Some Engineers Are Turning Down Tech Recruiters in Silicon Valley Over Concerns About Corporate Value (ieee.org) 257
Tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have faced growing internal unrest from employees who raise ethical concerns about how the companies deploy their high-tech services and products. That chorus of dissent is now growing louder as outside engineers voice their concerns to recruiters working for those tech companies. An anonymous reader shares a report: The protests of tech workers have proven persuasive because Silicon Valley firms compete fiercely to recruit and retain relatively scarce engineering talent. For example, Google's leadership sought to reassure employees by declaring it would not renew its Pentagon contract and by issuing a set of ethical principles for future uses of Google-developed technologies. By the same logic, engineers who are approached by tech recruiters also have leverage. "I might be a one-off example, but it could be different if Amazon gets a lot of people emailing them saying, 'Hey I won't work for you because of this,'" Geiduschek, a software engineer at Dropbox, who declined a job offer from Amazon, says.
Jackie Luo, a software engineer at Square, took a similar stance with a tech recruiter who sought to interest her in a career with Google. The recruiter happened to contact Luo when she was reading about Google's plans to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored version of the company's Internet search engine. [...] Individual engineers such as Luo and Geiduschek seem to be responding to tech recruiters through their own initiative rather than as part of any larger movement. Meanwhile, some tech employees have joined organized efforts, such as the #TechWontBuildIt movement spearheaded by the labor advocacy group Tech Workers Coalition.
Jackie Luo, a software engineer at Square, took a similar stance with a tech recruiter who sought to interest her in a career with Google. The recruiter happened to contact Luo when she was reading about Google's plans to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored version of the company's Internet search engine. [...] Individual engineers such as Luo and Geiduschek seem to be responding to tech recruiters through their own initiative rather than as part of any larger movement. Meanwhile, some tech employees have joined organized efforts, such as the #TechWontBuildIt movement spearheaded by the labor advocacy group Tech Workers Coalition.
Amazon has it's 100 hours a week issues! (Score:2)
Amazon has it's 100 hours a week issues!
Re:Amazon has it's 100 hours a week issues! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Amazon has it's 100 hours a week issues! (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a friend that said they worked no more than sixty hours a week while on call 24/7. For programming, that's about the best work/life balance you can expect.
Only if you're a schmuck. I have never worked those kinds of hours - nor would I any longer than the time it takes me to find another job.
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60 hour/week longterm people are mostly useless.
Unless they just put in 60 hours of facetime and 20 hours of work they are crispy and would get much more done if they worked 40 good hours.
40 hours of actual work is ambitious, most offices won't allow it...You must attend the annual sexual harassment training this week...and the all hands meeting...and don't forget the 3 hour 'stand ups', everyday.
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And dogs! I had a friend quit Amazon after getting bitten. Two other mutual friends quit there after getting frustrated with distractions due to dogs. Coworkers, meetings, and email are already distracting enough without adding dogs.
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I meant dogs like the pets! Not hotdogs.
Admirable but... (Score:2)
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If they're white and male they have reasonable grounds for choosing a different employer.
It doesn't hurt to let the recruiter know that - whether they're an agent or work for Google.
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I'm not sure what being white and male have to do with it.
Yes you do.
Politically active left leaning businesses discriminate against white males for the sake of social justice, diversity, and "optics."
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...for every one person like that there are a thousand who would like to work for Google.
They're mostly in India but yeah, I'm sure you're correct
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And probably at least one who has a different opinion on whatever specific issue that person is complaining about. After all, although there are some moral absolutes, there are a lot more situations where different sets of morals conflict, such as the conflict between getting self-driving tech onto the roads sooner to save lives when drivers are half asleep versus delaying it until it is better than those drivers when
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...for every one person like that there are a thousand who would like to work for Google.
"Would like to" does not equate "is an asset" or even "is qualified for".
