Do you struggle to find ethical work?

I was thinking about this recently. What is your definition of meaningful work? I am myself also not a fan of consumerism. But is not most of our economy essentially spinning the hamster wheel of consumerism, in one way or another? Think about it. What is the goal of every industry? To keep us alive, fed, clothed, sheltered, safe and healthy. And what is the ultimate goal of reaching this Nirvana of human existence? To be able finally relax and be entertained. It all seems a bit pointless from this vantage point. This line of thinking will end up in you questioning the meaning of life.

Ethical work in a world that committed fully to self destruction is not easy to find if your work is not by nature contradicting the world's way

I have reached the conclusion that teaching is what I need to do in my life.

You can open your own company, otherwise, for the money they pay you, sometimes you have no choice.

Everything is outside of your control. Including the product of your work.

I worked for a company that has a very eco-friendly product yet eventually it was used by industries one might not find ethical.

Simplest example is engineering of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses. Are these engineers evil? Is the automation work that was focused on machine production to blame? Why didn’t the engineers predict that their work will be transformed into an industrial slaughterhouse? Just look at what happened with gas chambers.

The chain of influence is everywhere. You have to accept that eventually your work results are outside of your control even if you have an illusion of choice (self-employment, owning your own company, picking projects or clients).

Once you truly accept that, from that place dilemma no longer exists.

Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion).

I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway.

My belief is in bettering the world through regulation rather than individual choice.

I drive a diesel, but I'd vote for legislation banning _ALL_ diesel cars in a heatbeat.

I travel by plane, but I'd be vote for implementing laws to reduce or eliminate air travel related pollution.

I'd vote to ban some of the things I've worked on, definitely, and I'd have been glad to vote to put myself out of that previous job.

I'm not an idealist on this point.

I'll not personally sacrifice anything when the effect of my personal, specific, individual sacrifice that has direct impact for me personally, has no globally measurable impact.

I'm very much for doing good things, but while I'll be glad to do them, I want everyone else to be forced to do them too, so that they work effectively, and not just be my personal little cross to bear.

I won't be the one making do without X when X is legally available, ban X if it's bad, we'll all do make do without and find alternatives.

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Why defence is unethical?

I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now.

If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.

I think your picture of the world is too negative.

Defence is a necessary evil, because otherwise you will be governed by thugs.

Financial services enable people without capital to build things.

While there are surely material things that you consider vain, consumption is a good thing that improves people's lives.

I try to balance and minimize harm.

I suggest that your best bet is incremental change.

Totally reskilling isn't realistic, but taking a series of jobs that move you closer to skill sets you want is.

Similarly, if there are types of work you would find inspiring, can you figure out what those companies are looking for, and move towards roles that would help you become that?

Working for a slightly more ethical company is a positive change. Stack up many small improvements, over the course of 5 years you might be surprised.

You may wish to consider government work. At least in the UK it can pay quite competitively[1] with our private sector, especially when you factor in the hours they ask of you and benefits like pensions, the full package of terms I think looks surprisingly competitive.

But more importantly I think the work is meaningful. Whatever your view of government in general, or any executive of the day, often tech folk in gov have a chance to make solid products that benefit millions by just working simply and smoothly.

I think making services that work well, especially when users have no choice about engaging with them (and often when they get important goods and services as a result!), is one of the better streams of tech for good jobs out there.

[1]: https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk

Yes. But there are problems that need to be solved which are ethical, and which can be solved. Find them and solve them, leverage your solutions for money, use that money to solve more problems.

Bam - you're working for an ethical business.

Yes, look at profile. I have done the calculus, and depending on the project I am working on, I make the choice on whether to stay.

How do you define "ethical"? Oil & gas are an essential ingredient for lifting some societies from extreme poverty. No oil & gas would mean not being able to transport a baby to the hospital or heat their room. "Fast-fashion with questionable supply chains" is only a first-world problem. In some countries, "fast fashion" is all people can afford.

I think you may have an unrealistic view of what is an ethical company. The world is a complicated mess of difficult situations. Oil can raise people out of poverty, defence can save the futures of people from aggressors, the world of finance can do a lot of good too. Everything, more or less, is double edged if you dig deep enough.

Perhaps bring your ethical values to those industries you see as problematic. Otherwise, you're leaving those industries to people with different ethical views. (And that seems unethical).

From personal experience: Education and third sector (charities), or the companies that support them. All the universities I've ever dealt with have an ancient patchwork of backend systems, many of which are on the .NET side of the fence. Fair warning: you're not going to get fintech money in the third sector.

(Lot of people telling you your personal line in the sand is wrong, rather than just answering the damn question. "Try to change an arms manufacturer from within as a grunt programmer" is especially out-there).

It depends on your ethical guidelines.

I think that working in weapon industries helps to maintain peace by deterring autocrats and dictators from taking over the world (and there are a lot of them right now, so it is absolutely moral and necessary to maintain strong defence force for democratic countries).

Efficient open markets are contributing to the world peace by maintaining interconnected world. It is difficult to wage war with countries you trade with. And financial service companies are contributing to the global trade and therefore world peace.

Oil and gas are a declining industry (however, there is a lot to be done there to help it decline safely and ecologically responsibly). Nuclear power, however, is absolutely necessary for energy transitioning and mitigating climate change.

Only adtech cannot be redeemed.

You will always have problems with others not sharing your ethical values.

Best you can do is strive to do better and not actively deal with those that deal in harm (according to your value set).

