I wish the morality section were more direct - either admitting that the author has no issue with "grey areas" (a euphemism if I've ever seen one) or that money outweighs their moral concerns. That would feel more intellectually honest.
When it comes to the morality of work, I think it's okay to be selfish with your ideals - whether that means prioritizing money over ethics or refusing to engage with something that conflicts with your values, regardless of your actual personal impact. I have no problem accepting that it's not my responsibility to make ICE more ethical.
A lot of technical people seem to have no trouble with casually glossing over the ethics and morality of what they work on. Even here on HN, I regularly get downvotes for suggesting maybe developers should have some kind of ethical baseline below which they will refuse projects. Nope. Technical complexity, challenge, opportunity to learn a new technology, opportunity to do cutting edge research, and of course a fat stack of stock... all of these things routinely help us to justify working on the Torment Nexus. "Oh, I'm just moving protobufs around, I'm not the one doing evil with them" they will say. Or, instead, you'll see the justification: "Hey, I have five kids to feed. I can't just quit my job! Gotta do what boss tells me to do." This is how we slowly ended up where we are today with surveillance everywhere and coercion and behavior modification built into every tech product.
Personally, my favorite one is when someone with salary and clear ability to get a new job whenever they want claims it is "privileged" to reject a job on moral reasons. Their kids would go hungry if they had ... very high salary, just a little bit lower.
I have seen real world people refuse positions on moral grounds. It does exist and morally dubious positions pay what they do because they have to.
Can’t expect most individuals to decline a paycheck. However you can organize workers at these kinds of workplaces for real leverage (collective rather than individual, just like ownership and management does)
I have seen real world people refuse morally dubious positions in tech. We are not talking about "going hungry" vs "salary". We are talking about "having very very high salary" vs "having very high salary" here.
It is absolutely ok to blame people who do immoral stuff for more money. Pick pocketers do immoral stuff for more money too, it is really the same thing.
Right here in this post you have no trouble ignoring any real concern using a meme instead while declaring that it's everyone else's fault for "glossing over" things.
I think you would find they're not glossing over anything, you are just uninterested in any details since your value system already has a conclusion you're not going to change your mind about.
When it comes to the morality of work, I think it's okay to be selfish with your ideals - whether that means prioritizing money over ethics or refusing to engage with something that conflicts with your values, regardless of your actual personal impact. I have no problem accepting that it's not my responsibility to make ICE more ethical.