
Ask HN: Ethical Software Jobs? - _bxg1
A large portion of visible software companies these days live in ethical gray areas. Adtech&#x2F;tracking, analysis of tracking data, fintech, social disruption, dark patterns that cultivate addiction.<p>How do you seek out software jobs that genuinely benefit society, when they tend to be the ones making fewer headlines? Applications that are useful, non-manipulative, and don&#x27;t cause social harm. Do particular languages have higher or lower adoption in these kinds of companies? Are there keywords or specialized job sites? What signifiers could be looked for?
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bmalehorn
It sounds like you're skeptical about companies that affect people's habits.
So avoid these terms:

\- finance

\- advertising

\- entertainment

I'd focus on companies that sell to other businesses. Changing the habits of
businesses is usually considered a good thing.

And sell something less abstract. If you sell laptops, routers or office
chairs, nobody's going to think you're a bad person. Just maybe a bit boring.

Software-only products are all about information. It's about gathering
information about people (gray area) or understanding lots of information
about people (gray area). So work for a company that does something in the
physical world.

~~~
_bxg1
> skeptical about companies that affect people's habits

I would rephrase as companies whose express intent is to manipulate people's
habits for their own gain. Entertainment is fine as long as it's done in
relative good-faith (not gambling or manipulative microtransactions). Though
the game dev sphere isn't a great job market right now for unrelated reasons.

> It's about gathering information about people (gray area) or understanding
> lots of information about people (gray area).

That's a very narrow lens. Software can also be about gathering and
understanding information about the non-human world, for scientific reasons or
otherwise. It can be about empowering people to manage and utilize their own
information. It can be about empowering people to create new information. The
key question is whether or not the intent is to make someone's life worse in
order to make money.

~~~
bmalehorn
> I would rephrase as companies whose express intent is to manipulate people's
> habits for their own gain. Entertainment is fine as long as it's done in
> relative good-faith (not gambling or manipulative microtransactions).

Wondering - is Netflix a good company? On one hand, they're a straightforward
entertainment company, but on the other hand they optimize content and
suggestions on maximizing viewing hours. Their goal is to change habits to
watch more and more Netflix.

How about Apple? They sell hardware and software that people like and they try
to respect user privacy. But they design their software to aggressively lock
users into their own platform and prevent them from trying competitors.

> It can be about empowering people to manage and utilize their own
> information. It can be about empowering people to create new information.

This is almost exactly Google's mission statement, but most people here would
put Google in the gray area.

My point is, almost no company's goal is to make peoples' lives worse. But all
companies are fundamentally trying to manipulate people to buy more of their
product. The question is if most customers feel good about the company after
the transaction, if they feel like they were manipulated "too much".

~~~
_bxg1
Netflix is a good example, because it can be contrasted with Hulu. Netflix
uses aggressive dark patterns like auto-playing trailers to push content on
you; people have repeatedly asked for the option to turn these off and Netflix
refuses, because it gets people to watch more. They've made the express choice
to rob their users of agency for the sake of increasing engagement. Hulu, on
the other hand... doesn't do that. I'm not saying they're saints, but their
interface respects user-agency.

------
smt88
One way to measure the value of software is how much human work it replaces.

If your customer is a business, that means how many jobs it replaces. So with
a high bar for "socially harmless," you may be limited to consumer software.

At scale, I can't think of much consumer software that's profitable and
doesn't rely on ads. Off the top of my head, some examples would be Photoshop,
Dropbox (though their board includes at least one war criminal), and Firefox.

It's genuinely hard. Good luck.

~~~
_bxg1
I wouldn't say that increasing business efficiency is _necessarily_ an ethical
problem, even if it theoretically eliminates jobs. There's always natural
turnover as humanity progresses where certain jobs get eliminated and others
get created. I think the key differentiator is to not push that wheel too
quickly; it becomes a problem when a whole job field gets disrupted overnight,
as opposed to over the course of years where people have the time to
transition (and retire and enter the workforce).

In fact, some of the most straightforwardly value-creating companies I've seen
are B2B; things like Basecamp: [https://basecamp.com/](https://basecamp.com/)

Other areas that seem to not be (inherently) problematic:

\- Embedded

\- Tooling

\- Communication

\- Industrial

\- Scientific

