ineednoprocrast
ineednoprocrast on Hacker News
When you wrote this, what did you anticipate my reaction would be?
Why?
I must admit, I really don't know what it would be like to be working in the bay area on mass surveillance AI for half a million a year.
I studied computational linguistics/natural language processing in grad school, out of an interest in accessibility issues (I had RSI) and related applications, and had naively neglected to look very hard about how I'd be likely use it in a career.
Other people in my cohort went to work for the CIA. I couldn't move to the bay area for... reasons, (this was pre-Google) and it seemed everyplace I could find anything wanted me to have a security clearance, with all the implications that has.
One could say I'm not mercenary enough, or that I took too many philosophy classes, or any number of other rationalizations, but one way or another, none of the jobs I've taken have had much need for what I studied.
I feel morally obligated to use what I know to improve the state of the world. This has, unfortunately, led to a lot of unemployment and serious depression.
Pseudonym for obvious reasons.
The piece of the puzzle I don't understand yet is why credit card processors appear to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police. They could very easily make the argument that the use of money transferred isn't their problem. That seems to have worked for the NRA. Why did they get into the business of kinda-sorta-but-not-really representing the police?
I could really use a functioning service to help me find clients right now, especially if there's some mechanism to prevent a race to the bottom.