They can and do!

The end result is that they're fired from Google for being too uppity about raising ethical issues.

Let's be honest, there's also a lot of money involved.

Who wants to trade their nice, comfortable, upper middle class lifestyle, in favor of joining the lines with the middle class or maybe even the poor depending on what happens? Jobs that provide an that sort of lifestyle are not as plentiful as people believe. I'm really uncertain whether or not people are truly aware of how much a Google engineer can make? Contrast a family's lifestyle in the presence of that sort of salary, against the very real fact that being middle class or poor these days entails a lot of uncertainty. At least in the US.

I'm just saying that there's a lot at play here, and it takes a certain kind of person to follow his/her convictions no matter the cost. It's definitely a case where it's easy to be critical, and at the same time a bit tough to empathize. But I think empathy leads to a better understanding of some of the important human dimensions of these issues.

You don't have to work for such a company. There are plenty of employers that don't snoop or track. It isn't a part of their business model.

What you're saying here is really "everybody has a price". That's never a flattering observation.

But it's almost always true.

With education and life experience our 'prices' can change for the better. And with collective action we can make the world better than it was before us. Consider that simply being an informed, relatively independent voter is a collective action too.

Perhaps, but only if you count nonmonetary things as part of the definition of "price".

However, that doesn't make it ethically supportable.

Is there substantive evidence that studying humanities or even ethics is causal to people behaving more ethically?

No. The evidence is that ethicists are as moral as everyone else.

https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/12/10/why-arent-ethicists-mo...

I can see an interest in ethics leading to its study. Not sure how much good the reverse will do by the time the person is old enough for university.

What if you are born and raised in Israel and you've watched Hezbollah carry out terrorist attacks for the past 40 years, would you maybe not be motivated to work for an Israeli firm who claims to make software that helps fight terrorism?

I'm not saying that's what everyone's story is at NSO, but I also don't think that company is full of soulless software engineers who skipped out on humanities classes.

Hezbollah didn't exist 40 years ago.

As someone who was raised in Israel - your idea of how Israelis think of working in high-tech is a figment of your imagination.

Hezbollah sent VBIEDs to the US Embassy in Kuwait, French Embassy in Kuwait, Kuwait Airport, Kuwaiti Power Plant were all bombed in 1983, so 37 years ago, sorry, I rounded up an entire 3 years.

So par for the course for 90% of the comments here.

How do stereotypical Israelis think of working in high tech?

What if you grew up in a communist state and watched the network of secret police and neighbor spies regularly bully and make people disappear when they heard anti-party, anti-authoritarian, and otherwise unconforming viewpoints?

"Everyone" never falls into any one category anywhere, but are you somehow suggesting that the engineers at these organizations are somehow exceptionally more in tune with ethics and the humanities than the rest? Because we are deficient across the board.

Software Engineers do study humanities. But, you know, there is big money involved.

Really? I can’t imagine the software engineers making better than average. I imagine this is where all the mediocre developers go. A top notch developer could go anywhere; why would they choose ... government surveillance tools?

Have you even considered the possibility that perfectly intelligent people simply might not always share your beliefs or values?

This entire sub-thread is so absurd. I can't tell if it's a wisecrack that people have run with, tongue in cheek, or if its lack of self-awareness is truly genuine.

"If everyone wrote more book reports on 'Catcher in the Rye', then no one would take jobs in the defense industry"? Come ON, people.

Some probably find it to be an interesting challenge.

Whether morality is learnable is something the ancient Greeks were already unsure of.