This could be the story of literally any large tech company today. Airbnb got its start by spamming people offering vacation homes for rent on Craigslist [1]. According to The Facebook Effect [2], Facebook was almost entirely dependent on its contact importer/spammer for its growth in its early days. On days when Hotmail blocked them for spamming, new user sign ups dropped by 80%; it was only after they cut a deal with Microsoft that included an agreement to not spam-box their emails that they continued to grow.

When you look behind the curtain of successful modern startups, virtually all of them were built on mountains of spam and bad/unethical/illegal behavior, which they then publicly decry and block on their own platforms after they become influential enough to do so. If you have issues with this, Silicon Valley probably isn't the place for you. There are plenty of tech jobs in other areas - but look away from startups, because most are employing/willing to employ extremely aggressive techniques to win.

[1] http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facebook_Effect

This simply isn't true. There are a few who did that, but they're the exception, not the rule.

Shady unicorns: Uber (too many to count), AirBNB (spam), DropBox (lied about encryption/security), The Honest Co (lied about product quality)

Not Shady unicorns: Xiaomi, Palantir, Snapchat, SpaceX, Pinterest, Spotify, DJI, Intarcia, Stripe, Vice, CreditKarma, CloudFlare, BloomEnergy, Fanatics, Slack, Blue Apron, GitHub, Domo, SurveyMonkey, BlaBlaCar, Lyft, MongoDB, Buzzfeed, Cloudera, Automatic, EventBrite, Evernote, Warby Parker, Docker...

The narrative that "everybody cheats" is just something that cheaters tell themselves, so they can pretend that their behavior was warranted.

That said, it's worth discussing these things before applying to a company, because dishonesty creates massive risk in the company, so if you hear and answer that sounds like 'downandout's, you need to devalue that company, because their lack of ethics creates risk for that particular company, and it creates reputational risk for you.

Xiaomi sent user data to China without consent. [1]

Palantir proposed an illegal campaign agaisnt Wikileaks [2] and its very industry is by its nature fairly dubious and shady, though that doesn't mean it's doing things that are strictly illegal aside from what is known.

Snapchat ignored and didn't fix various privacy and security issues. [3]

Pintrest operates in a dubious copyright gray area. [4]

Spotify pays artists very little and most money gets sent to record labels. Even labels see almost nothing. [5]

Like Uber, Lyft engages in unethical treatment of its workers. [6]

I can go on. The badness of these things varies significantly. Not all of them indicate a company is totally unethical. But I think the assertion "most Silicon Valley companies are doing at least some illegal, scammy, or otherwise unethical things in order to get ahead" is completely true.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/xiaomi-under-investigation-for-...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/style/uber-facebook-and-ot...

[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2?...

[5] http://www.hearya.com/2012/11/28/david-macias-enlightening-l...

[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/Lyft/comments/2y16r3/lyfts_highly_u... (aggregates news articles)

How is that shady? They have deals with the appropriate companies.

Buzzfeed spams the crap out of Facebook. Eventbrite & Vice had some spamming issues in the beginning as well. I'm not sure about Snapchat's growth story - they may have been a rare example of natural growth, along with Google. Most of the rest of those you're talking about aren't really the kinds of pure internet plays that are relevant to this discussion. No amount of spamming would have made Xiaomi, Palantir, SpaceX, DJI, etc any more successful, so they didn't employ these techniques.

AirBNB's CAN-SPAM violating email was clearly unethical. A media company showing up on Facebook more than you would prefer is, at worst, mildly annoying. There's an important difference.

Ethical people do not need to leave Silicon Valley. Dishonesty is not prerequisite to success. Your claims are wrong.

Again, you're implying things that I simply didn't say.

>A media company showing up on Facebook more than you would prefer is, at worst, mildly annoying

You're right, that's not spam, but that's not what I was referring to either. I'm not going to write a massive explanation here of the specific Facebook spamming techniques employed by Buzzfeed et al, but suffice it to say that they are actively and aggressively spamming to "prime the viral pump" with certain stories.

This is a stretch.

However, I decided it was ethical for the context of this conversation, because to my knowledge they don't lie to grow revenue. They claim they'll charge a huge pile of money to analyze data, and that's precisely what they do.

Almost every company is mendacious and shady.

Good God!!!

Google's growth was organic and based on a very high quality search product. The spammier search engines all basically died off.

