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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I've always felt like the best course to stay ethical is to stay far far away from working on any projects that will be used or seen by "the general public". Games, Social Media, any sort of Sales or Marketing - they're all a shitshow, cause the variable they have to optimize for is income.

    My father is a Delphi programmer for a small family business that writes software for Wood cutting factories. Yeah, getting money in is a factor for the company, but the pool of customers is so slow and stable that the programmers can just focus on creating the best software possible - so the thing they optimize for in this case is getting as many boards out of a tree as possible. You could spin it in an ethical direction and say they're reducing waste from excess trees that would be cut if they didn't have good optimized software. Or you could spin it in an unethical direction and say that they're supporting an industry which can cause environmental trough over-consumption of resources. It's a weird thing to think about and I feel like everyone draws the line at a different point.

    So what I want to say, I guess, is that you just gotta focus on what your own values are and what you'd expect from a potential employer. Upheaving your whole life and moving to another country for your first job might be a bit much, as the sunken cost of having moved for a company will inadvertently make you more hesitant to leave them.

    Maybe just look around in your area and see what small companies are around - not small as in Start-Up, I wouldn't trust a company that hasn't been around for a few decades, but rather small in their niche and their customer-base. Big Tech might just be a lost cause. Also don't do that dumb americanized interview circus. A company that respects the people who work for them never lets you jump trough leetcode hoops and dozens of evaluations and interviews before even having a chance to speak to someone.

    The company I work for has been noting but great so far, and they've hired me within five days of applying. It was one interview, no evaluations or personality quizzes or whatever.

    I also don't know how common that is, but they're an AG that only employees can own stocks of - so there isn't a centralized owner or CEO, just a board of majority-owners who still have to listen to everyone else who owns the stocks. The fact that it's somewhat self-governing makes for pretty sweet employee benefits (free ebike and car charging, 29+2 days off per year, everyone has the option to do half-time or 4-day workweeks, up to 100% remote for everyone etc).

    And again, they're a small-ish business that stays far away from the general public. I write software for the German Energy Market. The companies that use it are extremely regulated by law and couldn't even do anything unethical with it if they wanted to. They're also bound by law to use software like ours to even oparate legally, so there isn't much client turnover or financial pressure. A few deadlines per year exist, but the job is mostly open to actually improving the software instead of selling as much as possible to as many people as possible. I think that's kind of a key point. Desperation and Greed can make people take bad turns, so maybe staying away from anything that can push you in that direction is the safest bet.