Ask HN: Those who work at Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, etc. Do you feel guilt?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28077063

by dog_boy • 5 years ago

20 16 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If so, how do you deal with it?

dog_boy3• 5 years ago

I purposely left this to be quite ambiguous to get a broad range of responses.

Who are the "etc." here? What do you feel guilty about? Why don't you feel guilt?

johncoltrane• 5 years ago

Why should they feel guilt to begin with?

dog_boy3• 5 years ago

I'll leave answering your question to the respondents!

phenkdo• 5 years ago

It's this smug holier-than-thou sanctimony that any successful company is ipso facto evil, the bigger evil.

tidbits2• 5 years ago

Absolutely. I was laid off after PPP ran out last year from a small (~20) company. Applied to a bunch of companies, went through a couple of interviews, no offers. Gave in and replied to an FAANG recruiter that had been emailing me and got the job. I like my team and work/life balance, but planning on jumping ship in the near future specifically because I don't want to work for FAANG anymore. As for how to deal with it, the money helps ha. But it does start to weigh down on you. I like to think I wouldn't have ever worked at such a company if not for covid.

silicon24013• 5 years ago

How did you get a job at a FAANG and not elsewhere? The way people talk about it, getting a FAANG job is like the highest bar to aim for

tidbits2• 5 years ago

FAANG definitely has a high bar, but there are many factors that affect interviews. However, I think a big part of it is that they were willing to take a risk on hiring me since I had 3 years of experience and did solidly on the interviews. In contrast with the non-FAANG companies I applied to, they probably saw the obscure company I had been working at as a negative and decided to play it safe and pass on me. What further supports this theory of mine is that, around the 6 month mark at FAANG, recruiters started flooding my email, even though the difference in experience between 3 years of programming and 3.5 years is minor.

underseacables• 5 years ago

There’s a little bit of emotional manipulation in here. By asking “do you feel guilt“ assumes there is guilt to be felt. “Those who work for the government, do you feel guilt?” The same question could be applied in a number of ways, but it frontload the negative emotion by implying that the existence of guilt is there.

Better way to ask that question:

Those of you who work at Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, etc. Does the act of your job or workplace evoke any strong emotions?

dschuessler• 5 years ago

Asking if someone feels guilt does not imply the existence of guilt. One can feel guilt without being guilty.

Also asking for "strong emotions" does not strike me as the same question OP is asking.

In my book, the question is perfectly fine.

anotherhue• 5 years ago

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

silicon24013• 5 years ago

I don't work at a FAANG, but I work at a company that wants to be like a FAANG. Now and even if I did work at a FAANG, I would feel 0 guilt. The only reason I don't apply there is because of work life balance, but I'd gladly program attack UAVs or eviction services if it got me a FAANG salary AND a good work life balance.

dog_boy3• 5 years ago

Interesting! A hypothetical question...

If you were to find out that software you wrote for a UAV was responsible for murdering an innocent civilian, would you still "feel 0 guilt"?

arcanon• 5 years ago

If that dude can program a UAV to be the responsible party I think that means he also created AI.

silicon24013• 5 years ago

Yeah pretty much. To paraphrase Zizek, we often talk about the violence required for a revolution while ignoring the violence required to maintain today's status quo. For me to be a typical person, an incredible amount of suffering is required: slavery, murder, trafficking, theft, and ecological harm through fishing; much of the same involved in producing consumer goods like computers and chocolate; civilians dying for the US to maintain its global interests.

In my opinion, unless you're making active efforts to live without benefiting from someone else's harm (following a Jain diet, living in the woods, living off the land, etc), you're no different than me if I programmed a drone that person B constructed for person C to deliver to person D who ordered its use by person E who deployed it. It's just easier to convince yourself you're not responsible when everyone else is also doing it, and when believing that you're not harming others affords you the convenience of chocolate and computers.

trapatsas• 5 years ago

Do you feel guilt asking this question?

chrledntsurf• 5 years ago

guilt for what exactly?

Ask HN: Those who work at Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, etc. Do you feel guilt?

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