Ask HN: Have you ever refused to interview because of ethical reasons?

You should absolutely tell the recruiters as much as you can about how you disagree with the ethics of these publicly held wall-street run companies, and also capitalism in general. Embellish as much as possible. Mention unions, worker's rights and try to fit proletariat in there somewhere.

This will hopefully prevent spamy recruiters bugging you incessantly with high paying job offers in future.

Then you can find a job at a nice small or medium size company, because there are almost never any ethical issues that come up at these kind of places.

Recruiters have no way to affect any real change. Thank them for their time and then say you're not interested.

I have rejected recruitment attempts from Facebook, YikYak, and McKinsey on moral grounds. Would they have actually given me offers in the end? Who knows.

Mention it to the recruiter in a polite and constructive way. These companies will change if enough talent rejects them.

Generally giving the recruiter your opinion of the company will not do much. But if they keep hearing the same reason from many different candidates, to the point where it is affecting hiring, they might react in some way. If you're not taking the job anyway, you don't have to worry about their opinion of you. But be polite and professional in your criticism.

No. Why show your cards? They won’t.

Yes, I refused Facebook, recruiter asked why, I said the usual stuff about privacy, web beacons, personal profiling, etc. Recruiter wrote down "did not like the product".

All the damn time!

I have spent 40 years not working for Microsoft. It makes some effort lately at seeming less Evil, but its increasing revenue demonstrates it is wholly as Evil as ever. Who buys anything from them by choice? (I guess Surface is OK hardware?)

More lately, Facebook. Goldman Sachs. The list goes on. I often turn down cryptocurrency recruiters.

Out of the FAANG, I would work with Netflix.

I've not yet had to actually tell a recruiter no for moral reasons, but that's mostly because I don't apply to companies whose behavior I consider immoral. I was last recruited for a FAANG company about two years ago and at the time I didn't have the issues with that particular one that I have now; they just didn't have what I was looking for.

However, I did interview recently with a (software engineering) consulting company, and I made it clear to the recruiter that there were some industries for whom I would not do work. She responded that they do not as a matter of policy work for those industries, so there wasn't anything for me to worry about. I ended up taking a different opportunity for unrelated reasons.

I recommend that you be honest and straightforward with the recruiter. It won't hurt you or them any. They ought to reconsider working for an unethical company themselves, if they're in a position to do so.

> How was your experience refusing to interview with the company for ethical reasons?

Literally nobody cares. No consequences, nada.

Nope. My reasons may be invalid, but they are still why I say that. I assume legal and ethical are not the same thing here, I'm talking about jobs that are lawful only.

If I don't do it, someone else will, and so nothing has changed in the world.

If it's something I don't agree with, but there's still something interesting in there for me, then I celebrate my successes because it affirms my talent, and I celebrate my failures because then the thing I disagree with didn't went as planned.

It's better to know first-hand what potentially disagreeable things are being done, instead of guessing from a distance.

[edit] This is probably the one post where I cannot possibly understand why it was down-voted.. I am only answering the question that the poster asked, along with my own, personal reasons. Anyone is absolutely entitled to disagree with them, but I fail to see how they do not contribute to the discussion.

You don’t need to reply to recruiters at all. They cold email tons of people every day. If you ran into this recruiter in a bar in a year they probably won’t remember your name.

If you really want to spike the football you could say that you think their company is immoral, but they’ll probably trash your reply after seeing “I regret to inform you…” and move on to the next thing in their inbox.

I've refused a ton, often after applying while full-well knowing (weird phrase) that the company was straight up gangster. shoot, i think i just applied to clearview the other day. i thought, 'is this _the_ clearview??' Submit!

My ego would get a nice bump if/when I got a call, then eventually I'd bail, or just fail to get thru the process. And i have been a contractor at some, and probably would be again, depending on the specifics, etc.

I come from the Chomsky school of thought, tho -- basically, institutional analysis -- i.e. companies/CEOs/boards and economies, as currently constructed, are required to put short term profit above all else -- if that means enslaving children in south america, so be it -- if that means accelerating humanity towards the end of organized life on earth, so be it.

so, facebook has been killing and terrorizing muslims and rohingya and others in asia for years, and almost auto-couped the US government this year -- so be it. if facebook requires muslims, rohingya, or americans to suffer and die, it's not personal -- it's just business.

the biggest companies are generally the biggest criminals, and growing companies will grow into that role -- it's the way the system is designed.

