I had a message on linkedin years ago from a palantir recruiter asking me if I was interested, and I said I would never work for the disgusting Peter Thiel.
I don't understand how it's so hard to care about the mortality of your career. I did a mech eng degree and so many people went into building weapons.
i don't get it either. i get why people who don't have the opportunity of credentials and access to a professional career work for whoever, because survival is something else.
but the people with options? imagine spending half of your waking life choosing to work for the evil blob. what kind of shit ass hell is that?
"who gives a fuck" is a navigational system that guides the traveler into a dark pit.
Someone I know got real offended when I said half of the employees at Microsoft deserve to be arrested for enabling their genocidal bosses. Software Engineers can work at literally any type of company, anywhere in the world. It's one of the most privileged degree types. They do not have to choose to work for one of the few most evil ones. Try telling a CS major to work at their local public school.
i'm not CS, but i'm something else that has choices and could always work for the dark side. i see postings periodically and frankly the pay wouldn't even be close to worth it. i usually frame my choice for public service as a benefit with a stinger:
"sure, i could work for [asshole corporation] and make 15-25% more, but then all my bosses and coworkers would be myopic, dissembling assholes who don't give a fuck about anyone except themselves. no thanks."
i haven't worked in a for-profit entity for approaching 20 years. the corporate ones were cliquey, alienating and isolating. the smaller "family" ones were all toxic, nepo-hives, and incestuous. non profits can totally be all fucked up, for sure, but generally people are there because they give a shit about something. and not like "i want to help Elon Musk realize his dreams" type shit, but more like community, resource conservation, literacy. those are people with whom i can eat lunch, have a conversation or share a carpool and have a good time.
Some of it is laziness. The CS guys here only ever talk about applying for big name companies and become depressed when they get rejected. Ask them why they’re only applying for FAANG or Lockheed or Raytheon and they’ll insist it’s because no one else pays like them. But that’s not even true. I’ve seen many jobs in local government or local/lesser known companies that pay the same or more than entry-mid level MIC jobs. They just refuse to put in effort to look.
Then the other part is self compartmentalization. They just simply do not think about the consequences of their work. They go to work and modify some bomb blueprints, or watch a missile launch in glee, or design a system that can track all people with certain disabilities, or do a teams call to pitch a product to ICE and the CIA. Then they go home, go hiking, go to brunch. They simply don’t think beyond that, 401ks, and a house. Maybe they get upset when they flip through the news and see something about gas prices rising and some schoolgirls getting blown up. That’s it.
When I graduated college, one of the first jobs I applied to was at a small software company in the bumfuck nowhere I grew up. They'd taken me on as an unpaid intern, then again as a paid intern (minimum wage!), but when I wanted to work for an actual engineer's salary, they rejected me.
Not strictly related, I'm just still pissed about that and needed to vent.
Hey I’m a CS person who didn’t go big tech we exist lol. I don’t think everybody in big tech is inherently doing evil but many do, it’s shocking the types of job descriptions people will happily accept.
I get a constant stream of recruiters asking me if I want to work for Amazon. My response is always:
"Nah, I don't want to work for a company that makes it's employees piss in bottles, and shit in bags. Hit me up if you find a company that doesn't treat it's employees horribly though"
For some weird reason, they never get back to me.
"I swear I'm not like those other guys!" - anonymous Auschwitz guard
Also ghostarchive doesn't bypass the paywall, here's another link: https://archive.is/veTal
How could we possibly have seen this coming?... Sure, it's named after the tool Sauron used to spy on and subject the wills of friend and foe alike. But it's not like it was named Morgoth or Ungoliant or anything obviously evil!
actually the palantir weren't necessarily evil and weren't a tool of sauron, it's just that since he had one too and was basically a god he could influence the others, and even that only selectively because he couldn't force the palantir to show things that weren't real (no deepfakes)
Basically the palantiri are smartphones and sauron is ghislaine maxwell (i.e. a reddit psyop mod)
if i knew anyone who would admit to working there, i would encourage them to get their boss into base jumping
yo boss do you ever think you're too much of a WIMP to explore the TITANIC
I dont think any decent person would work for that CEO
starting? are they fucking stupid?
Yes
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