Having gone through my share of job interviews, I'd say it's fairly hard to find good fits, and job recruiters make this even more difficult with their keyword matching and not understanding even an iota about the skills required or offered. A reduction in the number of good applicants would be significant - the signal to noise ratio is already too low.
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And that's in a good job market. Once the economy goes to hell again, people will be begging to go work for EvilCorp because they are desperate for a pay check.
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really? So, all big tech companies are immoral while small ones are moral?
Non sequitur. Big tech companies probably are immoral, because you don't become truly big without stepping on a few bodies. That does not imply that small ones are moral - they could be either. If I were to guess, a small and profitable company without aspirations to grow big is more likely to display high moral values.
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They're all immoral, but Facebook and Google have both the desire and ability to inflict their ... particular morality on the world at large.
Re:Admirable but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Morality certainly influenced my most recent job move.
I had recruiters from both Google and Facebook reaching out to me, but it's clear from their corporate culture that conservatives - even moderates - are not welcome at those companies. I feel the "progressive" movement is the most dangerous and harmful political force since the Wall fell, and I don't want to have on my conscience contributing to that in any way.
Fortunately, you no longer need to work at the Big 5 to get great pay, at least if you're past mid-career (they probably still pay college hires the best, though I hear MS is falling off).
Not that the company I landed at isn't quite liberal internally, but they don't inflict it on their customers.
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No problem there, I don't work with fucknut conservatives and their shit-takes on every fucking thing
Fair enough, though I shudder at the thought of codebases where there were clearly no conservative engineers pushing back on the crazier fads and frameworks.
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Sounds about right (Score:4, Insightful)
Right... Because it is unethical for America — uniquely among the world's nations — to fight its enemies and enforce its borders.
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Right... Because it is unethical for America — uniquely among the world's nations — to fight its enemies and enforce its borders.
While you likely already know this and are just trolling, no one disagrees with America fighting its enemies and enforcing its borders. There are those who disagree with the manner in which the US is currently doing it though.
Re:Sounds about right (Score:4, Informative)
That's not, how TFA puts it, however. Simply targeting immigrants (the crucial adjective "illegal" coyly omitted) is enough to make it unethical in these people's imagination.
These people are wrong, they should not be hired — much less glorified in media — and companies hiring them for any job paying above minimal wages should be boycotted.
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I didn't RTFA but I'm gonna guess it has something to do with the wall and children in cages.
The idea that they are raging SJWs who object to all immigration control is just silly. Surely you don't actually believe that.
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The "cages" are a product of feverish imagination. We are perfectly entitled to build a wall — nothing unethical about it.
Abolish ICE [nytimes.com] is just that — because someone told them about the imaginary "children in cages", thousands of people call for the abolition of any and all efforts by the US to protect its borders. Comm [dsasantacruz.org]
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No they haven't. They have been calling for fairer, more humane immigration and fewer dubious wars based on lies and corporate interests.
Rather than lying about your opponents why not put forward your own ideas? What do you actually want to happen?
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Rather than forgetting about the last 50+ years, trying to pretend that radical leftists never existed and suggesting that all leftists share a common thread in being humane and honest, why don't you maybe get serious. How have democrats and socialists fixed immigration? Obama just had 8 years up at bat. Here's a tip. Socialism especially doesn't work with open borders. You can't tell everyone they are going to get "free" stuff and then let people flood in the door. If it was truly only about wanting
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So Mexico has guards with machine guns with orders to fire on their southern border, but when the US treats illegals much nicer, somehow we're the bad guys?
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Re:Sounds about right (Score:4, Interesting)
Illegal immigrants — the overwhelmingly vast majority of them from South America — have killed far more Americans [npr.org] over the years, than the 3000 killed on the day of 9/11. By your logic — punishing the countries, whose expats have done us wrong — we should've overrun Mexico and proceeded further South by now.
