Re:Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad
by joshuamorton on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @04:23PM
(#19628432)
>I am curious how reasonable people with many options of where to work turn a blind eye to what their companies do.
In my case a lot of it comes down to me, as an insider, knowing that you're wrong. "Monetizing people" is sort of meaningless. That's an objection to capitalism, if anything, not Google. Google no more monetizes people than a bank, or a rideshare company or even a university. Short of maybe fundamental research, you're not going to find a job that doesn't monetize people under some interpretation.
As for a "surveillance society", I don't really think that's true. The care my coworkers take with user data is, in a word, significant.
There are certainly things that Google has done that I think aren't ethical, but I'm much better positioned to be aware of and change those things as an insider than an outsider.
And then of course there's the multitude of selfish reasons: compensation, interesting technical work, intelligent coworkers, etc.
In my case a lot of it comes down to me, as an insider, knowing that you're wrong. "Monetizing people" is sort of meaningless. That's an objection to capitalism, if anything, not Google. Google no more monetizes people than a bank, or a rideshare company or even a university. Short of maybe fundamental research, you're not going to find a job that doesn't monetize people under some interpretation.
As for a "surveillance society", I don't really think that's true. The care my coworkers take with user data is, in a word, significant.
There are certainly things that Google has done that I think aren't ethical, but I'm much better positioned to be aware of and change those things as an insider than an outsider.
And then of course there's the multitude of selfish reasons: compensation, interesting technical work, intelligent coworkers, etc.