I enjoyed this reading because it raised a question I see myself inevitably grappling with at some point in my career. After reading the Facebook papers and researching the company, It is clear that Facebook has had its fair share of controversies and potential negative impacts on the world at large. Thus, the decision to accept a job at Facebook might be a complicated one for me. However, I believe I would accept this position.
In the “Ethical Jobs” reading, several potential ways to justify and frame work at an ethically-complex company were presented. The most compelling to me, however, was the view of an unethical job, particularly one right out of undergrad, as a stepping off point to grow experience and to ultimately surpass a job with which I morally align more closely. I think that if I were to accept a job like this post-=graduation, I would have to find comfort in the fact that this slight-to-moderate moral compromise is a temporary step in an ultimately morally sound career path. For this reason, I believe I may be the least reluctant to accept ethically dubious positions in my early career, and as my resources grow and I am more able to fulfill my self and family-providing needs, I can become more discerning in these ways. If I was offered a job at Facebook or a similar grade of unethical company, this would be how I justified accepting the offer.
I also appreciated when this reading pointed out the near-inextricable web of connections between the “good” and “bad” actors in the industries where Stanford students might end up. The concept that the ethical standing of a job might be more a spectrum of distance than a black and white delineation was comforting, given just how inevitable questions like this are during a job search.
