I would accept a job at Facebook. Predominantly, I believe the motivation would be financial security. Especially having come from a FLI background, I think it is fair to say I would accept most high-paying corporate jobs.
However, these big-tech roles do misalign with my values and I would therefore not readily seek them out. These companies would not be ones that I’m applying to, but if an offer were to just drop in my lap it would be hard to turn down. The reading suggested that choosing to ignore your impact is ‘lying to yourself,’ and posed an interesting question, “can that lying be justified ethically?” I think I would definitely admit that I am lying to myself, and would likely back myself up with the resonating argument of “Maximizing your own potential” referenced in the reading. Being able to build and refine my technical, collaborative, design, leadership, etc. skills would all be necessary if I were to later dedicate my time to a non-profit or smaller startup. There is the additional argument of “inside-game,” relevant in movement ecology. In this case, people would be making progress towards deconstructing harmful systems from inside the system itself. If this is something that I would be able to take part in at Facebook (such as participating in organizing teams like No Tech for Apartheid, planning educational workshops, etc.), I would also be more justified in taking the job.
