I knew someone who works for a major tobacco company. Nothing fancy, his job is basically just to ensure convenience stores and shops in his sales region stay stocked with his firm's brands. I don't know anyone who is more loyal to their employer than he is.<p>My uncle was also a corporate pilot for a major defense contractor. He worked there for 30 years. His wife had a advanced breast cancer but they kept him on payroll for two years while he took care of her until she passed. He was able to back to work and stayed there until he retired.<p>Perhaps these companies have to show more loyalty to their employees to stay competitive while cleaner industries can afford churn. This can cause employees to show the same loyalty in return.
Most of the time it's just that your concept of "vilified" doesn't match theirs.<p>I don't see an issue with smoking, with gambling, with oil and gas, with porn or really any of this stuff.<p>It's just not that big a deal to me. And yeah, I know that tobacco companies intentionally make cigs more addictive. Everyone with half a brain does.<p>By contrast I think that privacy is more important than all of the so I'd never work at GooSoft.<p>Outside of hyper judgemental political circles generally no-one really cares what you do. Journalists seem to really get off on claiming that their opinion is "the" opinion, though.
I was a sub-consultant on a few projects for Phillip Morris, the tobacco company. The primary consultant was an architect. He ran his own firm and explained that where he worked before he went out on his own, PM was a client and they basically kept his old company afloat during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and prevented himself and a lot of his coworkers from being laid off, so he felt some gratitude for that.<p>The headquarters / factory seemed like a really nice place to work, all things considered. There was a great cafeteria with discounted, healthy, fresh food. Everything seemed clean and well organized. Apparently the pay / benefits were good for the area. It also smelled heavenly. (I quit smoking many years ago, but fresh tobacco smells good, not like cigarette smoke.)<p>I think for the most part, businesses exist because they serve a need people have. If they don't, they go out of business. You can rail against fossil fuels, but people still need to drive to work and heat their homes and there aren't other good options that are available yet on a scale that can replace everything. Until there are, we're going to continue having to use fossil fuels, so vilifying the people who provide them doesn't do much good.<p>I do wonder how anyone justified working at Purdue Pharma, though.
Feeding your family is your #1 priority. Everything else is a distant second.<p>The survival instict of a human overpowers all others, any other discussion on this topic is just empty intellectualization.<p>Do you really think any sane human would be like<p>"Sure my kids won't be able to go to college, I'll work 2 shitty jobs and our house will be taken away by the bank, but hey, atleast I'll be able to brag before my collegues how good of a person I am".
Maybe this is specific to natural resources but as someone who grew up in area that was economically based on a vilified industry AND started my career in said industry, the VI is regionally normalized when all of your friends, family, and neighbors also work in that industry. The people doing the vilifying are generally outsiders and thus dismissed.<p>People in coal country work in coal, people in places with a lot of oil work in oil, etc.
a great of this I suspect is post hoc rationalisation - we find a higher order rationale to explain our choice (presuming availability of choice) of employer, in order to preserve our self perception of being a moral actor, when we likely made the decision mainly on practical grounds.<p>Engineers might also have this mental process to make - would you work for Palantir (example) and build spyware for the CIA? You might for the money, and then explain to yourself that its for good of country
For six months one time I rented a room in the massive London house of a psychiatrist who had just spent a year working for the UK government. Though he never went into detail about what it entailed, he intimated to me at times that he had made an absolute fortune in that period, which had enabled him to buy outright what was practically a mansion in one of the most expensive areas of one of the most expensive cities in the world.<p>Yet he hinted to me a couple of times that he was haunted by what he had done in that year. I shall always wonder!
In a university lab that had sponsors/prospectives and VIPs coming through for demos almost every day, one time, visitors from a major name in tobacco were being scheduled.<p>An official said something about students not having to meet with these particular visitors if they really objected, and voiced the example that some students may have had a relative die from lung cancer.<p>I volunteered to demo, with my price being that I then didn't have to meet with visitors from one particular tech company. (Who in the past had stood out, as individuals, as uniquely non-collegial, out of everyone who'd come through.)<p>So, I met with the visitors from big tobacco company, and they all turned out to be nice and humble, a bit quieter than average.<p>One bit that stuck was when I started demoing a Web prototype, with an example that included an article about cats (mild dry humor about cats being standoffish, or something like that). There was a slight genuine earnestly plaintive note in the voice of one who interjected, "I like cats...". Which of course was ambiguous, but which made me instantly wonder whether the student before me had given them the cold shoulder, or they otherwise felt defensive or hurt.<p>I thought the tobacco company people were fine, and I wouldn't read too much into where someone worked. Today, when I hear of someone working at one of the companies that I dislike, I've stopped thinking "what is wrong with that person, to work there", but more hoping that whatever evil might be in the DNA of the company doesn't end up treating that particular employee poorly.
I worked in defense for a while and have zero problem with it. Someone else might vilify it, but it just seems naive to imagine that eliminating all of it is even remotely possible.<p>I have a much bigger problem with my skills being used in the past to work on advertising tech.
I would think it depends also on your sense of responsibilty. For some people, the person building a missile has as much responsibility as the person who fires it. Other people might look at it as being entirely the fault of the person who fired it, and therefore there being nothing wrong in building it. The latter would not really care about whether he's building missiles or selling tobacco as the buck stops with the end customer.
