The Dominance of Big Tech in Career Imaginations
I see them, and so do you. The job postings on all the platforms : Linkedin, Handshake, and even Indeed. Sometimes, they even come with an asterisk reading Stanford students only. Outside of those sites, it remains impossible to ignore how long the lines are at certain booths during career fairs on and off campus.
It becomes very clear – through conversations with peers, by looking at the names on our buildings in the engineering quad, and by seeing the hourly rate for a summer intern on those postings – that jobs at Meta and similar companies are framed as the goal post of success.
Adopting the Standard of Success
Coming from a public schooling background, with only food service experience on my resume, and big things to prove to myself and those back home, it was effortless to adopt that standard.
It felt like whiplash going from being the type of person to have never ordered off of Amazon due to ethical concerns to the type of person searching for FAANG software engineering internships religiously. The prospect of making more money in a summer than my parents did almost annually quickly blinded me.
Wrestling with Ethical Contradictions
I tried to go down the route of poorly manufactured ignorance, attempting to convince myself I was unaware of the ethical and moral implications of working in big tech. As one could guess, this was hard, especially during seminars and meetings on tech ethics that exposed the nastiness of the same companies I thought I needed to work at.
Then came bargaining : reasoning that my work as a mere intern could not possibly directly harm anyone. That, too, fell apart.
My saved jobs began collecting dust, left unsubmitted until the applications closed. I tried to view it as a win, that I did not let this institution warp my morals, although in all honesty, it momentarily did.
Still, those companies still dominated my personal metric of professional success. Being new to the tech industry and jumping straight into Silicone Valley, those seemed like the only options.
A Broader Definition of Success
A few months ago, if asked whether I would take a job at Facebook, I would have said no without truly knowing if I meant it. Now that I know tech is larger than a handful of companies and financial security is not inherently tied to turning a blind eye to injustice, harm, exploitation, and cruelty, I can confidently say no. And I mean that.