So I disagree with your premise that Silicon Valley success is generally based on spammy or unethical behaviors. Yes there is way too much of it, but no, it's not a necessary part of success.

Is spamming/other bad behavior "necessary" for Internet success? That's an interesting question. I can only think of a small handful of successful Internet companies that magically went viral without such aggressive "growth hacking". The overwhelming evidence is that "necessary" may be a strong word, but "highly unlikely without it" is probably an accurate description.

In 5 years all this will feel natural to you like the rest of us, and your stock options would have fully vested by then.

Personally, I find ethical problems are the kind that would make me leave. Business disagreements and technical differences are one thing... but I can't support something if it directly conflicts with my personal ethics.

So if I were in your shoes, I'd frame the question in exactly that way - is this just a disagreement in style for you, or an ethical conflict?

This tends to be my experience, nice people find it very hard to start and run successful companies. The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

[edit] I keep getting down votes for stating my experience and opinion. I have no idea how the voting system on HN works. Should I avoid personal anecdotes?

Most of the businesses have to make tough decisions to survive, not all of them are fair (to users, employees, etc). However, the difference is in attitude about such decisions and frequency of them.

>> The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

Making as much money as possible is just a goal that some people set and do everything possible to achieve that. It's no different than any other goal. You don't need to absolutely maximize the monetary output of your life in order to be happy.

For me personally I totally agree. I have switched careers and taken a big cut in wages to give me more time with my family.

I have to assume that a middle of the ground company exists, but again, in my experience I have not worked for one. Some have been cottage industries happy clappy the world is kind and karma is real and others who think the customer is a chump and we can screw them out of as much money as possible.

I don't know of a universal rule for finding companies like that. But you can definitely recognize them when you see them in action.

Say that I with a couple of friends could, in 9 months or so, develop a system that would, for JC Penneys (say), save $10M or raise their sales by 1% (I think they are between $10B~$15B in annual revenue, so this would be around $100M+ revenue and at 5% margin (for example) worth about $5M to their bottom line...)

I think it would be reasonable to charge them $1M+ for this work.

One might argue (they would argue!) that 3 guys for 9 months should NOT be $1M+ -- that we were being greedy. But, I would argue that we are creating significant positive value after our fees.

Would you agree with their reasoning and disagree with mine? If so, that's fine - but I am curious as to why.

Also, you're not charging enough for your hypothetical services. What you really want to do is discount your pricing to, say, $500K but collect on revenue as part of a fee-at-risk deal, assuming you're that hypothetically confident of your hypothetical value-add.

To your 2nd point, I constructed my hypothetical badly, but regardless, I've learned that I (personally) don't like to depend on the client for accurate monthly or quarterly reports, and then have to do some anti "Hollywood accounting" measures on it, or deal with the inevitable re-org's required re-calculation. I completely understand what you are saying, but if possible, I like to make sure that the client is getting somewhere in the ballpark of at least 10:1 (pro forma, reviewed and agreed to by client) and call it a day. If I had a slightly different personality, your way can be a very (!) good way.

Some people will look for careers in industries that are known to pay more (e.g. finance), even though they don't like or even hate the industry.

For others, they just prefer a job that they actually enjoy and just enough income to support their life style and have a good level of financial safety.

None of them is unethical or wrong, just different personal preferences.

It's not everyone on HN, just a significant group. You shouldn't take it to heart.

Also, it's not uncommon for comments to get downvoted several times in the first few minutes (by people skimming New Comments), and then brought back into the black later on by more thoughtful readers getting the full context.

While I don't necessarily agree with your comment I'm glad you shared it. I appreciate hearing different opinions and ideas.

When people down vote to express disagreement with a well-articulated idea it makes HN a worse place. It silences dissent (by pushing it down on the screen and fading it).

I think HN needs to explain that downvoting isn't "I disagree with this sentiment", it's "I think this is a bad comment that detracts from the quality of the conversation". I suspect new users might not know this since it's different from many other sites.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Regardless of what the intention of the up & down vote buttons are, what matters is the reality of what the userbase interprets them to be. I've always been under the impression that a downvote on HN is only for inappropriate discourse (as it is supposed to be on reddit, but then maybe I should go double check that belief as well), rather than disagreement.