The main problem is that EVERYONE including yourself has positive qualities along with some ethical lapses to say the least.

You mentioned C#, you are aware that there are people in this world who consider Microsoft more evil than say JP Morgan? So pick your poison type of deal.

If you have not done much philosophy then a good place to start would be:

  How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, et al.

Schur runs into this problem constantly that you can't avoid dealing with unethical entities.

I did ask the same question quite often, and still do. Since you asked about product / industry, I'll skip the question of wether or not e.g. Meta is a morally acceptable employer.

Now, what I realized, is that the answer to that question is highly individual. And not straight forward or clear cut. I drew my line long ago at small arms for example, but I don't mind working on defence projects. Others see no problem working in ammunitions, while refusing jobs in high pollution industries like chemicals.

One thing I did learn so, as long as you are not a doctor, nurse or emergency / disaster relief worker, the litterally life saving jobs are far and few between. In the end, idealism, and highly appreciate people that have and maintain it, doesn't put food on the table. And as soon as you meed to be paid, there trade offs. Just what those trade offs are is up to you.

Not very specific advice so far, but there is some good news: whatever your skill set, someone somewhere has a need for it. And someone will have need for it to do good (TM) stuff. One option, unless you want to go to the front lines of social work and development aide work (in which case, if you can upend your life to do so, by all means try it), try looking for NGOs, large and small, doing that kind of work. Or rather the kind of work that aligns best with your morals, be that environmentalists or work in poor, developing countries. Pay will be most likely low, but it can be more fulfilling. Or consider some UN orgs, e.g. the UNHCR. They do direly needed work that directly benefits people on the ground.

As long as you stay in whatever industry, be aware that profits, money and power have a tendency to trump almost everything (even if not every mega corps is either Weyland-Yutani or the Umbrella Corp.). And as soon as physical supply chains get involved, well, tough luck. Because either zhe raw material and sourcing end, or the recycling end, there will a poor, litteral kid somewhere doing hazardous work for little to no pay in order not to starve. But, and that is the bad news, there is nothing an individual can about that indirect harm our way of life causes.

You can look at the very list players doing as little direct harm as possible (by your definition), or actively try to mitigate some of the harm done.

But please, try to keep your idealism alive and stay optimistic, there are already enough old cynic farts like myself out there. We, and the world, can use some more idealists to actually change things for the better.

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I really like this question and applaud you for asking it.

Heavily disagree with the comments saying “there’s no point”, “it’s out of your control” etc.

We always have a choice.

In capitalist economy, if something is extremely profitable at scale, it means a lot of people paid for it willingly. Usually, such things are not harmful by societal standards of the day. Working on such things is acceptable.

If you want to change societal standards, you can make meaningful impact only if you are powerful – power through money, politics or influence. You don't make any impact on society through your own lone-wolf personal sacrifices in your private life.

Ergo, work towards becoming powerful first and then work on using your power to make societal change.

Btw, world needs all kinds of people doing all kinds of work. Most work is towards keeping the world running as it is (KTLO work). Very little work that happens in the world is venture bets (trying something crazy new that might work). Then there's some work that actually results in changes to societal norms - those are strategic bets. Only the powerful get to make those strategic bets. Note: Power is most often in the form of having shit tons of personal money to spend. And sometimes in the form of political power and through influence over masses (rarely you get either of those without making friends with people with money). It is extremely rare to be powerful without either.

As mentioned in the comments, our world is driven by consumerism.

I don't like this fact too, but I have to pay my checks every month, so I have to accept the compromises. I obviously avoid to do any commitments in the military sector, and the industries that harm the environment. I have to admit the fact that any input that I make into the consumerism economy has indirect harmful impact anyway. By this reason I prefer to specialize in the front-end webdev, which, I believe, has the least impact in general.

I would prefer to live in an economy driven by inventions at first place, and with long-term planning where the most of initiatives would be well thought beforehand, and be developed in years before they start giving results, rather than in modern startup economy where everyone expect the results here and now. And in the world that would be driven by more decent people too.

My personal sphere of interests is around quite specific aspects in research of programming language compilers. But there are too few job offerings in this field, so I have to earn money in more trending fields.

One of the things that I worked on of which I'm proudest, was a data science platform for some really admirable US aviation safety programs, working in an elite team.

That said, in my HCOLA city, today I'm competing for housing with people who spent the same decade working at FAANGs and biotechs (as well as competing with old-money and foreign investors). You generally won't get wealthy by working for the government or a federal contractor. And you could be simply priced out of your city -- if not immediately, then as climate change, geopolitical power shifts, "AI", and ongoing wealth concentration disrupt things.

A colleague (who's done a lot of real activist work, mostly behind the scenes, since before the recent wave of fashionable activism), and who was there with me as a skilled techie at the start of the dotcoms, later said something like, "we should've taken the money, and then had the money for do-gooding after". I haven't had the positive impact he has, and in hindsight he might've been right (though it was more complicated than that).

But I'm not necessarily encouraging "take the money", as blanket advice for everyone. That's already the default that people do. And another default is for the person who might've said something about "improving the system from within" to then get acclimated to behavior they previously questioned, and instead chase career status and wealth. Most of us don't need to be encouraged to follow the default, and instead probably need to be nudged more to understand and be inspired to do better for society.

The only purely ethical tech company I think of is the Wikimedia Foundation. Perfectly moral product with zero real negative impacts on the world, amenable work env.