Re:Sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
To his point, we don't because "follow the money". The US is run by a very big-corporate establishment that puppets most Dems and Republicans, and has a laser focus on "more labor supply = more profits", all across the economic spectrum from the illegal leaf picker to the H1-B with a PhD. Open borders directly drives concentration of wealth at the top.
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I've heard that Texas has been considering this for YEARS.....
They figure if they have to have the people, they might as well get the real estate that goes with them......
Re:Sounds about right (Score:5, Informative)
Illegal immigrants — the overwhelmingly vast majority of them from South America...
This page [migrationpolicy.org] lists all of South America at 6%. Mexico is 56%, which certainly isn't an "overwhelmingly vast majority", and Central America at 15%.
...have killed far more Americans [npr.org] over the years, than the 3000 killed on the day of 9/11.
Is this the part of the article you're talking about? If so, I've highlighted a couple key points regarding the number.
In the aggregate, Trump said, immigrants in the country illegally are responsible for tens of thousands of crimes. He pointed to a 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office which estimated undocumented immigrants had committed some 25,000 homicides, 42,000 robberies and nearly 70,000 sex offenses. That estimate was extrapolated from a survey of 1,000 undocumented immigrants held in state and federal prisons. It offered no time frame in which the crimes might have been committed and no basis for comparison with the native-born population.
The article also cites a study that says that illegal immigrants in Texas were less likely to be convicted of homicide, sexual assault, or larceny than native citizens.
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I apologize. I meant to say "Latin America". The rest of my comment hints at that — clearly, I included the Mexicans (North Americans).
The NPR article — and you — fight a strawman. Neither Trump, nor I claim, that the illegal immigrants are especially murderous. The claim is, they have committed numerous murders and other crimes — and the article confirms that.
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have killed far more Americans over the years, than the 3000 killed on the day of 9/11.
You're taking a bit of the article that quotes Trump's claims and are presenting them as facts. Here's what the article says:
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Because you've seen happen in a movie?..
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The US has a very strong border. There has been an effort to drive undocumented immigrants into dangerous desert crossings over the last few decades and it is working. It used to be a relatively safe crossing and now it's very dangerous, on purpose. We're not even letting many refugees into the US. We've outsourced ICE detention to private corporations whose profit motivation keeps their detention centers full. Obama deported more aliens than previous presidents, and Trump is prepared to break that rec
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Anyone who thinks we have a weak border security is just naive.
Whether this is true or not, it is irrelevant. We aren't discussing, whether America's efforts are sufficient. The article is about people claiming, such efforts are unethical — and, instead of denouncing them as saboteurs, celebrates such people as heroes.
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I'm trying to remember if you're the one who is an expat from the former USSR. I get you confused with the other libertarian-right guys named Mashiki and Roman-Mir. Hmm, Mir is russian word...maybe he's another Randroid expat.
Well if you are the expat, you might not be aware of the history behind immigration law in the US, which has at times been intentionally created with racist intent.
For example, Northern Europe was favored over Southern Europe because the WASPS running the country didn't want more "be
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That would have been about as smart as making Hillary VP.
Stalin's life expectancy would not have been long, had he made Beria his successor.
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Right... Because it is unethical for America — uniquely among the world's nations — to fight its enemies and enforce its borders.
Is that what the US does? I think the problem is that "fight its enemies" is defined as drone striking suspects with limited evidence and civilian casualties, minimal accountability in a process that seems more like a global administrative execution program for people suspected or associated with anyone suspected of planning terrorism.
If you want to defend your borders that's fine, but do it at the border. Fact is there are no existential threats to the US, no territorial threats, and none have been made
Not really (Score:3)
The Pentagon contract involved adding AI to analyze photographs. People who want to make it seem worse than the same tech being applied to their Facebook pages to find friends made up the story about "AI to control drones", and continue to propagate it.
Chinese efforts to undermine US AI (Score:3)
If I were a Chinese strategist, evaluating the strong and weak points of each side:
Can confirm (Score:3, Interesting)
but it wasn't about that. Google contacted me and I told them that I wasn't seeing a cultural fit.