So... I took at job at BP. I’d rationalised it as me being paid stupid money, and probably not contributing much because most software projects and large non-tech orgs are stupid wastes of time lead by non-technical people with insufficient skills in building software and I’d just be a cog in some SCRUM machine.<p>Then nature decided to warn me of its power by breaking my ribs on both sides while I was trying to learn to surf about a week before I started. But the killer for me was really learning that BP’s original name was British-Persian and is the main reason that the democratic government of Iran was deposed, the Shah re-installed and the Islamic Revolution happened leading to the regime that exists in Iran to this day.<p>The combination of physical pain, sudden awareness of deeply troubling political context and a warning from nature caused me to re-evaluate and take a contract with a crappy bank instead. Although to be honest, the realisation that I was actually going to be working on something useful and well-thought out also caught me off guard. (I do normally work extremely hard to have a positive impact, but had rationalised my involvement as being likely to have no impact.)<p>I actually know the work environment at BP would have been much much better than the bank.<p>Perhaps at those companies, bad managerial practices get exposed very easily, because the employees won’t stick around? Perhaps they can also afford to pay more due to the reduced competition in ‘evil’ industries. A good work environment and the ability to support your family without constantly getting involved in death-march development definitely goes a long way.
I work in a vilified industry (gambling). I work there as they pay a very well, excellent medical insurance for my family, and other benefits. We mainly make our money from rich people, so if they loose money gambling. I don't worry about it much.
Is it money? I can't tell since I'm paywalled. But I feel like it's got to be money.<p>You have to pay people MORE to work in bad industries, since there are a lot of people who won't want to work there.<p>You can pay people less in fun industries, even if there is a lot of profit. Like video games. Look at Blizzard.
As many comments said, not everyone has the same list of "vilified" industries. I wouldn't expect to find a vegan working at KFC or a very religious person in the porn industry. But it's only based on their own moral & principles. Not something intrinsic to these industries.<p>What I will add and what I find ironic is : the "journalists" at the economist virtue-signaling with such articles from a position of moral superiority when it can be argued that one of the biggest pollution of our time is mental pollution, with the kind of articles their colleague in the publishing/media industry are doing...
Good question, but poor answers. There's not much in the discussion of it, and what is, is really shallow (these industries are legal so that means it's fine to work for them! this also happens to be the ideology that funds the Economist)
I did a job for a "famous fried chicken chain" in the US once, and the end-goal was to "increase consumption of 'heavy users' from 3x a week to 4x a week". They didn't even bat an eye at their use of "heavy users".<p>Maybe that's why I'm now working in the medical space...??
Why they would not work there? Most people are happy to get a job that pays rent and living expenses. Have you seen rents recently? If you can choose your employer based on some arbitrary criteria, you are quite privileged!
Let me provide my take since I qualify: I don't vote with my employment or even wallet mostly. I don't accept solutions that don't address the root cause of a problem. If an industry is harmful then isn't it a government's role in society to regulate or disband that industry? We live in a society and it isn't the duty of the common man to regulate corporations, in a society of rule of law it is the government's role to do that.<p>Many people that want to work at a company that makes a difference or whatever are speaking from a position of luxury and leisure. When you grow up seeing poverty and your loves ones suffering needlessly and even then you are still much more privileged than those in 3rd world countries who literally die from starvation and have to hold their babies and rock them to their last sleep before dying of malnutrition you can appreciate a bit more what employment means.<p>I have a responsibility to do well for myself more than anything else. And next to that to care for those that mean most to me. My employment is a means to those ends. I have my priorities set right.<p>Tobaccon? Climate change? Pharmaceutical industry (glorified drug dealers), crypto (pro scammers) you name it I will work for them if it is the best way to acheive my goals. Most industries, including tech do a lot of things that are harmful to society because they too have their priorities straight with profit being number one.<p>I live in the US which is arguably the most poweful government on the planet. We can talk about politics and political participation to enable laws and restrictions that prevent harmful practices borh by corporations and individuals but my employment is a business relationship and as such my priority is profit.<p>I do not for one second buy into the bullshit "we care" crap from corporations which is maliciously incentivized to prop up social causes and weaponize businesses as tools for socio-political conflict.<p>It is your job as a voter in a democracy to convince your peers and elect officials that affect change. Period. If that isn't happening then I am open to discussion inculding and up to using violence to enable change.<p>Stop thinking as a half minded capitalist and practice proper politics where the root cause lies. Money affects politics so do well and if you care that much spend your money and free time on political causes. You can even work in indistries you dislike so you can understand your adversary from the inside out well so you know exactly what policies to support politically.<p>Look at tech for example, you can avoid working for google because of their anti-privacy practices or you can work for them and do your job really so that when you support a poltical candidate or attempt to convince your fellow citizens you are an exper insider on the subject matter!<p>That's my perspective and I am open to discourse and discussion on the subject.<p>My counterpoint to those of you who avoid working in harmful industries: so long as you live in a democracy how are you any less responsible for allowing harmful industries to continue to harm? Do you do your best politically to affect change? The what else can reasonably be expected from you? Are we to live as hermits that come our from our eco friendly progressive isolated bubbles only to complain about the left and the right before casting a vote on election and day and retrearing back into our bubbles??