After I left Boeing, I made a pledge to never work for or belong to any groups that create weapons. Thankfully the X-32 failed and I got out when I did.
I never would. And never have.
Everybody has their price.
Sure, my price is making enough money on my first day there to solve world hunger.
I’d make way more money in defense. I’ve actively avoided it in my career. I spent one summer at LM as an intern. Never went back.
Some of us don’t have our souls up for sale and never will.
It’s not like China is going to stop making weapons if I refuse to make weapons.
Doesn’t make you any less responsible when the fruits of your labor are used to murder civilians.
If we don’t build the bombs dropped on Gaza, China will.
My parents said the same thing about air pollution and carbon emissions
I suppose the difference is that a country doesn’t just get conquered by force if it stops polluting.
Almost all pollution is by industries and not your parents, so…
If anything you could criticize them if they voted to keep the pollution going.
Buying a big SUV, shopping at h&m, eating red meat multiple times a week, and flying to the other side of the world during summer, are all worse than voting for climate change. Companies don’t pollute for the sake of it.
Check out the EPA’s stats on ghg emissions at this LINK. 28% of emissions total are from non-agriculture/shipping transportation, and if you break that down then 57% of the 28% are light duty vehicles, all larger road vehicles are 23%, and aircraft are 9%.
Since 2005 emissions carbon-equivalent total of the USA has fallen about a billion metric tons thanks to awareness and federal programs to reduce and eliminate emissions, almost exclusively in the Electrical Power sector.
So even if you cut out all consumer non-business transport you’re left with 72% of emissions. A person who votes to curttail polution does more good than a person who drives a hybrid.
yeah this is a really stupid argument
“It’s not like Israël is gonna stop killing Palestinians if I refuse to kill Palestinians”
I mean
That’s true tho, pretty much nobody else murders Palestiniains but Israel still does.
Change on all of these scales has to come from societies around the world, not from individuals.
yes but I’m saying that doesn’t mean you should just start killing Palestinians as well
I wonder how many arms companies aren’t involved with Israel.
Potentially the prosthetic arm companies
When you realize they actually have an adverse incentive to support indiscriminate bombardment…
My sib has a friend that constantly criticizes others b/c they marginally contribute to injustices in the world (one example is how a family friend votes that specifically puts others at a disadvantage for affordable housing, making them commute for hours on end). That friend also worked with Purdue Pharmaceuticals defense team during their lawsuit lol
It’s crazy to me how so many ppl can be so oblivious to their own hypocrisies.
Well someone has be on the defense
Before I went independent, I made many thousands of parts for General Dynamics up to and including missile housings. It’s a shitty feeling.
Selling out being an option for people just means the system is working as intended. People are so poor they are willing to compromise their morals to keep food on the table
Every corp you work at has a dark side. Maybe not Lockheed Martin level of destruction.
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My current job, we build systems to get people to spend more for things they don’t need.
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My last job, we provided technology to “free speech” folks and looked the other way unless legally obligated to take it down
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The nonprofit i worked for spent 80% of their time and energy just for funding. Like $2mil a year, and 1.6mil went to paying staff.
Sometimes jobs frame it to look like it’s a positive.
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I worked at one company that “gave opportunities” to offshore engineers because they were a fraction the cost of Americans.
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Another company outsourced our graphic design to people on Fiverr to help fund “freelancers”, and then repurpose the work for million dollar ad campaigns.
And for me, I just constantly think of what the line is and how much of it I can cross to feed my kids.
Very rational take. You learn entering the world that every company has a dark side, and every person has a line, but that line shifts.
Personally I’d avoid Lockheed, but when it comes to paying the mortgage, the bank is surprisingly not very amenable to me not having a job. I’d love to avoid working at any bad company, but I’d probably have to sell my house and live out of a studio, and my family would suffer for it.