Apple and Nike exploiting/torturing/killing people all over China, etc. -- the list of 'bad companies' we could come up with is almost endless. Tesla. ugh.

so we can refuse to work for fakebook/meta, or some other 'evil' company, but to me it's mainly just virtue-signaling. ditto for the folks who work for those companies and tell themselves they're 'trying to change it from the inside'.

that said, it still seems like the right-ish/less-wrong choice to not work for the worst companies.

but i think if you actually have ethical problems with certain companies, or with 'the system', then organizing to change them and 'the system' probably requires more than just pulling your wage slave paycheck from a different provider -- especially if you live in a relatively free country, etc.

i remember just a few years ago when my favorite company to hate was Palantir -- ah, the good 'ol days.

i have probably mentioned my moral superiority to recruiters in the past -- don't think it matters to anyone/anything -- just more virtue signaling.

what a strange question. your dilemma isn't about whether or not you should work there, it's about how to decline the offer. how about just say no/nothing and move on?

I'm no longer looking for different work but when I was, I definitely had categories of employers I wouldn't work for. Never shy about letting a recruiter know, don't think it had any adverse effects.

Recruiters for one of the FAANG companies that nobody likes has reached out to me several times in the past. I just don’t respond.

Now my criteria for employment is:

* remote work

* Discover how junior the work feels after speaking with the company. In my line of work everybody claims to want senior experts with 100 years of experience doing extremely beginner things in giant over-engineered tools for extremely insecure people.

That’s it. I used to have incredible reservations about working for an ethically compromised employer but now that I am old I would rather have high quality work as my primary consideration.

Yes, I tell Facebook especially where they can stick it when they reach out, and why I would never work there and won’t use any of their products. I think they’ve finally stopped!

Apologies for the cynical take but all these micro-optimizing purity decisions have no effect

Real change comes from government policy, not individuals, and not companies feeling guilty about themselves

There's nothing wrong with not wanting to work for these companies but don't be under the illusion that you declining to interview is going to somehow bubble up to senior leadership and make them think "gee we should stop being evil"

I did once for what would have been a very nice job opportunity.

> Hi Saket and Rajat,

> I appreciate Rajat reaching out to me and offering me this interviewing opportunity. However, I cannot morally use filtered.ai's service. You might not be aware of this, but filtered.ai sends the recorded video questions to "Vempathy", which uses facial recognition software to judge a candidate's "emotional state" using AI.

> Right now, AI facial detection technology cannot be responsibly used for hiring decisions. It's not robust enough to provide reliable data on all candidates, and will likely be discriminatory to wide portions of the population.

> I have no issue completing online interview coding tests or in-person whiteboard interviews. But I cannot allow facial-encoding AI to guide hiring decisions in this field, or truthfully, any field.

> I notice you are based in Plymouth, MI. This is where my father grew up. I was raised in Ann Arbor. I would be happy to connect you with leading AI/ML experts at the University of Michigan who can help illuminate the problems with this technology as applied to hiring decisions.

> Respectfully, [Redacted]

For context, I am a conventionally attractive white male...I suspect that current AI analysis would work in my favor.

Yeah. I turned down an offer to go to Facebook in the early days because their product wasn’t something I wanted in the world. Have turned it down again more recently because I now realize Facebook is social cancer. I shared this with a recruiter and thankfully he put me on the “never ever” list. I wish I’d known that list existed years ago.

I turned down an interview at DHS building a massive database of repeat migrant border crossing. Migrants come here and pick our strawberries, then send money home and fund their children’s educations. Sure laws need to exist, and illegal crossing violates the law… but come on. Can’t say I support using tech to make their lives even harder, especially since they do really hard work to literally feed us. I’m happy letting DHS remain low-tech and largely ineffectual. Nobody who is smart enough to get important things done should apply those smarts to something that makes the world less humane or more unpleasant. And by god, never work on terrible weapons.

Turned down an opportunity to build a really neat high volume high speed data storage system at Apple because their product design arrogance annoys me and I consider their repeated removal of awesome features a betrayal of me personally and user centric design in general.

Quit a lucrative contract gig because their inability to prioritize information security was begging for a massive breach and I wanted nothing to do with fallout.

You might be justified in wondering how I can work anywhere;-) turns out there are plenty of places not actively making the world worse.

I walked out of an interview with a well known company that does a lot of military contracting. The first thing they asked me to do was sign a document saying I would be willing to work without hesitation on things designed to take human lives. I don't necessarily have a problem working on weapon systems but the way they asked made it feel almost cult-like.

In college, I walked out on an internship interview with a company that sounds a lot like Sysco. I asked what kinds of projects the interns worked on and the interviewer proudly told me how interns don't do any real work and are just given projects to test their abilities. I got up and left.

Some gambling companies have reached me and I have refused to interview with them. Gambling is unethical as it predates on vulnerable people.

Just say to the recruiter you're not interested.