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95 points

Every corp you work at has a dark side. Maybe not Lockheed Martin level of destruction.

  • My current job, we build systems to get people to spend more for things they don’t need.

  • My last job, we provided technology to “free speech” folks and looked the other way unless legally obligated to take it down

  • The nonprofit i worked for spent 80% of their time and energy just for funding. Like $2mil a year, and 1.6mil went to paying staff.

Sometimes jobs frame it to look like it’s a positive.

  • I worked at one company that “gave opportunities” to offshore engineers because they were a fraction the cost of Americans.

  • Another company outsourced our graphic design to people on Fiverr to help fund “freelancers”, and then repurpose the work for million dollar ad campaigns.

And for me, I just constantly think of what the line is and how much of it I can cross to feed my kids.

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9 points

Sometimes you find maybe a startup that is for-purpose. So, not necessarily nonprofit, but exists to do something with a predominantly positive impact.

We have so few years here on earth that it feels good to do something that at least is not making any problems worse.

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22 points

I work in healthcare IT, we develop medical systems which help physicians to help people. It sounds like a good field to work in, but it’s still about money in the end, looking for ways to maximise profits, because we live in a capitalist system. As long as profits play the main role, there always is a dark side.

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0 points

Absolutely. There’s a line between “willfully sold out to Evil Corp because money good and I like money lol”, and “I need a job because eating is nice and they were hiring.”

The original post about Lockheed makes sense, but someone’s gotta be on an extremely privileged self-righteous high horse to shout “Baby killer!” at like, the dude working the lobby desk. Lol

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8 points

Yup. “Capitalism values only what it can count, and it can only count dollars. Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible.”

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16 points

Very rational take. You learn entering the world that every company has a dark side, and every person has a line, but that line shifts.

Personally I’d avoid Lockheed, but when it comes to paying the mortgage, the bank is surprisingly not very amenable to me not having a job. I’d love to avoid working at any bad company, but I’d probably have to sell my house and live out of a studio, and my family would suffer for it.

So I give some graces. For example, people shame folks who work at amazon, but Amazon pays the bills. What I personally have changed to is judging people for being gung ho about a company, happy with what the company is doing, or are they just there as a job. If you’re in accounting and you just loooove working for Amazon and think they do no wrong, then yes I judge a lot

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2 points
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Thank you for this incredibly rational take.

What I personally have changed to is judging people for being gung ho about a company, happy with what the company is doing, or are they just there as a job. If you’re in accounting and you just loooove working for Amazon and think they do no wrong, then yes I judge a lot

This. I’ll usually get along fine with my fellow working class folks in the trenches wherever I end up, and I’ll make friends with the cool managers even if they’re managers.

Few people are excited to be forced into a corrupt and awful system to justify their existence.

But more often than not, they’re the True Believers™ that are so utterly brain-warped into thinking some job actually cares about them, and make it part of their identity to “represent the brand”. I give these simps a wiiiide berth.

When it’s a grunt employee with that mindset, it’s even more pathetic.

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1 point

Worst thing my company does is supply ESD devices to the MIC. Not exactly sending them armaments but it does kind of help out the MIC.

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