Ask Lemmy

Money helps a surprising amount.

I get another job obviously.

Needing to put food on your table is a good motivator.

Also - you might want to check something - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_open_source Even allowing for the three Es, MS has employed a number of people who worked exclusively on FOSS projects.

I used to work for health insurance. I hated the job with a passion.

The way I dealt with it was simple. Each day I tried to push just a tiny bit in a good direction. And when that didn't work, every day I would put out a resume. Eventually I did get a job outside the industry and it was amazing.

Each day you have a bad day, put out a resume. Its a numbers game, eventually you get lucky.

It's easy to turn a blind eye when things are going well in your personal life. It's the central theme of "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45"

i wouldn't judge someone for this. there just aren't a lot of options 😔

I don't. I always consider a company's policies before I hop on-board. If they don't have a solid DEI policy, for example, I'm not interested. Companies who don't embrace DEI tend to have toxic managers in my experience.

I took an almost 50% pay cut leaving a job once. I received training, skills and equipment and I use those to support things I am aligned with. Now I work a job that doesn't pay as well and isn't quite so reprehensible, then on the side I assist in-need charities and groups.

I assume FOSS dudes taking Microsoft money can at least steer the ship to try to funnel more effort to those programs or at least use the insider knowledge to improve the code base overall.

ITT: Some people would rather face privation than compromise their morals, some would not. Saved you some time.

Feeding ones' family

Unionize

next question

Take their money. Give your very best every moment you're at work. And find a job that you can better live with. Or better yet, build one.

Your first priority should always be to take care of and protect yourself and your family. Build systems that enable you to be as self-reliant as practicable. You can't help others if you, yourself, are are constantly being knocked flat on your ass.

If the company is doing crime, document and blow the whistle. If it's evil in a way that doesn't have legal consequences, try to start a union so they fire you, then cost them as much money as you can with lawyers.

(a) Organizations and Conferences

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences ...

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision—raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

(c) Office Workers

(1) Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.

(2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.

(3) Misfile essential documents.

(4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done.

(5) Tell important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.

(6) Hold up mail until the next collection.

(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.

(d) Employees

(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job ...

(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can ...

(3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.

(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.

(5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

(6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

(7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.

(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.

(9) Misroute materials.

(10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.

(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion

(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.

...

(c) Act stupid.

(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.

(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.

...

(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion ...

...

(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.

I don't?

I mean, as long as I'm not directly working on a weapon, its fine. Every job you do for money is contributing to the GDP and indirectly supporting your country, any corruption, police brutality, human rights violations, persecution, war, everyone is contributing to it in some way.

The only way to truly decouple yourself from the system is going offgrid and farming for yourself, otherwise, everyone is complicit, we are all "sinners" in this world.

The Good Place talks about this. You buy a random tomato and you are contributing to climate change, you lose points for it, you end up in "hell" (The Bad Place).

I don't need to because I wouldn't get a job there in the first place

Poison the well.

Slowly.

I fucking don't.

If it's the only job you can get you make it work.

Its quite simple, I know what I will eventually get a better job ideally at a business with an IWW affiliated union

I don't think a weapons manufacturer is comparable to qualcomm or microsoft personally. I believe in foss and democracy but im not anti proprietary tech I just don't think people or governments should use them. There are certainly corps I would less want to work for. I mean I still work on windows machines even though I now run primarily on linux and im not even sure if any phones don't use qualcomm chips.

Public sector

I would never

Ive had enough choice to be able to pick companies with culture I agree with, at least for a few years until i got sick of it.

Most people dont have that luxary, which must be soul killing.

This is part of why I went into accounting. Can do it at any company, don't need to work anyplace I think is evil, every organization uses this skill set, most everyone needs something accounted for.

But - when my oldest wanted to go into physical therapy work I pushed hard for her to do the training in the Army because she could easily meet the physical requirements, they pay you while training instead of you paying for school, and yes you are indentured for 7 years while you get the best possible training, but are not used in the field just in the hospitals in safe areas, and don't do anything evil just help people. She could not countenance it but I still think she'd be better off, would have finished all that by now. So I guess I have still no problem rationalizing working for an evil empire if you are doing something good for people, and getting good pay and training for yourself, that you can then take out into the world to do good and make money.