I highly recommend reading the filings in the James Damore lawsuit: https://www.dhillonlaw.com/law... [dhillonlaw.com]
You can see the statements from Googlers in their own words. To say that it's incredibly disturbing that they have created and promoted such a toxic work-place culture would be an understatement.
Avoid like the plague unless you are a blue-haired harpy trying to work out her daddy issues by hating on men.
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but it wasn't about that. Google contacted me and I told them that I wasn't seeing a cultural fit.
I didn't tell them that, but concerns about the environment was among the reasons I declined.
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unless you are a blue-haired harpy trying to work out her daddy issues
Oh they're the ones with issues? Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
Re:Can confirm (Score:5, Insightful)
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On the contrary, you just have to have the right politics and/or be high enough up on the hierarchy of oppression to do so.
The idea that there is some horrible conspiracy against men within the tech world is utter bullshit. That said, there IS a conspiracy to root out and eject douchebags from the workplace.
Your protestations say more about you and your warped worldview than they say about what's actually happening in the workplace. Grow up. You weren't born with the right to be a douchebag.
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You mean like thinking that calling women "harpies with daddy issues" is a bad idea?
You might be on to something there.
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....right?
How can so many engineers get the same error message over and over--"People have a problem with you using gendered insults"--and not try just modifying their code just a little?
Like I want to shake them and say, "It's really okay for you to keep being a self-important dick if you really want to! Just be the same self-important dick to everybody!!"
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Another lesson in civility from an obvious master of the subject.
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Haha, well I'm not claiming I'm never guilty of this, or it's not a valid choice on how you want to live your life. Just pointing out that for a large number of engineers--a group that usually prides itself on problem-solving--the confusion exhibited in posts about how workplace culture is un-navigable shows a lack of investigative rigor probably worth looking into.
Also, I'm not at work rn :)
Hypocrisy (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a real shame that you can't act like a giant douchebag at work these days.
From the source you are responding to:
“You can’t talk about sexual differences between men and women, (although) it’s OK if they favor women,” laughs Tierney. “You can say men are more likely to commit crimes, but you can’t suggest that there might be some sexual difference that might predispose men to be more interested in a topic.”
Yeah, you can act like a giant douchebag, but only to men. Pointing that out gets you fired. Standing up for yourself gets you fired. Not following a radical political agenda gets you fired...but only at a handful of insane corporations with too much power and not enough ethics.
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Your referring to Damore as a "giant douchebag" highlights the problem. I've read the memo and watched multiple interviews with him and he is absolutely not. But you disagree with him so you're justifying his mistreatment.
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Damore starts of by insulting his audience for fun, apparently, with a superficial argument based on nothing more than name calling (e.g. "ideological echo chamber"), when it is only very tangentially related to his main arguments.
Yeah I'm sure he said "you know what would be fun? insulting a bunch of people! I'm going to write a memo doing that!" Good thing you figured out his real motive.
Pointing out that Google has an ideological echo chamber is in no way name calling. It isn't even an insult. It's simply addressing the problem. And it was not tangentially related to his main arguments. His main argument was that they have an ideological echo chamber. Their discriminatory hiring practices in the name of "diversity" (and th
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Sure, because saying Google should reach their gender quotas by changing their interviews to be more inclusive is totally a douchebag move.
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It's up to you to be a better person. Better get started, you're way behind.
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"studies have shown" is among the most egregious of lies and you damn well know it. Or maybe you don't, in which case you've got a long, hard road ahead of you.
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Guessing about what men or women want is a bad place to start an argument. Putting that aside...IMHO about half of Damore's points were worthy of serious consideration. The fact that half his essay is perhaps, laudable, does not protect him from consequences for errors in the other half.
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No one wants to fire them all
Look. People just want the people who make the final decisions on hiring to realize that they're probably hiring people just like them on a subconscious level. They're getting a monoculture without awareness. And some people are trying to fix that....and people like you are resisting. because hey, it's not broken to you.
