Would you work in such a company?

Question for everyone:

If given the opportunity, would any of you still be willing to work at a prestigious, well-known & lucrative-paying company that is mired with controversies (exploitation, scandals, ethics violation etc.) despite your role having nothing to do with it?

Some examples in case you need them:

1. Amazon’s mistreatment of workers and crack down on unionisation
2. Meta/Facebook's controversy in dealing with misinformation and data scandal (Cambridge Analytica)
3. Apple’s antitrust dealings & alleged unethical supply chain practices

I asked this very question 3 months ago on 2 different platforms; one via a poll on my public Twitter account and another through an anonymous post on the Developer Kaki Facebook group that I joined.

Here's my take on the outcome of the poll, the responses I received and ultimately my thoughts on the question posed.

As expected, the majority (albeit with a small margin) voted no & I belonged to the same opinion group for reasons I will share right soon. That being said, I do understand & can relate to why some people would’ve voted yes & I will try to analyse some of their arguments too.

As many have stated inside the Developer Kaki Facebook group, it ultimately depends on one’s personal beliefs, moral compass & definition of ethicality. What is deemed unethical by one person may not be so for another.

Everyone draws their line differently.

So where would I draw my line then?

On one hand, there’s part of me that tries to convince myself that because of how capitalism works & how these companies are so big (cough too-big-to-fail), there are bound to be some (potentially unavoidable) ethical dilemmas occurring down the line eventually. These shady practices and scandals often stem from decisions made by those on the very top, not entry-level engineers who usually have no clue about what’s happening until perhaps when the news breaks.

So, should I as a normal employee be held accountable for their blunders?

That said, organisational accountability can work both ways. I would feel proud of my company’s successes & try to internalise them as my own, even if I didn’t play a significant role in contributing to them. I can’t also help but feel complicit if it’s the contrary. Hence, I also felt even if my work has no relation or contribution whatsoever to the company’s unethical modus operandi, it will still taint my ledger since I’m part of the company & have the choice to not only speak up but work for a better company by that metric albeit with disadvantages like lesser pay etc.

And I’m not alone in thinking this way. According to this ethics study, 82% of workers say they would prefer to be paid less and work for a company with ethical business practices rather than receive higher pay at a company with questionable ethics.

Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

Imagine if you’re the software engineer that develops & maintains Facebook's or TikTok’s algorithms, while very much aware of the impact they have on contested issues like mental health, free speech etc.

How would you feel?

Some may rebut that one shouldn’t feel guilty as the core problem is not the tool itself, but how society uses it. While this deserves its own discussion, in the context of tech, I disagree. These techs are developed by us & we have to be accountable to them to some degree.

There is a reason why Albert Einstein and many scientists working on the Manhattan project publicly expressed deep regret, even if it was deemed as a "necessary evil to end all evils".

Who should be blamed for AI’s algorithmic bias on race and gender?

One of the replies in the group went insofar as saying that a job is nothing but just a source of income and therefore does not represent one’s beliefs at all.

I think this is a very nihilistic view of life. What we do in life is a reflection of who we are and shape our legacy.

As for how it ultimately depends on one’s personal beliefs and moral stance, I do wonder though if that still applies to issues that are near-universally recognised as unethical, to begin with. I get the examples given for working in environments where some religions have clearly prohibited (and therefore can be assumed as a localised case). But if we’re talking about worker mistreatments, intentional spread of misinformation etc., are they still deemed as subjective?

I do however find the suggestion of requesting HR to change your assignment to a different project to be interesting. I think that’s a fair compromise if you want to insist on staying at that prestigious company. At the very least, your line of work doesn’t directly correlate to the controversies.

Maybe it’s easy for me and those who voted no to say such now. But I’d imagine that if we were given such an offer from FAANG companies, then it wouldn’t be as straightforward. Our very own core principles may be put to the test. Either way, it's really interesting how values can waver.

To combat such a dilemma, many companies invest a lot in curating, promoting & enforcing some form of organizational values & code of conduct. Dell has its own Culture Code (not a shameless promotion by the way), and I’m looking forward to seeing them in practice consistently in the long term. These may seem boring and very HR-ish, but I’d like to believe that it’s there for a reason, regardless if it’s just for compliance's sake or only a show, I can at least feel content knowing the company I work in is doing their part to inculcate an ethical workplace culture.

So, regardless of your stance and how you voted, I encourage all of us to make an effort to regularly check how our everyday work aligns with our beliefs & moral stance. I leave some of these quotes and an additional reference for all of us to ponder as an end to this thread.