what is the furthest you’d go immorally for a fresh salary? Hell I’d work for Palantir for a nice $250k or be a manager at Evil Corporation Inc if I got a crisp $300k.
or are you a goody two shoes who will stand by your principles even if it means pain!
This question really highlights how this is by design.
The system becomes more and more expensive to exist in, forcing people to choose money over morals every day just to survive.
Because if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, of course you’ll work for raytheon.
Of course youll take that 50k cash for joining the ICE gestapo.
Of course you’ll only ever buy the cheapest shit from amazon and temu despite then using slave labour and killing factory workers.
Of course you’ll give up your morals to not have to live like everyone else that’s been made into the impoverished 90% of the population, on the astronomical chance you’ll get a taste of the 1% life.
Buying less is the closest thing you can do to an ethical choice. So I have started to grow some of my own food and encourage friends to come round mine instead of going to a restaurant, plus I can make better food and brew my own mead.
How many people working at Auschwitz were justifying it by needing the money, what did they need the money for?
I would never take a job at Palantir, United Healthcare, Nestle, Lockheed martin DeBeers. I don’t give a fuck if they offered me million, but I’m Neurodivergent with a strong sense of justice while lacking the mental ability to act on it.
I’d take the job, but I’d be shit at it and basically just goof off all day
Haha it’s weaponized incompetence. I would take a job at Palantir to sabotage it - especially if they paid me a lot
Take it, suck just enough at the job to not get fired, use the money to lobby against evil policies/fund grassroots groups that support ‘changing’ the current politicians out
It depends on how dispersed the consequences are. Definitely no single human life is ruined.
I’d steal a dollar from a 100k people.
I’d not steal 100k from one person if they’re not a multimillionaire at least.
When I was younger, I wouldn’t have cared that much.
Now I would not work for criminals anymore.
I am good at my job, so my work has impact. If I worked for the bad guys, then that would mean my work turns the world in a bad direction. Every day.
How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
Worked for a payday loan company for a while about a decade back. Supposedly one of the better ones to borrow from, and they always said internally it was about getting the customers financial options - but still didn’t feel great. Stuck with it for four years or so though.
Now I’ve got kids, and they like to know what their parents do. Had to job hunt last half of last year, and skipped several nice positions at big places because of what they do. Landed a position at a local place for less than I wanted, but the perks and culture make up for it. And I’m happy to tell my kids where I am.
My wife knew what the first place was about, and she accepted it even if neither of us was wild about it. But these days, we like to be role models - makes a big difference.
I wouldn’t work for Palantir for any amount of money under any circumstance I can imagine.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Did not and still would not.
Hell, I even got fired from a nursing job for telling doctors they did a poor job with a patient to their face. While being the main income, with two kids.
You adapt, find something else.
No regrets, would even say it’s a building moment for oneself. If you fold at the first pression, you’ll always fold. My moral compass is too important for me to sell it.
Can’t find ? Change job, change region, change country. Most of the time, you have a choice.
I’ve turned down jobs because I thought they would make the world worse.
I “sold out” i was desperate and took a job with Burson-Marsteller a major crisis response public relations company. I got fired after 4 months for making fun of a client to a co-worker. I saw some shit that made me never go against my morals after that. The worst thing (that I can talk about since it was leaked to the press already) was Mars candy company lobbying congress to make sugar based snacks part of school lunches.
The thing about working for evil people is it’s not just the work. You’re surrounded by people with no morals day in and day out, so you’re never safe. Everyone around you will cut you down to get ahead- that’s the job. You’ll be forced to develop paranoia, no way around it. You’ll be forced to do that to others as well, and you’ll lose sight of why that’s a bad thing. “Everyone does it,” “it’s just part of the game,” “I had it worse before,” or “I deserved it.” It’s bad for you. I don’t want to be around those people, personally. If you have any critical thinking and empathy at all, you’ll see through them and recognize that they’re just always horrible.
More than I’d probably care to admit to myself.
Everyone’s a saint until the rent’s due…
I’m currently working on making a graceful exit from a position I’m no longer comfortable with, so it’s hard to say what I’d do if offered a massive salary to put myself back into a similar situation.
I suspect that there are few ethically pure jobs out there, and very few alternatives that don’t feed into the orphan crushing machine somehow. So in my mind it comes down to striking a balance between what impact your position has, what level of control you exercise over what the company does, and what you can do outside of work to try and improve the system.
Are you willing to campaign and vote against the interests of your employer even if it means the possibility of being laid off or fired? Does supporting yourself financially provide a benefit to marginalized people by making the scarce aid they can find more available to them? Are you designing products or processes to increase other’s misery or just mopping the floor? If you quit, what impact would it have on the org as a whole?
I don’t think there’s a simple answer to this, and I’ve long felt that we allow our occupations define our identites to an unhealthy degree, so I’d rather judge and be judged based on one’s beliefs and actions outside of work than for participating in a system designed to force our participation.
You’re pricing yourself too cheaply. My soul is easily worth seven figures…
Seriously, if you’re willing to do immoral things for money you need to take a hard look at yourself and your views about what is moral and why. And are you willing to do things that will make anonymous strangers suffer? How about your friends? Research strongly suggests that a willingness to put the good of the community above our own needs is probably why humans as a species are still around. What kind of person do you want to see in the mirror every morning?
I’m not comfortable with even mild compromise.
Yeah, I feel like if I’d call something my personal “moral” that there’s a pretty hard line there. That said, I guess I don’t have more than a few real morals, though.
I’d rather live on the streets than work for palantir.
I was fortunate enough to grow up firmly middle class. My dad sold car chemicals for a pretty good income. He and my stepmom (who also made good money in project management) explained the concept of golden handcuffs to me in high school, that when you start making a lot of money and get used to that lifestyle it’s tough to take a pay cut that takes it away. They didn’t seem especially happy or content to me so having a lot of money has never been a priority for me. I just want enough to get by and save for the future.
When I was scraping by on 28k a year slinging pizzas and delivering for the post office on Amazon Sundays I told my project manager uncle that if I made twice what I did at the time I would be fine. Now I do make 60k working IT for a school district where I can sometimes do some good, and like I had told my uncle I’m doing fine now. I have a pension, I can max out my Roth IRA, have a good down payment for my next car when mine kicks the bucket, and I’m lucky enough to rent a couple rooms relatively cheap from a friend who was lucky enough for their farmer parents to buy them most of a house, all owing me to save a few hundred a month for a house of my own. And I can still buy nice stuff for myself every now and then.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to have an extra 10 or 20k for extra breathing room, but moving back to the private sector would suck, and I would probably just end up like my mother whose financial advisor literally tells her to spend more money. I feel very privileged to say this, but I just don’t think I could be bought at this point.