Everyone is like you in the code-dungeon. Why do things need to change? They get your jokes, you're not going to complain about their half naked anime post
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Google employees and leadership themselves demonstrating an incredibly amount of animus to anyone with the wrong politics, and white, heterosexual males in particular.
What, and white libertarian coder bros aren't some of the most selfish bigoted assholes around? you think it's actual gay black people doing the GNAA posts? "indo-chimps"? all the disparagement of black people? the misogyny? the lack of humility and empathy? white tech guys are some of the worst racists, homophobes and bigots I have ever seen. And I will lay odds that before he wrote his paper, that at Google, ol Damore couldn't keep his mouth shut about politics, women in computing and other matters
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Damn, I can just FEEL the decency and civilization radiating from this comment.
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I'm sorry can you point to where he claimed to be an expert? He did cite peer reviewed studies from experts, but the whole point of the memo is the methods the company is using to try to solve the problem are ideologically based and they are not tolerant of other points of view.
And are you trying to say that because he isn't an expert his claim that discriminating based on race and gender are wrong is invalid?
Article is geographically challenged (Score:5, Insightful)
The subject's title is, "Engineers Say 'No Thanks' to Silicon Valley Recruiters, Citing Ethical Concerns." And then the article calls out 4 companies: Amazon, Google, Facebook, & Microsoft. 2 of those 4 are headquartered in the Seattle area, not Silicon Valley. How about some simple fact checking?
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Besides, they can always find work on the north end of the Cascades up in Vancouver BC, where ethical concerns are more highly prized.
(caveat: I lived and graduated there, before coming here)
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All of these companies have offices in downtown SF. Google is in, or next to the same building (Hill Brothers Coffee building) as the Mozilla Corp on the Embarcadero with a fantabulous view of the bridge. I used to watch them take off drones from the roof of the building periodically. Microsoft is further in to Soma, nearer the caltrain station. I don't know where Apple's SF office is but besides marketing and advertising offices they have their own shuttles that go through the city. Amazon's A9 office is i
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Why Are You an Engineer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people become engineers to solve problems. To make life better for everyone. When corporate culture goes against that motive, engineers tend to rebel. This doesn't just apply to Silicon Valley.
I'm intrigued that engineers in Silicon Valley feel they are empowered enough to make such demands. Most engineers just bitch to management about not doing what's in the customer's best interest and move on.
Re:Why Are You an Engineer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineering pays quite well, but to get rich you're better off being evil.
FTFY.
Re:Why Are You an Engineer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Very well put! Was trying to figure out how to say that ...
Engineering is the best-paying job that doesn't require you to be a salesman, be overtly evil, or take significant physical risk. To be better paid as a doctor or lawyer or such, you have to start your own business - and while that's admittedly easier for doctors and dentists than for software devs, if you'd rather work for someone else then software is the place to be (most lawyers leave the field within 10 years because after that you're valued on the business you bring in as a partner - which is probably harder than making your own software company).
Not everyone in finance does evil, of course, but it's a damn hard field to get rich in if you insist on morality.
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Silicon valley is a strange place.
On the one hand engineers and can pick and choose. It's so bad that the big tech companies illegally colluded with a no-poaching agreement.
Oh the other, unless you are Indian or a trans lesbian black woman it's impossible to get hired because of all the H1Bs and SJWs.
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In the meantime, I design lame-ass consumer shit that provides no value to humanity at all - just more consumerism.
If it makes people happy, and isn't addictive or something, it's still doing some good in the world. My jobs have certainly varied over the years in how much good they've done, but in a long career I've only spent one year at a place I thought was a net negative for humanity. Not bad as jobs go.
Playing guitar in some shit-ass coffee shop would do more for people and humanity than what I do.
