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Some Engineers Are Turning Down Tech Recruiters in Silicon Valley Over Concerns About Corporate Value (ieee.org)
Tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have faced growing internal unrest from employees who raise ethical concerns about how the companies deploy their high-tech services and products. That chorus of dissent is now growing louder as outside engineers voice their concerns to recruiters working for those tech companies. An anonymous reader shares a report: The protests of tech workers have proven persuasive because Silicon Valley firms compete fiercely to recruit and retain relatively scarce engineering talent. For example, Google's leadership sought to reassure employees by declaring it would not renew its Pentagon contract and by issuing a set of ethical principles for future uses of Google-developed technologies. By the same logic, engineers who are approached by tech recruiters also have leverage. "I might be a one-off example, but it could be different if Amazon gets a lot of people emailing them saying, 'Hey I won't work for you because of this,'" Geiduschek, a software engineer at Dropbox, who declined a job offer from Amazon, says.
Jackie Luo, a software engineer at Square, took a similar stance with a tech recruiter who sought to interest her in a career with Google. The recruiter happened to contact Luo when she was reading about Google's plans to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored version of the company's Internet search engine. [...] Individual engineers such as Luo and Geiduschek seem to be responding to tech recruiters through their own initiative rather than as part of any larger movement. Meanwhile, some tech employees have joined organized efforts, such as the #TechWontBuildIt movement spearheaded by the labor advocacy group Tech Workers Coalition.
Jackie Luo, a software engineer at Square, took a similar stance with a tech recruiter who sought to interest her in a career with Google. The recruiter happened to contact Luo when she was reading about Google's plans to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored version of the company's Internet search engine. [...] Individual engineers such as Luo and Geiduschek seem to be responding to tech recruiters through their own initiative rather than as part of any larger movement. Meanwhile, some tech employees have joined organized efforts, such as the #TechWontBuildIt movement spearheaded by the labor advocacy group Tech Workers Coalition.
... have been simply not bothering and/or avoiding a number of these firms for years.
If they're white and male they have reasonable grounds for choosing a different employer.
It doesn't hurt to let the recruiter know that - whether they're an agent or work for Google.
but it wasn't about that. Google contacted me and I told them that I wasn't seeing a cultural fit.
I highly recommend reading the filings in the James Damore lawsuit: https://www.dhillonlaw.com/law...
You can see the statements from Googlers in their own words. To say that it's incredibly disturbing that they have created and promoted such a toxic work-place culture would be an understatement.
Avoid like the plague unless you are a blue-haired harpy trying to work out her daddy issues by hating on men.
Earth is a single point of failure.
Did you become an engineer to get rich? Engineering pays quite well, but to get rich you're better off in finance.
Most people become engineers to solve problems. To make life better for everyone. When corporate culture goes against that motive, engineers tend to rebel. This doesn't just apply to Silicon Valley.
I'm intrigued that engineers in Silicon Valley feel they are empowered enough to make such demands. Most engineers just bitch to management about not doing what's in the customer's best interest and move on.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I really liked working there, as did pretty much everyone else, and never saw anyone work a 100 hour week or even close. I only left because I found a much shorter commute. All the media coverage about how awful they are is I think completely blown out of proportion. Other than letting new hires show up to work in pajamas, it was a pretty cool place to work.
Illegal immigrants — the overwhelmingly vast majority of them from South America — have killed far more Americans over the years, than the 3000 killed on the day of 9/11. By your logic — punishing the countries, whose expats have done us wrong — we should've overrun Mexico and proceeded further South by now.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm not sure what being white and male have to do with it.
Yes you do.
Politically active left leaning businesses discriminate against white males for the sake of social justice, diversity, and "optics."
...Once upon a time, the best and brightest of the engineering, math and science students didn't dream of working in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. They dreamed of NASA, JPL & NOAA. Academia and government service. The reward was working on interesting, important things rather than stock options and snack rooms. Maybe that thinking is starting to come back.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Morality certainly influenced my most recent job move.
I had recruiters from both Google and Facebook reaching out to me, but it's clear from their corporate culture that conservatives - even moderates - are not welcome at those companies. I feel the "progressive" movement is the most dangerous and harmful political force since the Wall fell, and I don't want to have on my conscience contributing to that in any way.
Fortunately, you no longer need to work at the Big 5 to get great pay, at least if you're past mid-career (they probably still pay college hires the best, though I hear MS is falling off).
Not that the company I landed at isn't quite liberal internally, but they don't inflict it on their customers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm trying to remember if you're the one who is an expat from the former USSR. I get you confused with the other libertarian-right guys named Mashiki and Roman-Mir. Hmm, Mir is russian word...maybe he's another Randroid expat.
Well if you are the expat, you might not be aware of the history behind immigration law in the US, which has at times been intentionally created with racist intent.
