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Apple Employees, If Ordered To Unlock iPhone, Might Quit (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an NYTimes article: Apple employees are already discussing what they will do if ordered to help law enforcement authorities. Some say they may balk at the work, while others may even quit their high-paying jobs rather than undermine the security of the software they have already created, according to more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees. [...] The employees' concerns also provide insight into a company culture that despite the trappings of Silicon Valley wealth still views the world through the decades-old, anti-establishment prism of its co-founders Steven P. Jobs and Steve Wozniak. [...] The fear of losing a paycheck may not have much of an impact on security engineers whose skills are in high demand. Indeed, hiring them could be a badge of honor among other tech companies that share Apple's skepticism of the government's intentions.
It's not actually the disagreement that's likely to cause people to quit. Instead, it's the chance of a fuck up.
Suppose you do do this, and you make a mistake. You test your code like crazy, it goes via QA, and gets tested like crazy, you use it on the FBI's phone, and the device gets erased.
There's a reasonable chance that the result of these actions is that you end up in Guantanamo bay.
I'm not gonna take that risk for any salary, even a 6 figure one.