"What the world needs now is another folk singer ... like I need a hole in my head." - Cracker
work 80+ hours a week,
Shit man, the economy's booming. Now's the time to move to a sane company! Switch while the switching is good.
Its the work (Score:3)
Don't forget about culture problems (Score:2, Insightful)
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Do you really want to work at a place where people claim they sexually identify as an expansive ornate building, and your employer gives them a microphone?
Well, so says some guy who got pissy after getting fired for being a wanker. And microphone? Sounds like they let them post on forums.
and if you don't like people being a bit strange on forums, then what the hell are you doing on the internet?
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How awful, being tolerant of people's sexual identities even when they seem strange to you. Wouldn't it be better if people felt too ashamed to be honest about such things? /sarcasm
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The "harm" done by requiring someone to not mis-gender a trans person, to pick up one of your examples, is so minute and trivial in comparison to the harm that the trans person is subjected to by being mis-gendered that the two are incomparable.
This is the basis of all civil societies. Yes, it's annoying that you can't watch a movie with the surround sound system cranked up at 1AM, but that is nothing compared to the harm that doing so would cause your neighbour.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Believe it or not... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Free snacks are pretty nice, not gonna lie. Couple bags of chips, beef jerky, cliff bars, etc, one of these in the afternoon does a great job of boosting your blood sugar to keep the sleepies off in the afternoon. I'd say I am 100% more productive after lunch if I have access to something to boost my blood sugar. Given local salaries vs cost of snacks ($100/wk for an office of 20?) seems like a slam dunk no-brainer from a business standpoint. Helps keep the entire department from taking a 1 hour coffee brea
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:5, Informative)
- Former government contractor
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done this before (Score:2, Interesting)
Working as an engineer in the bay area I get unsolicited emails to my (relatively unpublished) personal email account directly by all sorts of companies, not to mention 10+ recruiter contacts a week via linkedin, etc.
I don't hesitate to let them know if a particular republican venture capitalist that financially backed Trump's presidential campaign that has invested in their company, has turned me off from their company (pick one, there's a couple of high profile ones). Or if they're heavily in bed
Good. (Score:3)
Unlike many others we, if we observe carefully, know exactly how and when we can be replaced. And when not. This gives us massive leverage and a few critical points. "I don't like your business model" is a very neat audible objection by someone who has a rare and demanded skill. Tech illuminates are in the sweet spot of being able to do a bit of a priests job in deciding who gets my skills and experience and who gets the finger.
I like that we have some confident and self aware engineers. Keep it up!
It goes both ways (Score:2)
It goes both ways. I believe in national defense, and in protecting our borders. I'd be happy to work for a defense-related company, or for a company with neutral politics.
I wonder how many people would rather not work for companies whose management lobbies for liberal causes, and/or clearly prefers candidates who are not straight, white, conservative, and/or men.
Self-administered professional regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, this also remains one of the few knowledge industries where it is still possible for a highly intelligent individual and dedicated individual who is totally impoverished to avoid bias and debt in academia and to not only learn enough to practice but even become a leader in our field with nothing but a low end computer and an internet connection. We will never eliminate the advantages of being born to privilege but this has always been one field where the odds are more even for someone who is underprivileged but the merit and raw capacity that defines the right to be at the top.
The headline should read (Score:4, Insightful)
"Some American Workers Try to Live Their Ethical Values"
Regardless of whether or not you agree with those values--and from the modding it looks like a lot of people hovering around this article don't--it is newsworthy that some engineers are willing to turn down lucrative, prestigious jobs because the work they'd be doing, or the company they'd be doing it for, doesn't mesh with their sense of right and wrong.
Of course, in a better world, this wouldn't be newsworthy at all.
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It's subcontractors all the way down.
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Yeah, you just described about 90% of modern IT work in that one sentence. Cleaning up flaky servers and copying prebuilt scripts from the Internet is just how things are done now!
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Surprisingly, the statistics is suggestive: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/0... [nytimes.com]
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
They are engineers.