Anyone who wants to verify this (and isn't close friends with executives) should speak with salespeople, maybe lead devs... rank-and-file devs tend to be poor sources since they're often like mushrooms, left in the dark. Even salespeople in fairly scrupulous companies often discuss the systematic lies. (Lies which should conform to some rules in order not bite the company in the ass later.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

[2] Particularly since markets are the dual to religion; a rupture that created egoism and altruism.

And I have to say I was also tempted to do so.

Non the less I do believe a counter argument being more productive.

I for example know a lot of companies having a great founder and a great culture as well as values. And are (at least in the founder's eyes) quite successful.

OK they are no Google. But none the less I like working in one of these.

I can't recommend this enough. find a job you really do have the best of both worlds, and stop settling for advantage/disadvantage positions.

I worked with an awesome team, but the company was sketchy, and something tells me you're in the same industry i was... E-commerce. The team was awesome, and i still have real friends there because of it. but the management and business ethics were terrible, not to mention that non-technical folks were making technical decisions that overrode us. the hard part of leaving is that i felt trapped, that if i left, i'd be unprepared for the positions i wanted. but thankfully i was wrong.

i decided that i'd really take the time to interview companies as much, if not more than they interviewed me. asking questions i had come up with that would spot companies like this. I even cut a few interviews short because of these questions, but it helped me clarify what i wanted, and where i would be happy.

to measure out my results:

  * was already well paid, new job paid 40%-60% more(range for discretion)
  * new company actually cares about code quality, testing etc. 
  * mgmt leaves tech decisions to us.
  * better, more flexible hours.
  * smarter people than myself, things to learn, and people to learn from.(education wasn't big at my last position)
  * a bit more stressful, in a good way. I feel like i have more responsibility, and that i truly own what i do.
  * path for career growth. i can see where my next steps lead me

Best of luck OP.

I'm not sure where you all play, but I play in big Corp, with my own ethics and make a strong impact. You don't have to tow the line, sale ially if you kick ass.

If you do indeed have values / ethics that STAND OUT (as opposed to just expressed on forums / on your sleeve) and you're a solid PRODUCER, nothing else matters. Go get it man!

My experience (15 yrz in big Corp operations and now IT) is that your ethics / values "get out" on their own and make a deep impact; IF you're skilled at what you do.

Politics, and quite often outright fraud (disguised as something else, it's not at all difficult to obfuscate decisions when it comes to software), are very common in all businesses. The idea that you will win because you are correct is not necessarily true. It's probably a pretty good strategy at small startups, it could very well be career suicide at larger firms.

E.g. "kicking ass" improving infrastructure performance and having fun, then your boss asks you to delay (or never implement) certain improvements because it will be hard to justify the body shop headcount next month.

In general a large corporation is -- surprise surprise -- going to be made up of a lot of people. Some of them are going to be really passionate about doing the right thing, some of them will be happy to do what it takes to get ahead, and a lot of them are just going to want to do their job, get paid, and not worry too hard about the bigger picture. It can feel bad to be at the big evil and feel like you're being corrupted by being a part of it, but you always have the option to do what you think is right. You can stay there, work hard, and push back against the culture and attitudes you think improper. Maybe you'll make a difference. Maybe you'll give up. Maybe you'll try hard but no one will listen, and meanwhile your hard work will benefit the wrong people. Maybe you'll get fired after people get tired of you telling them how bad they are or after you refuse to do something that crosses the line.

Does this actually work for people? My experience interviewing for software engineering roles is that it's a time consuming and tedious process. I can't imagine juggling a full time job while interviewing with more than one company at a time.

After I grew dissatisfied with my first job out of college, partially because I'd just been there five years and wanted to try something else, partially for ethical reasons (the new owners were hosting fundraisers for Jenny McCarthy), I sent resumes to three companies, got a callback from one, did a phone screen, took a day off work for the interview, and then got the offer a few weeks later. Gave three weeks notice, took a month off, was at a new job about three months after I first decided to leave the old.

This is absolutely not a typical experience. In most cases, software companies are very hesitant to give you more than 3 weeks.

"Our Mission is to make money for our investors and the executives who were able to negotiate their own contracts and who control how we do business. We make money primarily by (selling products|providing services|entertaining people). Where we can do so without impacting our fiduciary responsibilities, we may attempt to do the 'right' thing - particularly in situations where we can get positive press or customer relations out of it - but that's a preference not a responsibility and may be considered part of our marketing budget."

