Pretty sure the idea of "the stuff you do is going to directly mass murder innocent people" sells itself. 🤷‍♀️

See if they agree with the phrase "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

Then ask what will your salary depend on you not understanding?

What kind of person will your not understanding lead you to become?

Two wolves inside you and all that

Things you could try that should work on someone who's Bernie-levels of liberal, that is, they think they care about people.

"1. Have you thought through what your labor will do? How will you feel when something you work on blows up some civilian?

2. If everybody refused to work for these ghouls, they wouldn't be able to murder civilians. Why would you help kill people?

3. It's easy to get pigeon-holed into a career track based on work experience, so if you take this job it's likely you career advancement path will take you deeper into the MIC. Particularly given that you have other leads, why not pick a less unethical career path?

4. Software is rough, but there's a need for software and firmware developers in better fields, such as biomedical engineering. Why not seek a job that saves people's lives instead of murders them?"

Idk, depends on how much he actually believes his ostensibly progressive ideals.

How mean are you allowed to be? I haven't gone to many punk shows lately and youre about to hear kinda why, i say a pal who i wanted to catch up with and this dude who plays in 3 punk bands and is apparently an anarchist was talking about how he was taking computer stuff at community college and said his teacher had worked for both the cia and nsa. I replied 'so he's pure evil.' Not really expecting blowback, and got a what do you mean. If punks dont accept the nsa and cia as ontologically evil, fuck em

Tell him that the camp guards at Auschwitz got really good benefits

Find specific examples of what the company does and how it relates to murder of the global south, then present this information to them. Imagine you're writing a pamphlet to hand out. Or actually write that pamphlet and do hand it out, including to this person you know. Antiimperialist student groups use this tactoc, targeting job fairs and specific companies and it does help dissuade people.

For example, Boeing is the exclusive manufacturer of the JDAMs destroying Gaza.

get his phone and email the communist manifesto to the recruiter or their HR department

when you actively pursue a career that requires you aggressively not give a shit about human life in general in pursuit of opportunism, your co-workers, bosses, and professional contacts are all going to be self-selecting scumbags.

if that doesn't matter to them, tell them they'll fit right in. and then uppercut them with a roll of quarters.

Without knowing more about this person and your relationship to them I guess my very cautious way to approach it would be to mention in a vague kind of way how -some people- might find working for an arms-maker a troubling thing to do and given the controversy around such things they should perhaps give thought to whether they feel it's a good fit they'd feel comfortable with and good about. That it's nice to have a well-paying job but would it be something that would cause them any kind of stress or moral dilemma that would make the job harder or would it be something they truly are comfortable with.

I do think mentioning the pigeon-holing cuddlefish mentioned would be good too. How unfortunately once you get experience in a specific sector like this you tend to be guided into jobs like that in future and is that the kind of career track they're hoping for or were they hoping for something else in another industry and if so wouldn't it be better to take something that leads more clearly into that rather than this?

Mmmm ok I am in college in STEM fields and this has come up pretty often with my classmates. I'm pretty happy that most of them have been very uncomfortable working for the MIC, not a single one of them has been excited at all about these kind of job opportunities, even the more conservative ones are grossed out. We would be making the physical equipment though not the software so that might make a difference in how they perceive it.

Everyone has seen what our weapons do and if this person still wants to go contribute to that then idk what you can say to them that's going to change their mind.

I would probably just bring up the morality of working at such a company and go from there. If they actually listen you might be able to have a bigger conversation but if they deflect (well someone is going to do the job ect ect) then they don't care.

If all else fails you can try a Hail Mary with, "The money won't last and the blood never washes off."

Shame is a powerful tool. If you come on too strong then he’ll get defensive, but a bit of tactfully restrained disgust can work wonders.

If you would want to distance yourself from someone who works on weapons, then don’t be afraid to make it clear to him that you feel that’s way. Nobody wants to be the guy who drives people away

Depending on the specifics, it's likely that all of his coworkers will be insufferable jingoistic hogs, it will be completely miserable to work there

Whatever I do doesn't work. I'm just a crank for criticizing anyone's job, no matter what that job is. And if they're in the MIC, they'll find a way to pretend that it's just for "defense." But I will certainly be following this thread to see if I can pick up better tactics myself.

scold and shame, scold and shame

This is tough. There's a lot of very well paid jobs in the MIC, and they have you working on a lot of technologically exciting stuff. It's sadly very common for bright people, with nominally good politics, to work for some very dark entities. If you aren't locked in to some very clear principles, it can be very tempting to rationalize it. You probably can't stop this kid, but you should just ask honest questions, like: "Don't you think you'll feel bad developing tools that are going to be used 99% for bad shit?"