Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.
replies(30):
It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.
Buying made in China products supports this economic growth, and also the cheap, often exploitative, labor that went into producing them.
Besides, you should probably support the local manufacturing industry wherever you’re living.
That doesn't change that an engineer in the bay area can choose to work for Google or choose to find an alternative place of employment. People can choose more ethical choices without living in a pure ethical panacea.
So the lesson is: Being ethical in one way is hard, so don't bother being ethical in any aspect of your life?
Take that template and apply it to Googlers. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism; everyone has compromised a rigid belief structure somewhere.
Whether buying hardware or working for google is worse is another debate, but you should be able to see why people can work at google and not necessarily feel guilty about it.
The truth is most for-profit organization will not have a flawless ethical image that satisfied everyone, and that probably includes your employer. I'm not saying we should all look the other way, but let's keep things grounded in reality. Censorship is a delicate subject, especially as it concerns expressions involvong multiple cultures. This doesn't make Google immediately evil for electing to / not electing to act one way or another.
Maybe your accusation is that Google is choosing profit over ethics in this case? Then the "Chinese hardware" argument has to come into play. Are you, yourself choosing price and convenience when you know it means your dollars are ending up in those poorly run Chinese factories? What are you going to do about it? Should Googlers quit their jobs before or after you source all your hardware from ethically run, blame-free factories?
I think people (especially those in privileged positions like engs in the bay area) should feel empowered to think and decide their line as to what they want to support and contribute to the world.
I mean, from your description, I'd rather want a system that actually shows continued growth, rather than hollowed promises of growth.
Let's be honest here, democracy's real growth had been going to war with nations and extracting/exploiting resources from them. Hence why the past 50 years, there has been no real growth in democratic countries because they are not able to as easily extract from the rest of the world.
Hopefully, however, you have a voice (vote) in that government. The same obviously does not apply to you with China, nor generally does it apply to Chinese people within China.
You also generally have less choice when it comes to paying taxes, and significantly more choice when it comes to not buying things from China. If there are no non-Chinese alternative for X item, you can always choose to not buy X. However, that probably means not buying quite a few things, as you point out. But that was GC's point – it is fairly hard as a techie to not support the CCP. But just because something is hard to avoid does not mean you aren't doing it or aren't responsible for doing it.
A lot of engineers are wage slaves as much as anyone else. It's not like everyone wants to do this stuff.
EDIT: On a more personal note - I hope your name is actually "Bradly" and you're not "Bradley". And that you actually go by that in real life instead of "Brad". As I know there's some "Brad"s out there that like to buy up Bradly variations without actually going by it. It's killing me.
I'm also fairly certain that the US (and other countries) have been warring a lot in the Middle East in the past 50 years, and many people claim that this is directly related to oil, an "exploited resource".
Has that not been happening either?
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Yes, I am a Bradly. About half my coworkers/friends/family call me Bradly and about half call me Brad. I introduce my self as both interchangeably depending on the situation.
My point is - not everyone has a choice. You might get the pick of the litter but there are many people who are lucky if they even get one offer from a company paying $400k+/yr. And - for reference - I am one of the people who has never received an offer from one. All my offers have been under $200k/yr (that doesn't include that I have to pay over $2,000/month to buy options that will "maybe one day if we're all lucky" pan out for something).
The world of living in silicon valley under $200k/yr vs $400k+/yr is wildly different. One feels like you're no better off than a retail worker and the other feels like you're a working class professional.