So I give some graces. For example, people shame folks who work at amazon, but Amazon pays the bills. What I personally have changed to is judging people for being gung ho about a company, happy with what the company is doing, or are they just there as a job. If you’re in accounting and you just loooove working for Amazon and think they do no wrong, then yes I judge a lot
I work in healthcare IT, we develop medical systems which help physicians to help people. It sounds like a good field to work in, but it’s still about money in the end, looking for ways to maximise profits, because we live in a capitalist system. As long as profits play the main role, there always is a dark side.
Yup. “Capitalism values only what it can count, and it can only count dollars. Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible.”
Sometimes you find maybe a startup that is for-purpose. So, not necessarily nonprofit, but exists to do something with a predominantly positive impact.
We have so few years here on earth that it feels good to do something that at least is not making any problems worse.
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After a history of ethically questionable jobs, I thought I had escaped it into something almost benign where we were only wasting the money of other companies.
Recently we started going balls deep into making AI products, and I feel very uncomfortable with itRaytheon too. Job offer was $$$weet, but it was related to making missiles even more efficient.
No, I don’t think we need to turn brown kids into skeletons yet more efficiently, thanks.
What if you’re making the missiles more accurate?
I got a Raytheon for missile targeting systems. Didn’t want it on my conscience and got another offer for slightly less money but way more ethical of a company a week later.
Sweet, glad that worked out for you. I’ve learned for certain types of work I gotta ask whether it’s on the attack vs defense side of military work; at least a couple of interviewers have been taken aback by such an apparently blunt question, that it “isn’t such a relevant question”.
In my mind, both times I was wondering why they thought I’d be happy with coming to work every day if it was for something even possibly negative. Engineers get paid to pay attention to details, the fuck wouldn’t I be able to piece this shit together from within?
Compartmentalization is a cute concept on paper. 🙄
Excellent opportunity for sabotage.
Be the change you wish to see in the world
I had a job offer from Cambridge Analytica, they were up front about the work they were doing as well as the pay. Though it was tempting to sell my soul for the pay, even I have my limits.
Not twisting your arm, but I always wonder what my limit is, and if they added more to it.
It was freaking tempting. It was a 70% raise.
Yeah but you sleep gooooooood at night. That’s priceless.
I had an interview with a “mass email” provider. By the time I left it was clear to both of us that no way in hell.
Is it bad that I consider this much worse than a defense company? Lockheed has some cool tech and help protect my country, at the huge cost of killing so many. Cambridge Analytica indiscriminately attacks people’s privacy, all people, and for profit with no hint at a good purpose
I’m sure I still don’t appreciate that historically speaking the world has been quite a dangerous place.
I’m not a fan of dead kids or rich men sending the young to die for them, but I cannot deny my lifestyle significantly benefits from the fact top military spenders align with my ideology. (e.g. I’m better off with a powerful USA than North Korea)
Would be interesting if a new generation of principled Americans were responsible for a change where defense contractors knew to attract modern talent they had to provide assurances against outputs being used for evil. I’m naïve enough to think that might be possible.
If your country is the USA I am not sure it’s worth of protecting.
Hot take but a world without the USA would probably have a lot more war in it.
The EU wouldn’t be able to get away with the low defense spending. Even with the war in Ukraine, they seemed to realize they’re spending too little. Granted, the US does overspend.
The US is not a uniquely bad country TBH. Just another shitty one in a long line.
Fuck off
Lots of refreshingly, considered takes on Lemmy today
Who has the least ethical job at Lockheed?
My money is on the salesman, “this bad boy can kill so many children”
Boy Boy has a video where they sneak into a military weapons convention.
One guy was selling crowd control armor and advertised the dissociation from your actions that armor like that creates, divorcing you from guilt.
Found the vid + timecode
By shifting what you sell to “this bad boy can disperse your targeted package across an area x by y in z time frame” instead of “we can turn the entire school to rubble” you help them sleep at night.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
- George Orwell
CEO because he likely gets paid mostly in shares, and it’s really shareholders (not employees) who have the most choice in the matter.
Does their workforce in D.C count?
Before reading the text I was expecting a Saddam joke. After reading seems even more applicable.
