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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.
...for every one person like that there are a thousand who would like to work for Google.
Right... Because it is unethical for America — uniquely among the world's nations — to fight its enemies and enforce its borders.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
The subject's title is, "Engineers Say 'No Thanks' to Silicon Valley Recruiters, Citing Ethical Concerns." And then the article calls out 4 companies: Amazon, Google, Facebook, & Microsoft. 2 of those 4 are headquartered in the Seattle area, not Silicon Valley. How about some simple fact checking?
My userid is prime!
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.
I live in the Seattle area and know lots of current /former "Softies" and "Amazombies". Those large tech companies have huge turn over and incredible burn out rates Both companies threw out Stack ranking some years ago, https://whatis.techtarget.com/... but the mentality that put it in place is still ingrained in the corporate manta. Ie: "for you to get ahead, someone else must fail". It's the major reason pay is so high, you have to pay ridiculous money to keep good people.
After the toxic culture at Google came to light during the Damore incident, why would anyone want to join a company that boos you when you get hired if you're not a SJW darling? You may get paid well but there are so many non hostile workplaces that you would be much happier in. Do you really want to work at a place where people claim they sexually identify as an expansive ornate building, and your employer gives them a microphone?
Curious, none of them would dare be seen taking a position like "I don't want to work with a company that relies on H1B visas."
If you want to talk ethics and activism, I have news for you. All that bullshit about diversity your corporate HR departments spew about hiring and visas is just a smokescreen around the fact that our immigration system is subtly more pernicious than indentured servitude.
Indentured servants had full recourse to the King's Justice in the colonies. H1bs don't have the equivalent of that in the United States.
This is why your corporation and its leadership support all of that immigration. It's to pit you and the immigrants against each other in a race to the bottom that lets them suck up that tasty arbitrage to achieve dizzying new levels of profit without having to pay you any more.
But sure, piss and moan about drones while supporting a company that makes great use of a system that is closer to the Peculiar Institution than a free market labor economy.
...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.
The Pentagon contract involved adding AI to analyze photographs. People who want to make it seem worse than the same tech being applied to their Facebook pages to find friends made up the story about "AI to control drones", and continue to propagate it.
And dogs! I had a friend quit Amazon after getting bitten. Two other mutual friends quit there after getting frustrated with distractions due to dogs. Coworkers, meetings, and email are already distracting enough without adding dogs.
Yeah, it's a real shame that you can't act like a giant douchebag at work these days.
From the source you are responding to:
“You can’t talk about sexual differences between men and women, (although) it’s OK if they favor women,” laughs Tierney. “You can say men are more likely to commit crimes, but you can’t suggest that there might be some sexual difference that might predispose men to be more interested in a topic.”
Yeah, you can act like a giant douchebag, but only to men. Pointing that out gets you fired. Standing up for yourself gets you fired. Not following a radical political agenda gets you fired...but only at a handful of insane corporations with too much power and not enough ethics.
Unlike many others we, if we observe carefully, know exactly how and when we can be replaced. And when not. This gives us massive leverage and a few critical points. "I don't like your business model" is a very neat audible objection by someone who has a rare and demanded skill. Tech illuminates are in the sweet spot of being able to do a bit of a priests job in deciding who gets my skills and experience and who gets the finger.
I like that we have some confident and self aware engineers. Keep it up!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I had a friend that said they worked no more than sixty hours a week while on call 24/7. For programming, that's about the best work/life balance you can expect.
Only if you're a schmuck. I have never worked those kinds of hours - nor would I any longer than the time it takes me to find another job.
"no more than sixty hours" is "best work/life balance you can expect"? You guys are being taken for chumps.
If I were a Chinese strategist, evaluating the strong and weak points of each side:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
60 hour/week longterm people are mostly useless.
Unless they just put in 60 hours of facetime and 20 hours of work they are crispy and would get much more done if they worked 40 good hours.
40 hours of actual work is ambitious, most offices won't allow it...You must attend the annual sexual harassment training this week...and the all hands meeting...and don't forget the 3 hour 'stand ups', everyday.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
"Some American Workers Try to Live Their Ethical Values"
Regardless of whether or not you agree with those values--and from the modding it looks like a lot of people hovering around this article don't--it is newsworthy that some engineers are willing to turn down lucrative, prestigious jobs because the work they'd be doing, or the company they'd be doing it for, doesn't mesh with their sense of right and wrong.
Of course, in a better world, this wouldn't be newsworthy at all.