Not everyone has the ability to act on said 'choice' and risk their jobs, income, benefits.
Also, many unethical choices are made or advocated for by engineers themselves.
“What choice do I have?” - a Google engineer who drives a brand new Tesla, living in a $10k per month apartment.
It's not that easy.
But blanket blaming all of them and saying they all have a choice is not real. Any of them on visas? How would you feel about risking not just your job but also the ability to live somewhere.
You can't blanket blame all engineers and say they all have a choice.
I have refused to implement unethical code when I earned US$8.8k/year and supported my mother (living in Brazil, beginning of my career), I believe a Google engineer has much more leeway and money sloshing around to decide it's not right to do something unethical, and be vocal about it. There's much more of a choice than I had at that time and if I managed to choose to not be an asshole doing unethical bullshit, and didn't starve my family in the process, they are pretty damn able to do it as well. Might need another job but c'mon, you have Google in your CV, jobs will come, stop being a greedy pig.
Anyone sick at home? Anyone with a visa? Any debt? Student loans? Kids?
You wouldn't just need any other job, you'd need another comparable job.
"Im used to spending too much money so in order to not getting a minimal pay cut im gonna work on unethical proyects." Isthe kind of insane thinking only people at HN seem to say without flinching.
Like at that point do not work at google, write ransomware for a company in Russia, they will pay even more money. Make bio weapons for a dictator in a civil war afflicted country of the third world. If Life style creep and your new Tesla to drive your kids to the private school is the only thing keeping you in check, you might as well trade stocks against life expectancy based on obesity reports and climate change effects on coastal areas.
Do any of them support a sick kid, spouse, parent? Any of them send money home?
All I'm saying is that some of them might not be in a situation in which they could, on a whim, risk getting fired. And we shouldn't blame them because the fix for that is not on their hands.
That also accounts for expenses.
Do any of them send money home? Help parents or grandparents? Do any of them had to bring their parents or grandparents to live with them due to health issues? Lifestyle creep takes into account taking on more debt. That debt is not just in luxury like how most people think.
Some that help their parents, some that have kids, some that have sick spouses, some that brought their parents to live with them and support them due to health issues, some that have work visas.
I am simply saying that even though the right thing to do would be refusing, you also have to consider everyone's life circumstances when they make decisions.
The fact that they make $100k, $200k, $300k like another comment said means that they don't just need a job, they need a job making roughly the same amount of money and having the same benefits to be able to risk getting fired.
My original comment I wrote it so that we wouldn't just place everyone in the same group and generalize. It's not necessarily always as easy as refusing and risking your job. You're risking whoever else you support for example.
There's also Google engineers driving Corollas and helping their parents back home with expenses.
Lifestyle creep is believing luxuries or non essentials are essentials due to now them having become part of your day to day.
I'm very sure if you are earning US$300k/year and depending on every job you get to be comparable or better you have set yourself to be fucked for life... Again, with Google on your CV you can get another job for a visa, or to pay student loans, if you depend on earning US$300k/year to just live your life you have much bigger problems.
You are trying to make it look like someone with one of the highest paid white collar jobs in the world is struggling to live and depends on earning that amount. Let's be real, it's a very, very very very small subset of people earning on that bracket that actually might have enough issues in their lives that require earning that amount (huge amounts of medical and student debt, supporting a family with disabilities [spouse, kids, etc.], etc.).
They might exist in this case, yes they might, but making that possible exception into a "think of the poor golden handcuffed employee who is being forced by some freak life situation to do this hugely unethical thing in name of their employer" excuse is not reality, in reality it's just much more likely these are people that want to keep their cushy job ingratiating their employer by making the web worse for everyone else. Greedy. Pigs.
Google engineers are not special. Everyone has a situation, and family, and bills. Everyone has a parent who will die one day. Everyone hits hard times. Everyone faces tests of character at inopportune times. Very few of those people are making $300k a year tho, and nonetheless making the rightethical choices every day. Why can't Google engineers?
That's why I said standing up for your principles is difficult. If it were easy, everyone would do it.