I agree, but that assessment is open to interpretation. Build software for self driving cars that displaces a workforce? Automate a segment of the economy that makes a workforce obsolete? Build actuary software that helps analysts decline claims based on health conditions? Write some computer vision algorithms to be used in surveillance software?
You guys are kinda overreacting. No one is gonna track down and kill dozens of engineers, i really don't think it would even be possible to do hundreds or thousands of hits like that without being caught or stopped. This is about the people that _make the projects_. The person who _decided to obsolete an entire workforce_ is infinitely more culpable than a level one engineer who made an API. I mean just look, this guys the literal CEO, i think if we see anything more it'll be other top executives. For better or for worse you're almost certainly safe just working on a team.
But also, why would you want to participate in the active ruining of people's lives. If you realize your work is doing that you have a choice, bear responsibility for the suffering of thousands of people upon your soul and face the consequences, or leave. It's not like we're felons fighting to get hired at wendys. Jobs exist, we have 401k's and stock plans and get paid insaaaane amounts of money. Simply be responsible with your financial savings so that you can be responsible with your work. None of this applies if your financially troubled. But financially troubled people aren't the ones building the abstracted death camps and job eating machinery.
Aside from workforce automation I would hesitate to work on any of those problems. I also recognize that workforce automation has significant impact on the people whose work is automated away and I would prefer we as society took better care of people, but I feel like that is a different class of harmful than the other examples.
Yeah its tough. One that doesn't get though about as much is libraries/frameworks or generic technology that can be plugged into these projects. If one of these firms had to reinvent a message broker or event streaming framework or front-end/UI library everytime they built something it'd not be profitable.
