I think the degree of responsibility often depends on how much choice someone has in their personal and professional life. In my own case, I feel fortunate that being at Stanford gives me access to many career opportunities, which allows me to be selective about where I work. With that privilege, I would want to avoid companies that are directly engaged in practices that conflict with my moral values, especially if my role would contribute directly to those actions.
At the same time, I recognize that few large organizations are completely free from ethical controversy. For roles that are more removed from ethically troubling practices, I think whether it is “unethical” to work there becomes more context-dependent. In those situations, it comes down to the individual’s values, their reasons for taking the job, and the degree of influence they might have within the organization.
I also think that refusing to work for a company simply because it is unethical may sometimes have unintended consequences. For instance, if all ethical engineers stopped working in big tech, those companies might end up being populated by people with fewer ethical concerns, which could have devastating impacts on society. It may even encourage some engineers to drop their own ethical practices. For some situations, I think that its important to actually have people who care about ethics on the inside. That said, I also think that there exist cases where a company’s core mission or practices are so deeply unethical that quitting or boycotting becomes the only justifiable response, since there’s no meaningful space for ethical advocacy from within.
I honestly don’t think I would be particularly interested in a job at Facebook. But I do think that under a certain set of circumstances I would join Facebook. As to the point in my last paragraph, this would ultimately depend on my position and whether I felt that there was space for ethical advocacy from within.
