Who has the least ethical job at Lockheed?
My money is on the salesman, “this bad boy can kill so many children”
By shifting what you sell to “this bad boy can disperse your targeted package across an area x by y in z time frame” instead of “we can turn the entire school to rubble” you help them sleep at night.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
- George Orwell
Boy Boy has a video where they sneak into a military weapons convention.
One guy was selling crowd control armor and advertised the dissociation from your actions that armor like that creates, divorcing you from guilt.
Found the vid + timecode
Every corp you work at has a dark side. Maybe not Lockheed Martin level of destruction.
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My current job, we build systems to get people to spend more for things they don’t need.
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My last job, we provided technology to “free speech” folks and looked the other way unless legally obligated to take it down
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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.
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I worked at one company that “gave opportunities” to offshore engineers because they were a fraction the cost of Americans.
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
Tankie is when you’re to the left of Adolf Hitler and it’s barely even an exaggeration anymore
I had a job offer from Cambridge Analytica, they were up front about the work they were doing as well as the pay. Though it was tempting to sell my soul for the pay, even I have my limits.
I had an interview with a “mass email” provider. By the time I left it was clear to both of us that no way in hell.
Is it bad that I consider this much worse than a defense company? Lockheed has some cool tech and help protect my country, at the huge cost of killing so many. Cambridge Analytica indiscriminately attacks people’s privacy, all people, and for profit with no hint at a good purpose
I’m sure I still don’t appreciate that historically speaking the world has been quite a dangerous place.
I’m not a fan of dead kids or rich men sending the young to die for them, but I cannot deny my lifestyle significantly benefits from the fact top military spenders align with my ideology. (e.g. I’m better off with a powerful USA than North Korea)
Would be interesting if a new generation of principled Americans were responsible for a change where defense contractors knew to attract modern talent they had to provide assurances against outputs being used for evil. I’m naïve enough to think that might be possible.
Hot take but a world without the USA would probably have a lot more war in it.
Not twisting your arm, but I always wonder what my limit is, and if they added more to it.
Raytheon too. Job offer was $$$weet, but it was related to making missiles even more efficient.
No, I don’t think we need to turn brown kids into skeletons yet more efficiently, thanks.
I got a Raytheon for missile targeting systems. Didn’t want it on my conscience and got another offer for slightly less money but way more ethical of a company a week later.
Sweet, glad that worked out for you. I’ve learned for certain types of work I gotta ask whether it’s on the attack vs defense side of military work; at least a couple of interviewers have been taken aback by such an apparently blunt question, that it “isn’t such a relevant question”.
In my mind, both times I was wondering why they thought I’d be happy with coming to work every day if it was for something even possibly negative. Engineers get paid to pay attention to details, the fuck wouldn’t I be able to piece this shit together from within?
Compartmentalization is a cute concept on paper. 🙄
