If You Work for a Tech Company That’s Abusing Its Power, It’s Time To Quit
No more excuses
If you work for a company that’s involved in surveillance and censorship, it’s time to follow your moral compass and quit. If you think that’s rash thinking, consider the repercussions of continuing to help develop the sort of technologies that will ultimately be used to silence your voice and infringe upon your own freedom.
A recent report in the New York Times revealed that across the technology industry, employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built. At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech start-ups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere.
In the past…
Silicon Valley workers typically developed products with little questioning about the social costs. But as more tech companies, which grew by serving consumers and businesses, are expanding into government sponsored surveillance, those on the inside are starting to give notice.
One example: In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics too. Which is why if you’re working at a company, whether it’s Facebook or a startup — that’s involved in unethical data manipulation — it’s no longer acceptable to argue that you’re just doing a job.
I understand you have bills and a family to support, not to mention the fact that you’re likely working for a prestigious company with global brand recognition. But think about why you entered the field that you’re currently in. I bet you didn’t go to school dreaming of a day when you could help the government track people’s day-to-day activity. I also bet you never expected to be working for a tech company that cares less about people’s well being than Big Tobacco.
Still, I get why you might be reluctant to leave. If one of your main concerns is that other people, specifically those who are younger are likely to step into the roles that you’d be leaving behind, think again. According to the same report, engineering students have said they are demanding more answers and are asking similar questions, even before they move into the work force.
In fact…
This past June, more than 100 students at Stanford, M.I.T. and other top colleges signed a pledge saying they would turn down job interviews with Google unless the company dropped its Project Maven (a U.S. Department of Defense artificial intelligence (AI) project that studies imagery and could eventually be used to improve drone strikes in the battlefield) contract.
Their protest worked: Later that same month, Google said that it would not renew the contract once it expired.
So maybe you didn’t know the holistic scope of what the company you’re working for is building. You were just happy to build and help propel the technological revolution further into the future. But that’s no longer the case, because in the early aughts, tech companies like Google and Facebook hadn’t yet betrayed the public’s trust and veered their roadmap towards deception and misinformation. And since that’s no longer the case, it’s time to start asking questions. And if you don’t hear answers you like, then it’s time to quit. Especially when you have other ethical options. In fact, you can come work alongside me at DUST. Because when the data reckoning comes, and surely it will be here soon, you’ll look back on your own excuses and you’ll know then what you probably already know now: It’s time to take a stand for what’s right. It’s time to join the resistance.