This may seem cynical, but it's basically the way it has to be at any publicly-held company and most privately-held companies that get VC funding. If you tell investors "We're going to put social responsibility/open source ahead of repaying your investment or providing you with profits," good luck finding investors. Entities that put social responsibility, etc. higher are generally called non-profit, not-for-profit, foundation, etc. and I'm not aware of any that could be described as "a big tech company."

If you're early in your career, and you are benefiting from working on hard engineering problems with a competent team, then I would advise you to try to enjoy the ride and then switch jobs once you think you've learned all you can from your team.

As others have already explained, businesses are very frequently amoral and short-term-profit-driven. I went through my jaded-at-the-world phase, and by now I've mostly made my peace with that aspect of capitalism. I've learned that the world is often more complex than I had imagined. Sometimes, companies have to claw their way to survival through questionable means, but may still have a net positive effect on the world after enough time. And sometimes not...

If this isn't your first, or even third rodeo, and you're ready to earn instead of learn (c.f. Mark Suster) then life is too short to be unhappy with where you work. Use your skills to build something your care about in a company you respect. My $0.02

If yes, I think you should flat out refuse to do it, and start looking for another job asap.

2) Are their competitors playing fair?

Moral purists may disagree with this, but if the people being hurt by your dirty tactics, are themselves fighting dirty, I think it's fair game. There's no reason why the weaker side should handicap itself against a stronger opponent who's fighting dirty.

3) Can you do more good than harm, from the inside?

One way is by repeatedly raising this issue for broader discussion, when opportunities arise, and shaming people into more ethical behavior. Another way is by being a whistleblower. Edward Snowden did a lot more to champion privacy by working for the NSA and then being a whistleblower, than by refusing to work for the NSA at all.

----

If none of the above give you sufficient grounds to stay, then look for other companies to join in the medium term. There's no reason to rush and quit, without getting another good job lined up. And in the meantime, as a new hire, you're not really an important part of the company anyway, so you don't need to feel guilty about "enabling" anything. During your exit interview, if they ask you why you're leaving, consider telling them honestly that you don't feel comfortable working for a company that misleads its users. This just might be the most impactful thing you can do, in terms of persuading the company to change its ways.

Lastly, kudos to you for making ethical behavior a priority.

For most of them and those who chose popular stacks it's usually quite easy to get a job. Or any job. This gives them superpowers and enables them to ask for a lot--high salaries, tons of perks, free food, freedom and maybe a company with the right vision, leadership and policies.

But what they forget in all this abudance of options is that a job is a job. You can call it career, give it exciting titles and enrich it with stock options, it stays a job. You can work at Google, at a fancy office, with super smart coworkers and free a-la-carte-food everyday but it is still just a job and you are not free. And even Google has its dark sides the employees accept. Let's not start to talk about Facebook, Microsoft or Apple.

Maybe one company has shady growth tacticts (btw which successful company doesn't have them? Even Google abused all their properties to push Chrome), the next one lacks free food or uses an aged stack. Remember it's always a job. And if one doesn't like it, he might try to find a better option but shouldn't be suprised about new drawbacks. Or he could try to start his own company. A perfect one where everything is perfect for everyone. Then one will realize that many things are more complicated than they seem.

There's no perfect job.

It. Is. A. Job.

If you can't accept that you're in a job and the feeling of entitlement shines thru, that would just be whining in my book. And yes, HN, lots of that in here.

I recently changed career to become whatever I found honest just in case it would make my life different.

Well, being a human beings seems to come with a handicap we almost all have moral compass. And most of my job in IT have been in the dark side of my compass recently.

Right now, I maybe risking my body moving heavy loads with poor equipment and security, commercial making occasional mistakes forces us to do 12h continuous loading of trucks else the company bankrupts and none of us are paid BUT from my perspective it is a great improvement.

Customers are sometimes saying thanks. Coworkers are sometimes saying thanks, and boss too. We are working as a team and when everybody does his/her job correctly we have satisfactions.

A satisfaction I was missing.

And when the day is over, the job is not in my head anymore.

I can once again live a normal life, we don't scam customers, we don't break their goods, we are the most honest we can giving the stupidity of some regulations and of some dishonest customers.

And fuck, being able to feel proud again is worthy the quasi state of misery I live in.

