We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right?

No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of that guy's engineering skills.

What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians, and that the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital. We need to give up the fantasy that we can change things with individual action, and start looking towards collective, society-level solutions to the problems today.

When the vast majority of ultra-successful companies engage in undesirable practices, we must accept that those practices experience evolutionary positive selection. They are advantageous in the current environment. This is a structural problem, rather than a problem with any specific company.

More distressingly, this means that any work at a funky, independent, ethical company is merely laying the foundation for future unethicality, like Y2K Google.

The industry is known for contempt of the law, tax evasion, and oppression of the poor and minorities because this is what our society is known for.

Fantasies of personal power abound as we engage in cultural wars with our fellow citizens on personally important, but nationally and structurally irrelevant topics. We feel strongly about gender/animal/gun/vaccination/religious rights and engage in passionate debates and demonstrations as wealth, power, and freedom is gradually and inexorably stolen from all of us.