Throughout my career I have tried my best to avoid work in industries that I consider as doing harm, e.g. oil & gas, defence and financial services companies like JP Morgan that have a large prescence locally.

In the last few years I have worked for a cloud consultancy with similar values, however, I have still found myself working on projects for clothing companies that I would consider as fast-fashion with questionable supply chains.

I am starting to wonder if I need to take my skillset in another direction to find more meaningful work. I took an interest in C# and microservices in the past and while that has worked out well for me, it seems to have locked me into a very enterprise world with values that rarely align to my own.

Has anyone faced a similar dilemna? Basically, I am struggling to find my Ikigai as I do not feel like the world needs the work that I am doing.

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    Lol of course. Being an engineer is like being a lawyer. You can do ethical work for very little money and a massive amount of time and a ton of competition or you can sell your soul for time with your family and a roof over your head

  • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    My hypothesis is that as long as work is kept as a mandatory thing for humans, most of it will be unethical.

  • retrieval4558@mander.xyzEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I work in healthcare, so yeah, kinda. It’s tough trying to do the most amount of good possible in a very unethical system overall.

    • Papercrane@feddit.deEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I think healthcare is a good balance. Obviously it’s still expensive but it helps people in need and can better society. But maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt because I program medical devices

      • Dojan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        The prospect of programming medical devices terrifies me. Like it obviously needs doing, and I have nothing against the act itself. But like, I know I’m fallible, I know that the code I write isn’t perfect. What if a device I programmed were to break down and cause someone else’s death?

        I don’t know. I’m a bit neurotic, but the idea is terrifying.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          This is exactly why I got out of healthcare IT, it wasn’t my fault half the products used by the hospital were outdated crap but i felt horrible whenever they would break and I was struggling to get this equipment/system working again that was used to diagnose or treat people’s life threatening conditions.

          Now I work in an absolutely unethical business but at least no lives are dépendant on my work

        • Papercrane@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          That’s why there are rules set in place to make the software secure as possible. Checking everyone a value gets set and throwing the whole device in error Mode of something fails. And then there are unit tests, ISO, the hardware is also very secure to make sure a battery doesn’t explode or there is no super high current and stuff like this. Tbh I’m just a junior dev so I might not have the biggest grasp on the concepts but I’m pretty sure med devices do more good than harm

          • Dojan@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Absolutely, but there’ll always be outliers. Someone didn’t properly vet the PR because it was late on a Friday and they wanted to go home. Maybe it was a tricky piece of logic, or a poorly documented method that had some sort of side effect. Perhaps management had bought into AI hype and let a LLM deal with the PRs…

            I always loop back thinking about Therac 25, which hopefully wouldn’t happen in today’s society, but who can say?

  • Dojan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I think one has to strike a balance really. I’ve worked with

    • Developed various sales related tools for a Stellantis owned car manufacturer
    • A resource management system for the government of a particular population
    • Planning tools for a mining company
    • CRM related stuff for a “green tech” company
    • Various tools for government sectors

    Like none of it is world changing, and some are a bit more questionable. Mining isn’t exactly environmentally friendly, though the company I did work for is arguably one of the “greenest”, and environmental sustainability is a big thing for them right now. As it should be for everyone.

    I have some hard line stances though. I don’t want to work with the military. I don’t want to work with medical stuff, (out of fear that code I’d written somehow kills someone). I don’t want to work with companies that overtly exploit people (online casinos, mobile apps/games and that kind of BS). I’d say JP Morgan qualifies for that last bit.

    • kugel7c@feddit.deEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Always has been, especially since we have offshore banking and banking secrecy laws. Not that credit was ever particularly ethical. Neither investment banking tbh.