I agree with that to a point, if you need your job to pay the rent and the bills, and there is no other job you can do, then you are well and truly trapped.

There are people for whom the circumstances of their employment, whether it is strict visa rules or the fact that they are being employed illegally, or some other extenuating circumstance such as disabilities that do not give them the freedom of action that being able to leave one job and move on to another. In this we are completely in agreement. The fallacy here is to extend this circumstance as if it will never change.

It is absolutely true to say this advice does not apply to every living breathing human on the planet. However it does apply to a lot of people in the workforce today.

In many economies, the number of people who lose employment and are always having difficulty finding employment again is relatively small[1]. And I have been grateful that I happen to have opportunities and have supported financially organizations such as Homeboy Industries[2] that work to address that. It is inspiring to meet the people who have taken that step to invest in their own employability and versatility so that they can increase their options and live a life they are proud of. Are their periods in their life where losing a job would be really challenging? Absolutely. Does it have to always be like that? Absolutely not.

So in the general sense, I don't think it is a simple point. I think it is a state of mind. Either you take responsibility for your failures and your successes, or you only take responsibility for success and blame your failures on things outside of your control. I get the whole learned helplessness thing, it's a real problem. But it can be overcome. The motivation for that change has to come from inside a person. I do not believe there is any amount of coaching or cheering or reward/punishment cycles will force it.

[1] The most common situation that I've personally interacted with are ex-felons.

[2] https://homeboyindustries.org/

There is an inherent cost to switching jobs, regardless if one potentially could, that one may not be able to afford.

It’s not just as simple as “finding a new job”. Runway for bills, the time it takes to find the right opportunity, etc, are all definite resources that are required to make the switch - which I’d argue far more people have trouble affording as opposed to your proposed statement that few people have trouble finding new jobs within their space.

Personally, I've never had a job where I didn't feel ethnically compromised in one way or another. If I'd quit all of my jobs to date, I wouldn't be a model of self-actualization. I'd just be unemployed and broke. I wouldn't even be ethically pure, as I'd be failing in my responsibility to people who depend on me financially.

I feel that your point of view makes more sense for someone who finds consumer capitalism and the tech industry ethical on a fundamental level, bar occasional aberrations. Not everyone sees it that way.

I really wanted to make a point only about the ethical issue. I think it's fair to say that most of your comment is fairly generic "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" advice. The efficacy of such advice has already been debated a thousand times over. In the midst of the present economic crisis it strikes me as less helpful and relevant than ever.

Thank you for this clarification, I appreciate understanding where you are coming from.

I'm wondering if the ethical compromises you feel/felt ever inspired you to try something to avoid them.

For example, one of the people I knew at Sun was pretty depressed about the sort of crap that went on in tech companies. Her response was to create a company that she felt aligned with her views of ethics. Took her a long time to get to "Raman profitability" but that work was offset by the benefit of knowing that the place where she worked didn't subscribe to the kinds of ethical compromises that make people uncomfortable.

I agree that this sort of advice is less actionable during a crisis, whether it is a pandemic or the Great Recession. Just like it is never helpful to tell someone in a car crash that if they had been wearing a seat belt they wouldn't currently be on the way to the emergency room. That said, large unlikely stresses to the system, like the pandemic, tend to "light up" areas of risk[1]. It is why in operations at a tech company you will stage mock outages (with real equipment failures) to be able to "see" whether or not your mitigation processes work and where they can be improved.

I still think it is always good advice to learn from adverse circumstances, regardless or origin, to create additional resiliency in your life. That's how I started figuring out what to put in my "go" back in my car[2]. Looking at disasters that hit the Bay Area and asking myself the question, "Okay, when this hits and I'm in my car somewhere, what will I want to have?"

[1] Using the pandemic as an example, the pathetic capacity for the US to manufacture PPE was not widely understood (visible) until the pandemic.

[2] https://github.com/ChuckM/CarEarthquakePrep

Your advice is well meaning, but unsolicited and rather obvious as far as it goes. Lots of people consider quitting their jobs and starting their own companies. Not everyone is in a position to do so, or indeed wants to do so. There's a fine line between offering advice and implicitly judging people for not making the choices that you think they ought to make.

I understand this point of view. From non-profit leaders who core activity is grooming relationships with rich or powerful people. To startup who's sales strategy is to lure one giant customer at a loss free to reel in other companies who purchase based on what others. To poker based companies who uses bots to fake engagement. To government entities who are funded on data points hiring teams of data specialists to crave up the raw data into misleading stats to be presented as fact. The little self funded startup finding creative ways of not paying staff or for services rendered.

I can't think of one business who has pure ideals and has successfully implement them without inventing something new.

"Deciding to compromise your principles to keep earning money is just as much an exercise of agency as making the opposite decision." In real life Its not the same . First is often exercised in denial or exercised by default where as Quitting your job on moral ground is a decision taken in full awareness.