It was refreshing that the reading argued that, perhaps, avoiding companies that are ethically ambiguous, is not the only way to live ethically. I find that so often at Stanford, students fall into binary thinking like this — and would answer that no unequivocally, you should not accept a job at Facebook — rather than doing the hard work of thinking through the gray areas. And I think that working at Facebook is certainly one that falls into a gray area.
To me, I think that the decision would ultimately lie in the work that I am doing, and the direct impact of that work. While this isn’t always transparent (in CS 181 we talked about cases in which developers working on seemingly benign GPS projects were stunned when Google signed deals with foreign governments to use the same tech nefariously), I think I would accept an offer as long as I understood that my work was not being used in ways that could be harmful. On a broader level, I always revert back to thinking about how, if I, an ethically minded person, did not accept this offer in protest, Facebook would find someone who would. I think you have more power to affect change from the inside (or by choosing to leave once you are on the inside). As such, perhaps it is the ethical choice to take the offer, such that the company does not become entirely run by individuals who did not think twice about the ethics when offered the job.
Lastly, I thought the set of values presenting in the second reading was very interesting and, to me, I think that it is not unethical to prioritize some of these values for ones self. Imagining the offer to work at Facebook, I think I would certainly be swayed by the security that that job would offer me, especially as I try to navigate early adulthood. Along these lines, I thought that the idea of career sequencing was particularly poignant. In some ways, I think it removes the pressure from trying to ensure that every job aligns with all of your values all the time. Perhaps some jobs, especially those as you first start your career, are simply means to an end and that at certain points of your life, it is okay to prioritize some of those values over others.
