Well yeah if we’re applying that to atrocities and murder it wouldn’t be a valid argument. But these are workers that don’t have a union that are sometimes living paycheck to paycheck. They’re just trying to not be homeless.
I don’t work at YouTube but speaking as a tired, underpaid dev who works for a company he hates, I am just trying to get by. I don’t even have PTO right now. I do plan to form a union in my area though.
I’ve worked a number of tech jobs and quit all of the ones that involved me directly contributing to or outright directly performing an immoral act.
I have no respect… pity, sure, but no respect for anyone that knowingly contributes to making the world worse for other people.
You are trying to form a union, that is commendable, an actual step toward positive change.
Most people?
They knowingly contribute to systems that make the vast majority of people worse off, and then bitch about other people doing the same thing in another field.
Or they don’t know or care about any harm their work causes, but still bitch about everyone else doing the same thing.
First, do no harm is apparently too difficult to apply to one’s own life.
If we all keep acting as cogs in the machine that makes everything worse… everything will obviously get worse.
You’re getting massively downvoted, but you have some valid things you’re saying, but also some shortsighted things, I think.
To be able to quit a job if they wanted you to do something that would contribute to making someone else’s life worth is a place of privilege, most people are living paycheck to paycheck. At least in the US. Because of that, most people, even in the tech sector, don’t necessarily like their job they just like not being homeless. So they stay quiet and get the job done. I don’t think it’s that they don’t care, I just think it’s that they don’t realize that if they were to unionize and defend themselves they could get a lot of change done. To make people realize that takes a good leader and/or someone to take initiative, and those types of things are conveniently left out of our education. We are taught to be good workers and to be grateful of the bosses for paying us. It can take quite some effort to make people realize that they generate the revenue of the business and they are the most valuable asset in the company: the workers. Especially down in the south of the US where I live.
This video pretty accurately breaks down what I’m saying: https://www.tiktok.com/@moneywithkatie/video/7438453768158547242
To be able to quit a job if they wanted you to do something that would contribute to making someone else’s life worth is a place of privilege, most people are living paycheck to paycheck
But uh, that shouldn’t apply anywhere near as significantly to a software dev for YouTube, as compared to a person making shit tier wages at all call center or McDonalds or something.
The software dev is getting paid a whole lot more, has a whole lot more pre-existing wealth, has a resume that would enable pursuing other, similarly though perhaps slightly less lucrative jobs in the same line of work, that don’t feed the beast as malevolently.
The beast that disproportionately feeds upon the objectively less well off and more victimized lower wage workers.
I used to work for MSFT. Large Intl. Import Export Firm.
Then I realized I could not stomach the guilt.
Took a voluntary paycut and worked a similar job for a Non Profit helping the homeless.
(Software Engineer, DB Admin, Data Analyst, Root Cause Analyst, BI Reporter/Analyst, blah blah blah.)
I am not holding software devs with huge salaries to any higher moral standard than I hold myself to.
Of course many, many people are basically stuck in a position where they have no realistic alternatives.
I very well understand the economic and societal factors that play into why people stay at jobs they hate, why people will not typically voluntarily risk their job for a moral stance.
It would be very stupid and shortsighted to say that everyone working paycheck to paycheck ahould commit noble economic seppuku out of protest.
But this thread is about Software Devs for one of the largest and best paying Software companies in the world.
They could protest. They could quit. They could afford that.
MSFT just fired a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on projects or for a company which is directly aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The truth is most of these well off software devs do not have the moral backbone to do anything other than develop a self loathing complex, if they even care about anyone other than themselves at all.
Most of the people that I knew, the corpos, they took their high incomes and immediately became AirBNB or traditional landlords or house flippers.
They only cared about their net worth, all while basically pantomiming, Patrick Bateman style, concern and sympathy for all those affected by the problems they know they are excacerbating.
Two main points: Workers individually are powerless, that’s the point of unions. I work in the media industry and if I quit a job with no notice it’ll take me minimum 6 months to find a new one. That’s 6 months of grabbing an income wherever I can, and if we rule out shareholder owned entities that’s easily 6 months without an income entirely.
