Throwaway for anonymity reasons.

I learned to code. I am good enough to get a job at a Google/Amazon/Facebook. Should I do it? I feel like it would be working for the devil, but I also feel like almost every job is like that. $200k/yr sounds pretty nice.

  • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Don't do work that directly assistants imperialism or punching-down violence. Some folks here are giving absurd generalizations that would justify working at Raytheon to build better bombs with which to starve Yemeni children to death. Don't do that.

    But barring that, you're going to be hard-pressed to find modestly ethical work in general. It's all to build some dumbass widget at the expense of our future existence. It all ends up supporting the imperial machine. The owners will still take your surplus labor value and give it to the war machine and yachts and propaganda and cops.

    There's one chance out of that in the context of capitalism, and it's creating your own co-op. But that will require existing clientele, expertise, and more than just you. There will be limited capital. You'll basically be doing a startup but without bourgeois cash thrown at you, which is how most startups ever succeed.

    If you're in a position to do that, please do. Otherwise, you are stuck, just like everyone else, doing work for "the devil" so long as you (1) keep away from assisting capitalist violence directly and (2) stay true to socialism in your actions. Try to unionize the place. Talk to others who are trying to do so already. Donate your money in solidarity to your party, to international parties in solidarity.

    Our only way to fully escape assisting capitalism is revolution. If your personal activities in what I assume is the imperial core are getting to you that badly, try to compare them to what you could do if you moved to a socialist, anti-imperialist country. Would your labor have a greater impact in China or Vietnam? Can you leverage your relative privilege (high income) more effectively from the imperial core? You could probably pay a socialist to spend all of their time doing organizing in another country and still be very well-off. And is it better to organize in the core or in the periphery? I personally don't know, but it's an important question.

    • Owl [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      All of this but

      Try to unionize the place

      Be really careful about attending unionization meetings and being vocally pro-union at Google. If you look like a troublemaker, they're really good at maneuvering your career into a dead end in a plausibly deniable way.

      On the other hand, if you're willing to sacrifice yourself for the cause, wait for your first promotion, then immediately go hard on worker activism. Getting a few really good constructive dismissal cases into the courts would really help out at this stage.

      • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        A good point. I should have mentioned that they should also get some training on unionizing and agitating, since I think a lot of people think it means you just start telling everyone that you should unionize. You've generally gotta start with small asks that don't seem particularly combative and work your way up, e.g. Also, as you mention, workplace organizing is still (technically) legally protected, so there are two likely trajectories:

        1. You successfully organize and get that union.

        2. You get pretextually fired long before this but can take a case to the NLRB.

        2 is more likely but will still immensely help the cause and if you were already doing a decent job organizing it won't just be you fighting that battle.