> it also appears as though they are fully conscious of the prospect of social censure:

>>We are working with you to make sure your careers are not affected by this.

I'll tell you how Google is going to spin it (maybe it's true, maybe it's spin, but it's what they're going to say) - If you work on a big project at Google that never gets launched, it affects your ability to move up in the ranks. So he's saying that people working on this aren't going to be "penalized" (passed over for promotion) because the political climate made their project unable to launch. Without that assurance, even if you assume there were no ethical concerns with the project, smart employees would not sign up for it because of the risk of external events preventing its launch.

I agree holeheartedly that Google management should be taking major flak for this and turn back from this plan, but I won't paint the engineers working on this as evil.

I know the people working as full time engineers aren't living on Ramen noodles and sleeping in boxes, but it's real hard to fight something when your and your family's livelyhood depend on not fighting it.

We should champion those willing to take the extraordinary step of walking away, leaking or pushing back on this; while recognizing such actions are extraordinary, and should not be expected of everyone.

It would be nice to live in a world where anyone can stand up and fight in this manor, but I just imagine an engineer who really, really can't lose his health insurance and the inner turmoil they go through.

This is pretty funny. If you have a job as a SWE at google, you have the opportunity to start working at probably 80+% of good software companies that are currently hiring. It is pretty cowardly to do something you know is bad just because you'll go from $300k/year at Google to $200k/year somewhere else

Other view on this: if you have a job as a SWE at Google, you might have had to relocate to a different country where you are not super well integrated (for example, only basic knowledge of the official language). Leaving your job might make you lose your visa, having to relocate and lose a large part of your social circle. Make that even more fun if you have a partner or kids or whatever.

Of course it's usually going to be somewhere in the middle. But not everyone lives in the Bay Area where you can hop between jobs and change employer every week.

“Just following orders” (this quote Godwin approved)

Is there a corrilary to the Peter Principle here? Promoted to your level of being afraid to disobey and lose status/wealth/power?

You could say that they are Disciplined Minds: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/558867.Disciplined_Minds