I went to university in Texas and so many people went to work in the Oil industry and even with an awareness of climate change issues, whenever I questioned them the answer was "Oil is a critical part of our energy infrastructure and someone will need to figure out how to get it out of the ground."
It was fair reasoning but I always thought "you are a bright engineer, you don't have to be the person figuring this out, you could be taking your skills elsewhere and hopefully the oil industry will have to settle for worse talent."
Yes, Facebook is valuable in many ways to people but do you, personally, need to be the person aiding the mining of information? If you are upset about the deleterious effects of Social why don't you work for Netflix? Or any of the other similarly compensated companies. You don't have to work for a 'social good' company but there are absolutely well paying companies out there with a neutral effect on society. Working at let's say Stitchfix or Salesforce or Microsoft doesn't make you a martyr but shit, at least it's not Facebook!
I don't think my friends are evil for working in oil but I think there are alternatives to do less evil in the world. That same MechE working on oil could find just as challenging work elsewhere. If you are a talented ChemE how about working on batteries or pharmaceuticals (even tho that industry is shitty for other reasons, the output at least helps people stay alive.)
LOL that's so me; I am not perfect. My partner went vegan a few years ago while she was eating a filet mignon at our anniversary dinner and just said "I'm not eating meat anymore."
I don't eat meat at home now but I definitely get it when I'm out at a restaurant. Eeek. Occasionally she gets all 'cmon man' but usually it's OK.
It was fair reasoning but I always thought "you are a bright engineer, you don't have to be the person figuring this out, you could be taking your skills elsewhere and hopefully the oil industry will have to settle for worse talent."
Yes, Facebook is valuable in many ways to people but do you, personally, need to be the person aiding the mining of information? If you are upset about the deleterious effects of Social why don't you work for Netflix? Or any of the other similarly compensated companies. You don't have to work for a 'social good' company but there are absolutely well paying companies out there with a neutral effect on society. Working at let's say Stitchfix or Salesforce or Microsoft doesn't make you a martyr but shit, at least it's not Facebook!
I don't think my friends are evil for working in oil but I think there are alternatives to do less evil in the world. That same MechE working on oil could find just as challenging work elsewhere. If you are a talented ChemE how about working on batteries or pharmaceuticals (even tho that industry is shitty for other reasons, the output at least helps people stay alive.)