I thought a lot about this question this summer as a public interest technology fellow, where we discussed the importance of technology for social benefit rather than technology that cannot be as strictly categorized as detrimental or beneficial. During my time, we looked into “repeat offenders” or companies that had time and time again been caught and/or fined due to some unethical decision they had made. Facebook, Google, JP Morgan, and Amazon (among many other big companies) were among the most fined companies. The list of privacy, ethics, consumer scamming violations were incredibly shocking. I along with the other fellows in the room nodded in agreement that we would never work for a company that didn’t align with our morals.
But this leads to the question: what about the people who work for them already? Can we necessarily say that they are not good people because they work for an unethical company? (Among a host of other rather philosophical questions like is it possible to get rich without making a questionable decisions, is it possible to really enact large scale change in an organization as a singular contributor..) I talked to someone from Stanford who worked for Facebook as a privacy and data researcher, who had coincidentally worked as a public interest technology fellow the summer before his time at Facebook. I asked him why he would work for Facebook after knowing all they had done, to which he responded: “Not everyone has the privilege to choose.” To work ethically in an industry is a choice that some of us will be privileged to make. Others may have to consider the very important factor of money and sustaining themselves and their family. The reading mentions that people who consider money as the most important factor of a job are considered greedy, which I will admit is an idea that I also subscribe to.
Is it even possible to work for a company that 100% aligns with your morals? Are these options more than morally rewarding and actually sustainable? I think now, my answer is more of a maybe. The incredibly skeptical, realistic side of me scoffs at the idea of any number of people being able to change the course of these big, well-established companies – if that was the case, would not all these good people have changed the company already? How can we actually create ethical companies and cause unethical companies to change the way they operate?
In this case, how much can intention matter if the action doesn’t reflect it? If I want to create meaningful impact on the world, but work for a company that has caused so much harm, the former loses its meaning.
