Google.<p>Consider:<p>- donations to climate deniers such as CEI<p>- work on totalitarian tools such as project dragonfly or PRISM<p>- sabotage of competitors, e.g. breaking search and YouTube on Firefox<p>- feigning investment to steal ideas<p>Of course, in big companies, bad stuff is bound to happen every now and then. I just think that the above can't be explained away as isolated mishaps, because it happened (or is still happening) over long periods of time, involving many people (quite a few of which resigned as a consequence).<p>Similar criticism can obviously be leveled at the other big players, and I wouldn't work for, say, Facebook either.<p>On the other hand, I wouldn't expect, say, Microsoft, to develop a dystopian search engine for an authoritarian regime.<p>Surely, most people who are working at Google do so without contributing to any sinister purpose (unless you consider ads evil I guess). I just feel there are other companies with considerable impact where I wouldn't have to worry as much about potential abuse of what I'm building.
To get this started: Palantir. I know the world, and myself, may change; but I choose to believe that I would never work for "defense" or the military-industrial complex.<p>It could become inconsistent as a position in the long term, as we might be headed towards a future in which most leading IT companies collaborate with the military-industrial complex via contracts in some way or other. Hopefully not, though, and until then I'll refrain from working for companies that are explicitly in that space.
Any company which makes money out of others misfortune - this includes gambling, military/defense, finance, etc.<p>I want to look back on my career and say I made a POSITIVE impact on the world somehow.
Figure Eight (formally Crowdflower). They hire people and then lay them off 6 months later, on a regular basis. They have tons of burried negative reviews on glass door, but since they pay Glass Door, it's hard to find them or even get them publishrd. They also have big military contracts doing some of the AI bigger shops won't do because of the bad press.
I’ve just got one; EqualExperts. They’re a bit like thought works in the UK. I went to them when I needed work and was told I didn’t have enough years experience in the industry.<p>The issue with this was that someone I used to work with, who was a little older, had significantly less. He’d moved from being a junior developer, and not a particularly good one, to being paid a decent amount more with a fast track interview experience.<p>I wasn’t as strong of a developer as I am now and I’m happy to admit that, but I asked them if they were willing to give me the technical test anyway and use that to judge. Nope. I was too inexperienced because I didn’t have 8 or more years as a developer.<p>EqualExperts, you can permanently fuck off from now on.
I'd never say never. If the choice is between working for a bad company or starving and becoming homeless I'd choose the former. Companies I avoid working for include casino and online gambling sites and companies in the fossil fuel industry.
It might be interesting to split this questions into two:<p>(1) Which companies would you never work for due to ethical reasons<p>(2) Which companies would you never work for due for non-ethical reasons (e.g. poor leadership, bad work/life balance, dying industry, etc).<p>It seems like most people are answering (1), which is cool, but I'm also curious about (2).
Well, no specifics, but any company responsible for creating malware, or selling software to totalitarian regimes for enforcing unjust laws against the public would be places I'd never work for.<p>Probably any operating in the tobacco industry too, though other 'vices' wouldn't be off the list there.