<story><title>Ask HN: As a Facebook or Google engineer, do you consider your company evil?</title><text>Amid the severe backlash that tech companies currently face (Google and FB amongst others), how do you consider your own company from a moral POV?
Do you think the current backlash is justified?&lt;p&gt;No judgement, just curious.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway22349</author><text>Googler. Yes, I think the backlash is all deserved. I’ve been here for many years, since back when any criticism was still very niche, and at the beginning it was different. Obviously morally superior to working at a bank, and more meaningful than working on Snapchat for Sourdough Starters or similar dumb startups. Now it’s no better than the banks, and they’re even chasing military contracts. And the work is largely pointless tedium.&lt;p&gt;I’ve thought of leaving for years. Problem is: I have a wife who doesn’t work, two kids, piles of debt, and live in the most expensive city in the country. We can’t just leave, our whole life is here. And moving to a bank now to make more money (if I even would, the tenure and promotions do pile up) means working harder and more hours. That comes out of spending time with my young kids.&lt;p&gt;I spent a couple of years having a tough time with this. It genuinely caused a long-term, slow burn existential crisis that only recently started to settle into a stable state. All of life is moral compromise, I think. It sucks and I’m sorry, but it would be too hard to stop and I’m just sort of accepting that now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MperorM</author><text>I would like to thank all the wonderful people like you who created such amazing products for me to use. I am sorry to hear that you have experienced mental anguish due to this. From my perspective you should feel pride and accomplishment from having contributed to helping millions of people every day.&lt;p&gt;I get dozens of questions answered each day through your search engine that before would go unanswered. (my last question was: &amp;quot;how does a digital scale work?&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;I get to write beautiful documents, spreadsheets and presentations that I can easily share with colleagues, who in turn, easily can provide feedback and comments inside the documents themselves.&lt;p&gt;I tracked the length of my last run with only my phone using android and maps, something that otherwise would have been difficult to do.&lt;p&gt;My family easily collects photos of our holiday together in a single shared space.&lt;p&gt;These are just the first things that came to mind I used google for in the last week. Whatever evils google do, you do at least as much good as well.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s absurd to me that you are feeling guilt because of this. I can&amp;#x27;t tell you what to feel, but people like you have made my life significantly better and I want to express thankfulness for that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: As a Facebook or Google engineer, do you consider your company evil?</title><text>Amid the severe backlash that tech companies currently face (Google and FB amongst others), how do you consider your own company from a moral POV?
Do you think the current backlash is justified?&lt;p&gt;No judgement, just curious.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway22349</author><text>Googler. Yes, I think the backlash is all deserved. I’ve been here for many years, since back when any criticism was still very niche, and at the beginning it was different. Obviously morally superior to working at a bank, and more meaningful than working on Snapchat for Sourdough Starters or similar dumb startups. Now it’s no better than the banks, and they’re even chasing military contracts. And the work is largely pointless tedium.&lt;p&gt;I’ve thought of leaving for years. Problem is: I have a wife who doesn’t work, two kids, piles of debt, and live in the most expensive city in the country. We can’t just leave, our whole life is here. And moving to a bank now to make more money (if I even would, the tenure and promotions do pile up) means working harder and more hours. That comes out of spending time with my young kids.&lt;p&gt;I spent a couple of years having a tough time with this. It genuinely caused a long-term, slow burn existential crisis that only recently started to settle into a stable state. All of life is moral compromise, I think. It sucks and I’m sorry, but it would be too hard to stop and I’m just sort of accepting that now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway_g_67</author><text>Another Googler here, thanks for saving me the typingm&lt;p&gt;Yes, Google does unethical things. This sucks and I feel uncomfortable supporting it. Quitting is just too costly in terms of personal cost and would not have much effect.</text></comment>