Sometimes, money does not matter as much as feeling you are not wasting your life doing something that makes you something you will come to despise.

Feeling an honest human again worth every single $ and all my savings I lost in the conversion.

If you and other coworkers are treated fairly, then you are probably being a bit too sensitive / idealistic. Relax and view it as a challenge: learning how to deal with people that you view as too aggressive/competitive. It will serve you well in life.

Again, given the lack of detail that's my best advice... Note that I've worked at a company that stole code and got sued, so I have some experience in unethical companies and leadership.

You make a very good point here!

Every company has issues and decisions that you don't agree with for variety of reasons. So looking for some perfect company will make your life much harder than it should be.

It's just that you have to draw a line what's acceptable and what is not.

Having experience in industry (or just general professional experience) can help a lot because it allows you to compare the issues and set the line. I know that because I was wayyy too idealistic and naive at my first full time job :)

I'd just add that regardless of your decision, try to take a step back and see if you could have spotted these issues earlier, before joining so that you'd be less likely to repeat this mistake in the future. Maybe there were some red flags that you missed or downplayed?

a good book that addresses some of this is Driving Technical Change. some people you will never change, and those you can ignore. if there are enough people that you can influence you have a chance to make a difference. as long as you're strong enough to not let the negativity bring you down, this all can be a rewarding path...

It's that simple. Don't work for a company that isn't ethical. It doesn't matter if your team is great if you still have to get up and help do something unethical.

Also, be real. There are many great teams in the world, your current one is not the only one, find one at a company doing worthwhile things.

Come on bro. Unless you are in some rare Netherlands / Amazonian fair trade, employee owned, tech company who pays in angel farts, you live in a capitalistic economy.

YOU determine your own credo, your own ethics, your own constitution. Live it inside the Corp. Make that money and be a good person.

And while your at it, look up the etymology of "corporation". It's absurd to think man could "give life to a corpse in order to make money" after running that mandate through everyone's "ethics filter" first.

Ethics and values are driven by the humans not the Corp.

Finding another job with ethical practices isn't hard.

I am not a trained counselor, but:

It doesn't really matter if the policies are legal or ethical. If you feel ashamed of your work most days, that's not a good situation, and you should probably look around for another job.

You should also consider that "behind every great fortune there lies a great crime". Pretty sure there is some work you can do which you would not be ashamed by, but it may take some extra effort / screening to find it.

But there's of course a limit to that, and once illegal things start to happen - quit. But if that's a "regular shady" stuff everyone does, you may have problems finding company that won't do it (well, you can find companies that are much subtle internally about it, and you won't know what they do).

Before you do though, ask yourself if these "bad" actions are due to the fact that it's a large organization and these kind of things will always happen there or if it's actually ill intent.

Since I don't know which category (as I don't know the details) I would guess it's really just a question of the former rather the latter.

Size alone will make you rub some people the wrong way, make mistakes that have consequences and so on. Even a company like google who had the whole "don't be evil" had to change that because they learned that being evil really isn't something you necessarily want to be but in the views of others your actions might be interpreted like that.

Personally I am of the view that most organization even the really large ones are mostly good but will purely from their size make bad decisions here and there. You cannot not have that because size is power and power demands sacrifice.

A company that rips off its users will eventually rip you off.

Note though, that if the users are sophisticated enough that they should be able to read and understand a contract, and your company is following their contracts, then they are not ripping anybody off.

Start interviewing and looking for another job. When you find a better one, quit.

I'd be happy to have a chat and see if there's a space for you somewhere in my network. Life's too short to do morally-dubious work. Contact info's in my profile.

(Unless you're a relatively high-level being with some political cachet, which, given you're new and having asked this question in the first place, you're probably not.)

I worked for a similar company right out of college, when I was young(-er) and naive(r). Those 18 months barking up an amoral tree would be handy to have back.

Also don't trivialize the psychological impact that this can have on you, especially if you find yourself thinking about this off work hours.

It's very easy to see ourselves as swept along by the tide of history, moved by bigger forces all around us. But we are those forces. Every action we take every day is like a drop in the ocean of history, and maybe sometimes our drops end up adding together to make something great, or maybe they make something that is hurtful. Whether or not we can individually turn back a tide that might be perpetuating or creating hurt or evil we can decide whether or not to contribute to it ourselves, and that makes a difference to our lives and incrementally to the world at large as well.

