ClarityGuy

You could argue that in a corrupt system, ethics tends to work against the interests of that system... but I'd say at the civilizational level they're indispensable, and going back to Aristotle ethics is rooted at the civilizational level (or some would say at the God-and-man level with necessary implications for civilization).

A lot of our relatively new institutions are set up to run like perpetual-motion machines with voracious appetites constrained only by positive law -- so much for those institutions. What we really need is to recognize the many ways in which we've lost our bearings plus a cooling-off period that allows us to search for them again.

Isn't a career in tech a trap of constant self-development?

You could have him find the roots of the tree it fell from (with multiplicities).

I really like your TLDR. It perfectly captures that nagging feeling I get about this business whenever I fail an accursed tech interview. No amount of informed commentary about the craft will suffice when they want somebody who knows the difference between the STL's reserve() and resize() methods.

I think philosophy has traditionally been more of a self-consciously humanistic pursuit, so even though there's some cross-pollination with STEM it wouldn't fit super well into that category. The thing about contemporary thought is, there's a lot of instrumentalism hidden inside it especially in high-tech circles. This arises in large part from instrumentalist prejudices in education. OTOH, the wider world of older philosophy is somewhat dangerous to modern education so it tends not to go there.