Ethical Jobs

While the question at hand is multi-faceted, I would still choose to work at Facebook, given that certain conditions are met. While Facebook might seem to be a social media goliath that has incrementally damaged society, I strongly believe that the platform has delivered incalculable benefits. First off, Facebook has revolutionized the definition of connectivity by bringing together diverse people from notably different geographies and very different languages. Additionally, the platform substantially reduced the correlational relationship between one’s voice and how much power/wealth they hold in society. By democratizing access to sharing one’s unique thoughts and perspectives, Facebook molded an impressive path that gave voices to traditionally underrepresented and marginalized communities. Another commonly forgotten contribution of Facebook is its monumental help for small businesses and enterprises with marketing, outreach, and customer retention. Especially during times like the COVID pandemic, Facebook’s targeted ads helped numerous local businesses gain customer attraction in times of dry cash flow and profit. That being said, all this doesn’t go to dismiss Facebook’s notorious roles in mental health disruption, privacy invasion, and whatnot. As such, I would still definitely choose to work at Facebook if, and only if, my role is furthering societal wellbeing. While I admit that any technology product benefits and concurrently destroys societal wellbeing, I feel strongly that particular Facebook products are undeniably shaping the frontier. For instance, I would feel extremely passionate about Facebook’s medical metaverse application development as it provides a platform for training surgeons and residents to experience a practical simulation. Additionally, I also believe that improving the fact-checking capabilities of Facebook would be a rather beneficial venture. With misinformation rising quickly, having a detection system to flag and inform viewers of certain posts would be valuable. In the 5.2 reading (“Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations”), I disagreed with the statement explaining, “What’s important is that pretending an ethical conflict between your convictions and your company simply isn’t there may be justifiable”. While it may be notoriously easy to ignore discrepancies in one’s own moral values, I strongly think that sacrificing these very principles that we live by is inadmissible. Personally, I would hold myself to a higher standard by ensuring that my direct contributions have no direct negative impact on society. As the 5.1 reading (“Finding Jobs to Want”) mentions, the very first value on the list is ‘meaningfulness’. By choosing to ignore an ethical conflict, I believe that one’s ‘meaningfulness’ in the workplace disappears. Overally, I really enjoyed the texts as they portray the common ethical battles between corporations and aspiring employees.