I agree to a very limited extent about the hierarchical nature of a typical corporation, but I also disagree. Software engineers at a certain level of their career and with relatively uncommon skills can pick and choose what companies they want to work at. In my opinion people of good moral character and conscience need to be prepared to refuse to accept a position at companies known to engage in activities against their principles. And further need to be prepared to resign if they are asked to do something clearly unethical.

From my particular specialization in network engineering, I would never accept a role at an ISP in an environment where I had to implement something like the GFW in China, or further walled-garden/censorship of the global Internet. It's directly contradictory to my principles. I sincerely hope that the best and the brightest of my colleagues would never choose to aid and abet internet-fuckery by autocratic regimes. If people from my field look at a project and could reasonably say "Vint Cerf would be really disappointed if he saw me implementing this...", I hope they will choose to walk away.