You’re missing the point. It’s not about whether or not you can pat yourself on the back on your deathbed for not working for google. The point is that if we want to make a meaningful difference to stop google, it takes more action than inaction.
All it takes is for a few good people to do nothing...
By leaving Google, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, the engineers are lowering the mean moral compass of the engineering base.
Additionally, leaving a secure, well-paid role in political protest takes a certain amount of privilege. My father left an amazing job in protest over immoral actions and I can assure you that it had huge financial impacts on my life growing up. I respect him for his decision and I like to think I'd make the same one, however, I can understand how people even less fortunate aren't making political choices with their employment.
> By leaving Google, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, the engineers are lowering the mean moral compass of the engineering base.
Good.
It's not like a good, ethical developer is going to change things from the inside. Companies are not democracies, they are dictatorships.
So what if Google has no good and moral developers left? At least it will become more obvious what Google truly is while the 'good' developers can make a positive contribution elsewhere. It was clearly never going to happen at Google anyway, not with a incentives a publicly-traded company has.
I would much prefer Google to be manned entirely by the kinds of people I wouldn't dream of inviting into my home. I'm already against the company's existence, so Google having nobody left with a shred of integrity or backbone would make it a whole lot easier to argue for the company's demise, in whatever shape that may come.
All it takes is for a few good people to do nothing...