For example, Northern Europe was favored over Southern Europe because the WASPS running the country didn't want more "bead jiggling whore of babylon worshipping papist scum" coming to America. And of course, the "yellow peril" from Asia wasn't admitted at all. Read up on the Know Nothings, which was a nativist anti-immigrant (especially anti-catholic) movement of the past. They way they talked about Catholics was EXACTLY how the right-wing talks about Muslims today.
And of course, the US basically keeping immigration restrictions up even as Jews were trying to flee Europe making it VERY hard for Jews to escape.
And of course the irony of being against illegal immigration when I don't think anyone asked the Native Americans already living here for the 17th and 18th centruy equivalent of green cards. Remember this, there are Native American tribes whose names only exist in history books because they were wiped out. Exterminated. Genocided.
So if you don't want those filthy muslims and brown people from south of the border here, I think you're a hypocrite. If we welcomed some rabid Randroid from the Ukraine why can't we welcome people from Syria or Guatemala?
What's that? Maybe Your parents had college degrees paid for by the Collectivist State?
Well Tovarysch, you aren't that special. America doesn't just need spoiled expats from Commie-land shilling for that sociopathic economic philosophy of that selfish asshat Ayn Rand every chance they get. It also needs people to pick vegetables, work in meat packing, and yes bus tables or work as maids in hotels.
Do you want to do that Comrade Randroid? You're too good for that? You're John Galt and Lazarus Long combined and such work is beneath your great intelligence? Your kids too good for that? Well someone has to do that, and the people paying for that work don't want to pay what you'd want to be paid for such backbreaking low status work.
And people like you don't want a guest worker program and don't want to make immigration easier for those who want to come here to make a better life for themselves...yes even doing the work supposedly "real americans" like yourself don't want to do.
Our supposed enemies are nowhere near our actual borders. Those "brown people" emigrating from Latin America aren't our enemies. Hell their ancestors were HERE before ours. This country of ours is actually THEIRS, we just stole it from their more northerly relatives.
So go back to the Rodina, you'd love it amongst the dog eat dog kleptocracy and plutocracy. Nothing stopping you from lying, cheating and stealing your way into a fortune with some desperate-for-a-better-life anorexic czech/slovak/russian model turned trophy wife at your side. Well nothing unless you do something to upset an oligarch with ties to the Kremlin....or are gay, or atheist, or actually believe in democracy.
But hey, no regulation or SJW's to stop you from doing what you will. Comrade Putin will make sure of it and make you rich, that's what you want. No rules for the Uber-man-genius like yourself.
You know what, Russia gave us both the horrible ideology of Stalinism and the horrible selfish asshattery of Objectivism from Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum.... aka Ayn Rand.
One ruined russia, and the other is ruining the US, thanks to guys like you.
Hey, Maybe you're really a long term sleeper agent working for Russian interests. come over here, infest the US with Randroid asshattery and spread it on tech-sites. to bearded aspies who already have problems with empathy and compassion and already look down upon everyone who isn't a bearded aspie as normies, sheeple, lazy minorities, etc, etc.
Working as an engineer in the bay area I get unsolicited emails to my (relatively unpublished) personal email account directly by all sorts of companies, not to mention 10+ recruiter contacts a week via linkedin, etc.
I don't hesitate to let them know if a particular republican venture capitalist that financially backed Trump's presidential campaign that has invested in their company, has turned me off from their company (pick one, there's a couple of high profile ones). Or if they're heavily in bed with the defense industry, or tangentially attached to some other cause I'm against (there's a couple of banks that come to mind), I will let them know. Having enough experience in the industry to have options, it's nice to be able to flatly turn down offers. Obviously there is someone who will sell their soul to get their foot in the door, I am not slowing down their hiring process by any measurable degree, but it does mean that they will have to struggle to grow with less talented or less experienced talent. I'm ok with this.
Most of my friend share at least a somewhat similar view. But we've been here long enough to pick and choose our next job. There's a lot of immigrants from other parts of the world that will take the more morally ambiguous jobs in tech just to get here.
moox. for a new generation.
I've argued we in the tech industry need to do it for a long time. It shouldn't look exactly like older professions like engineering, law, and medical because those industries are tied the established formal education. We have the power to ground airlines, shut down power grids, automate out co-workers, sell snake oil security, and skew research data. When we are faced with ethical dillemas we should know we can fall back on professional regulation to refuse on ethical grounds and our employers will lose a massive amount of face and business if they don't respect that.
That said, this also remains one of the few knowledge industries where it is still possible for a highly intelligent individual and dedicated individual who is totally impoverished to avoid bias and debt in academia and to not only learn enough to practice but even become a leader in our field with nothing but a low end computer and an internet connection. We will never eliminate the advantages of being born to privilege but this has always been one field where the odds are more even for someone who is underprivileged but the merit and raw capacity that defines the right to be at the top.