Pro tip: you can safely assume that any of the stuff you read online in terms of ethics in those companies exists solely for people to feel "woke" and for you to click on, and is highly biased. Do not take what you read online as the common viewpoint about those companies.

Companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google has had way more positive impact on society that surpasses any negative things that they have done. The negative things should be ignored, but require proper contextualization and accuracy to really understand what the overall impact is.

While that's certainly true (although an simplification - they are just managed by people with low ethics), we can do better. If I behaved like managers of Google, Meta or Microsoft, I'd be ashamed of myself.

Now I'm in completely the wrong forum to say this, as this place obviously favors one view, but can you say that building companies just for the purpose of profits is actually ethical?

>If there actually was a credible alternative, that would be one thing. But what is it? Start-ups? Yeah right. Non-profits. Please. Government? Medicine? Law? Commerce? Entertainment? Education? Research? Who considers any of these ethical?

Maybe they are not ethical, but what, exactly, is unethical about them? Unless you work for a company that exists to game the system and/or exploit people/resources you are adding value to the world and making it a more efficient and better place for other humans.

It's only unethical if you're not in the ruling class. If you're an executive, it's perfectly fine to sit on the board of multiple companies simultaneously (each one paying you $50,000+ per year).

I've said this before, but if you only do the ethical thing when it doesn't cost you anything, you aren't actually an ethical person. You're just an opportunist.

Companies that say they have to do the unethical thing because otherwise shareholders will get mad or fire them, well they're doing the same thing, but it's avoiding personal costs (risking their cushy job) by doing the unethical thing. Doing the wrong thing because your boss will fire you if you don't doesn't mean you didn't do the wrong thing.

Says who? I don't know about your ethical system, but mine certainly doesn't demand that I confine ethics to one sphere and never let it touch the others. Indeed, such an ethical system sounds completely broken to me.

Companies aren't individuals. They are aggregates, and (absence some major force, e.g. like Gates in MS or Jobs in Apple, or some important founding principles) aggregates tend to go to some mean, which in the case of companies includes profits above all.

Yep, this is the point I was making. I think a lot of people are in this situation. It’s not that they’re cogs in an amoral machine, it’s that they are actually morally aligned with their company and striving to make the world a better place (in their vision).

That's what I'm talking about, there is very not that much successful companies making money ethically. At one point or another they seems to make a decision that will trade ethics for money.

> Trusting companies was a no-no in the first place.

I meant "trusting" a company like Cloudflare to host my code/being my CDN.

Or for example when you take a flight with a Boeing plane, you're somewhat trusting the company that your plane will not lose a door...

This really isn't true. There are many companies out there that go above and beyond, in terms of acting ethically. In fact, it can be a competitive advantage to do so, for many reasons. (One, being employees who believe in your mission and buy into it, are far more likely to be productive long-term employees.)

This comment posits that companies act in a closed system. Companies don't just act within the boundaries set by the law, they actively seek to directly change laws by lobbying and to change the interpretation of laws through litigation in order to best suit their interests. They are political agents as are their workers.

It might bring more gray area into your life but like it or not what you do for your day job can have moral implications. You may have taken this post as a personal attack because you work at Google, which may be why you are so vociferously arguing against it. But even if one disagrees with where this person drew the line I think it behooves everybody to at least occasionally reflect on the ethical implications of how they spend their time, especially in tech where what you work on can easily affect millions or billions of people.

I'd hope this discussion would be more about the merit of where this line was drawn in this case rather than whether or not one is even justified in taking a moral stance instead of just putting their head down and shutting up or quitting.

Even one bad actor, at the right position and power, can make the ethical values of thousands of developers irrelevant until it's too late.

I often wonder about companies that are filled with ordinary folks, companies that do real nasty stuff. Like say Nestle, or even Enron. How do normal, ethical people get by in these companies. Do big companies and corporate culture destroy the inherent compassion and empathy in people?

Intel isn't a FAANG to begin with, second, I'm asking you again, are you creating alternative opportunities for the people who would refuse to do their jobs because it goes against your sense of morals? What are these opportunities of work you've built for these people? Answer that question. If you can't answer that, then who are you to judge? Not everybody can afford your grandstanding.

I bet it's because a lot of people over there would do the same given the chance

Not it shouldn't. We know that these companies are morally corrupt. When you sell your time to help grow these companies you are also morally corrupt. Simples.

It's never that simple.

What corporations are okay to work for, in this unidimensional worldview? Exxon Mobil? Philip Morris? Pfizer? Dupont? Boeing? Nestle? BHP? Fox News? Volkswagen? Nike? HSBC? Is it okay if your employer's owners or executives have appeared in the panama papers? Are or have been on the boards of FAANG companies or own stock in those companies? Are you allowed to buy Google or Apple products and use their services?

What about companies that collect and trade on the personal information and habits they collect about their customers, just not on the scale of Facebook or Google? Are they okay? Even if they would like to be able to sell more personal information but don't presently have the means to would that be okay?

So where do you work? What products and services do you buy?

For a spurious definition of ethical not shared by almost all people.

Which society does have that lien, the one I left behind that fully payed for my education (although almost everything I know about computers I learned on my own) or the one hosting the company I happen to work for right now? What about some years in the future when I move to another company/country?