
Hmm. I’ve had dozens of jobs in my life. Thinking on my common reasons for quitting, my line is respect; treat me with it and I’ll work hard. Treat me like a child and/or a chump and I’ll walk.
Don’t make me lie for you, don’t lie to me, and pay me on time and in full.