Ethical Jobs

Would I accept a job at Facebook? As a student who is graduating and actively seeking for jobs, it is so hard to say no. As a data scientist whose daily responsibility is relied on data, the answer can probably be even harder. On the one hand, Facebook owns so much data that can serve the interest of the vast majority, as well as my own passion and career goals. Without working for them, I’ll probably never be able to have access to them (of course I can attempt to ask for access as a researcher, but anyone who has gone through the process understand how painful it can be), not to mention the possibility of getting insights and potentially contributing to better features and user experiences. On the other hand, the famous scandals (e.g., the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal) of Facebook center around data. Even if I’m going to be such a small part of it, I would essentially be lying to myself if I attempt to claim my work is not close enough to those unethical actions. One point brought up by Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations proposes the possibility of working for an ethically difficult company and trying to make an impact from inside. This ‘compromise’ works reasonably well (maybe psychologically…). While it might not be entirely realistic to make significant changes to the companies strategic moves at the beginning, I can at least adhere to ethical standards in my routine work and deliver data insights that produce no harm to users.

At this moment, sorting out my priorities does not seem to be so easy. As I was going down the list of questions mentioned in the article Finding Jobs to Want, I found myself do care more about some values among the seven values more than I thought. For instance, I rarely thought much about the comfort level of a job, however, it is really important for me to be in company with a team of colleagues I find comfortable with. These factors further complicate the problem when I attempt to balance the different values.