There are a lot of good comments here, enough to get you to an answer I think. Personal integrity comes at a cost, and you describe a situation where your personal integrity is in conflict with the company's policies. It is true you should always be looking for a new job, thinking about what you want to do next what you like in a company what you dislike. One of the reasons for leaving is that the company's ethics and yours are too far out of alignment.

Here is the really tricky bit. Companies that are unethical get a reputation for that, the longer you stay at that company the more someone will believe that you're ok with that stance.

So three things;

1) Lead by example, speak out about unethical behavior to your peers and make your own choices in line with your values.

2) Look around for a company that is more aligned with your values, that is much easier to do while employed though.

3) Develop some questions you will use when you interview to understand how leadership treats those questions. Things like "Tell me about a time when your management suggested something against the best interests of the customers/users, and the response to it from your organization."

Good luck.

in some companies I've worked for it's quite accurate

also, do other people on your team feel similarly and therefore would likely leave in the next year or so?

for me, of the answer was closer to enron evil, and the team likely won't be around in a year I would probably be looking to move on.

alternative method : do you go home and agonize about it and vent to your close friends / partner constantly about the issues you struggle with? if si, might be a good indicator to get out. I once had a job like that and when I left my wife couldn't belive the difference in my after-work anxiety levels (which surprised me!); that's when I really knew I did the right thing.

                      _

If there are possible legal issues for you, then you need to get your own lawyer, because the company's lawyers aren't your lawyers.

Putting that aside, if you want to make a change to a management decision then you'll have to be making a presentation to management that's heavy on facts (evidence of risks and bad consequences) rather than about how it makes you feel. Since you're looking to change the status quo, the burden of proof is going to be on you and your allies (if you have any).

If that actually succeeds then it's evidence of strong leadership. But in the more likely case, it's time to look elsewhere.

It is the same with HR. HR is not there to protect employees. HR is there to protect the company and the easiest way to do that is to get rid of troublemaking employees even if they are making a valid case.

Seems like you're making this into a company-versus-employee dispute when it hasn't reached that stage yet. And better to avoid turning it into that.

If nobody is willing to consult the lawyers about their area of expertise, why have them?

Of course, that assumes a certain level of privilege. For someone who can't afford to quit and find another job, things are different.

If you talk to an attorney who isn't paid by you and bound by privilege to you (ie corporate counsel) to address a problem that you have, you now have two problems.

Day-to-day, what really matters to your experience is the direct team around you. You're a little enclave inside a larger organization, and may never really interact outside said enclave.

But, we also like to take pride in what we do. If you are ashamed to work for the company, that will probably eat at you. You might learn something that changes your perspective that leads to changing your mind, but the company probably won't change.

They don't follow the golden rule. They do X to other companies, while actively preventing other companies from doing X to them. If X is okay, then it should be a two way street. If X is not okay, then it should be a zero way street. Either of those positions I could be happy with. In no case of good behavior is X a one way street.

Below I will attempt to recruit responses from my hacker news connections.

You make it sound as if Tech is some way insulated from the practices required for a business to exhibit constant growth.

Want idealistic tech? Get the cuff out of big Corp OR... practice perception management. Do "you" (aka be yourself without compromise). If you have ethics / ideals to uphold, do so in a way that creates value for the project.

Show how your values / ethics provide value to the project. Be dope. Produce results with your values / ethics in front of you. Production can't be disputed.

There aren't many, but there are a few.

"I'm enjoying my work with the Imperium and they seem well-organized but some of their policies, like mass death, fer instance..."

By "fair," do you mean "legally defensible in court" or "morally upright according to middle class values?" Turns out, successful large American companies go for the former; if you want the latter, then you probably need to look for a smaller colorant, ideally founded around a mission. Non profit and government work can also be good for that.

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Oneself-Harvard-Business-Cla...

Drucker takes a firm stand on this issue. He advises to "put values first"

Obviously, best to find another job first.

(I have done something like this at two companies, for similar ethics reasons.)

If the latter, OP didn't disclose anything about a specific company.

How should I have phrased it to avoid ambiguity?

Truth be told, no matter what the circumstances are that is the correct answer.

Nothing like seeing some of what you don't like and don't want to accept, to help you define your own boundaries and what you do want.

Good luck!

http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-evil/

> They are in an industry where the leader has a big natural advantage, and they are in that lead by a large margin.