theunitofcaring:

Apparently employees at Amazon are protesting the company selling their facial recognition tech to law enforcement and ICE. And Google saw a dozen employees resign when it came out that they were working with the military on drone strike tech, and have since ended the program.

I’m super excited about this. Software engineers at Google and Amazon (and Facebook, and Apple) have a ton of leverage. They’re in incredible demand and can get a job anywhere. The companies are terrified of losing their competitive edge, and consider it really important to be a place people want to work. It took a dozen resignations at Google to get them to fold on the drone program (and lots more expressions of outrage). If you’re a software engineer at a major tech company, you have 1/12 enough power to cancel a partnership with the military.

I think you should use it. Figure out where your ethical lines are, and then make it into a PR nightmare when your company crosses them. Quit, and leak your letter of resignation to Gizmodo. A dozen other tech companies will sling high-paying jobs at you within two weeks, I promise, and you won’t be working on bombing civilians in Afghanistan or on helping ICE. You do, actually, personally, have the power to change this. You can hit where it hurts because you are where it hurts; these companies care about attracting talent more than they care about anything else.