Honestly I think this speaks as much or more to the bleak prospects of entering the consumer tech sector as opposed to changing views on war. Finding work in Silicon Valley as a fresh graduate is as difficult as it's ever been; and if you want to do meaningful work that will have an actual positive impact on people's lives, well, good luck. More likely than not you'll be doing something that sucks the soul out of you in service of a company sucking the souls out of everyone else.
Morally the 'defense' industry is distasteful enough for me to stay away, but as someone also looking to enter the tech industry I don't blame anyone for looking for a lesser of evils. I can only hope things improve enough in the private sector for the choice to be clear before it's too late.
If you want to do meaningful work that will have a positive impact on people's lives... Like being elected to Congress, anyone can do it, but there are very few actual seats so almost no one gets to.
Are you excluding B2B from your "bleak prospects"? There's a lot of non-consumer tech to do out there. Defense tech will be, for the most part, soul-sucking work too. Just that some of actually does suck the souls out of everyone else.
Re-read "War is a Racket" and the words of Dwight Eisenhower.
The implications of the "defense" tech boom are horrific because the only way for this industry to achieve the hockey stick growth demanded by Silicon Valley investors is a hot war.
It's also very depressing for students to talk like it's a foregone conclusion that people must die. Youthful naivete isn't a bad thing and I much prefer the idealistic pro-Palestinian protesters to this sort of "people are going to die (and in the process I'm going to make a bunch of money)" attitude.
That's an interesting take. War is very good business for the military-industrial complex. VC profits will come from money spent. There is a gargantuan amount of waste/excess profit in the complex, I have no problem with efficiencies eating away enormous profits at the incumbents to produce large profits with overall reduced spend at new tech, but the incumbents know how to fight for their revenue so I expect increases overall.
Honestly I think this speaks as much or more to the bleak prospects of entering the consumer tech sector as opposed to changing views on war. Finding work in Silicon Valley as a fresh graduate is as difficult as it's ever been; and if you want to do meaningful work that will have an actual positive impact on people's lives, well, good luck. More likely than not you'll be doing something that sucks the soul out of you in service of a company sucking the souls out of everyone else.
Morally the 'defense' industry is distasteful enough for me to stay away, but as someone also looking to enter the tech industry I don't blame anyone for looking for a lesser of evils. I can only hope things improve enough in the private sector for the choice to be clear before it's too late.
If you want to do meaningful work that will have a positive impact on people's lives... Like being elected to Congress, anyone can do it, but there are very few actual seats so almost no one gets to.
Are you excluding B2B from your "bleak prospects"? There's a lot of non-consumer tech to do out there. Defense tech will be, for the most part, soul-sucking work too. Just that some of actually does suck the souls out of everyone else.
Re-read "War is a Racket" and the words of Dwight Eisenhower.
The implications of the "defense" tech boom are horrific because the only way for this industry to achieve the hockey stick growth demanded by Silicon Valley investors is a hot war.
It's also very depressing for students to talk like it's a foregone conclusion that people must die. Youthful naivete isn't a bad thing and I much prefer the idealistic pro-Palestinian protesters to this sort of "people are going to die (and in the process I'm going to make a bunch of money)" attitude.
That's an interesting take. War is very good business for the military-industrial complex. VC profits will come from money spent. There is a gargantuan amount of waste/excess profit in the complex, I have no problem with efficiencies eating away enormous profits at the incumbents to produce large profits with overall reduced spend at new tech, but the incumbents know how to fight for their revenue so I expect increases overall.