When building a career, there are two primary approaches to defining success: 1) maximizing positive impact by focusing on achieving the greatest measurable outcomes, based on your personal philosophical values; or 2) avoiding ethical implications, ensuring all decisions align strictly with your core ethical principles, even if it limits your overall impact.
The article, “Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations,” addresses the ethical dilemmas faced by individuals considering opportunities for companies whose practices may conflict with their moral beliefs. The author presents two strategies for managing these moral conflicts: 1) avoiding work for such companies altogether; or 2) justifying the decision to work there, citing factors such as distance from the unethical activities, the opportunity to maximize personal potential, and the need to fulfill practical, material responsibilities.
However, one key option overlooked in these arguments is the potential for individuals to drive positive change from within the organization. Rather than distancing yourself from the departments or decision-makers who wield more negative and unethical influence, accepting a role allows you to directly challenge harmful practices and advocate for reforms that align with your values. This proactive approach recognizes that an individual’s moral agency is not inherently passive; rather, it is instrumental in bringing changes and ethical improvements from within the established companies.
Going back to the two metrics of defining success, the reason why I advocate for this third option—joining the company while actively driving change from within—aligns with the first approach of maximizing positive impact. We are concerned about the unethical practices of these powerful organizations precisely out of their vast influence. Multinational technology companies like Meta and Google have profoundly changed almost every aspect of human society and will continue to influence over billions of people across the globe. Allowing them to continue operating under the assumption that they will always act amorally, while relying on external efforts to mitigate their negative effects, is neither the most efficient nor the most impactful strategy. Instead, changes from within these organizations offer a more direct and cost-effective route to curbing unethical behavior.
Take the example of the Civil Integrity Team at Meta, led by my mentor Samidh Chakrabarti. This internal trust and safety team stood out in the tech industry for its commitment to an informal but powerful oath: “serve the people’s interest first, not Facebook’s.” Their work focused on safeguarding the integrity of elections, particularly in response to the rampant foreign interference incidents that marred the 2016 election. Despite their efforts being curtailed shortly after the 2020 election, the legacy of their approach continues to resonate, most notably in the whistleblower testimony of Frances Haugen. Haugen’s revelations, backed by internal research documents from Facebook, exposed how prioritizing user engagement at all costs endangered children, amplified divisive and misleading content, and ultimately undermined the public good. This underscores the critical role that internal actors can play in holding powerful organizations accountable and pushing for ethical reforms from within, and when that’s not successful, in calling for external investigation to work together on the issue.
