Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Does working at Adobe impact the individual 's ethics?

This seems like a case where Adobe is behaving unethically.

I wonder if long-term Adobe employees have the sense about their ethics being more flexible now, versus when they started at Adobe?



To answer your question for real: Yes, obviously.

To answer your question practically: No, it's just a job, gotta pay the mortgage. And you know companies have a legal duty to be amoral in the quest for profit, right?

We live in a time where so many people work at and/or want to work at ethically dubious large tech companies, we experience overwhelming social pressure to see them as more morally-neutral than they are.

We don't want the cogitative dissonance of hanging out with friends and spending the whole time thinking about what it means to have someone in my life that enables $foo for a living. Are you financially and emotionally ready to quit your job as soon as your employer crosses your line? You did spend time developing and reflecting on your own personal line in the sand, right? And are you're comfortable unabashedly sharing that standard over dinner to your 5 closest friends? What if one works at the place you find most-evil?


> companies have a legal duty to be amoral in the quest for profit, right?

No, they don't.


Does working at Facebook, Twitt...er,X, TikTok, or any of the other soulless companies?


It's easy for things like Adobe or Facebook or Twitter because they're mostly one thing.

The others are kind of complicated to me. They're so large that the sins kinda get diluted. How many products does Microsoft have? How many dark patterns do they need to make use of among those products before you can no longer justify working for the corporation as a whole? Can you work on Microsoft Research because the XBox Game Pass subscription cancellation is problematic? I think I could justify that to myself just fine, but I imagine that's a personal call.


I get the gist of your comment, but your specifically chosen example of Microsoft is a bad one. It's not just MS's XBox subscription is bad by itself. The recent news about the forced inclusion of Recall. The forced inclusion of ads into the OS. The horrendous data collection by MS. The list goes on and on that would put Microsoft on a egregiously morally bankrupt company on all levels.

A novel idea let down by a poor example.


I worked for Adobe and it was very much _not_ "one thing". My work there involved literally tens of thousands of software services across three major segments and hundreds of products.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: