When it comes to making decisions about whether or not to work at a company that is ethically ambiguous as a whole, there are obviously several layers to consider. Firstly, whether or not your specific role is one that will cause remorse and if so, why? Everyone’s ethical principle’s are different, and the way we analyze the trade off between unethical action and money are different. For myself, its difficult to speak in absolutes, because “unethical” isn’t a yes or no, there is a spectrum for the severity of ethics. For example, I dont agree with everything Facebook does as a company, but would I take a PM role there for ~200k? Absolutely. Would I sell heroin for a million dollars a year, legality aside? No. I don’t believe that working at a company that commits, relatively, minor ethical transgressions, and is not directly enabled to do so by me working there’s fine, especially for high pay. With that being said, more severely unethical action is less acceptable for the same amount of money, and I would like to think that there are some things I would never do regardless of payment. I would have a hard time believing there is anyone in the class that wouldn’t work at Facebook for enough money. They are frankly not egregious enough ethically to justify turning down an extremely high salary, especially when you can do good with the money you make if you so choose. Additionally, I am firmly of the belief that organizations or groups cannot act ethically or unethically, only people can act ethically/unethically. This means that the burden of change is your own—running away from problems that exist because you think other people make bad decisions is not a productive solution, and will only exasperate existing issues.
