i gotta be honest… i had an internship for a power plant company once, and during a lunch-n-learn session they had a talk once from a project manager whose team had just bulldozed wetlands to build a plant.  it was a little scary, and he had NO idea how we were all taking it.  I talked to some coworkers after that and they were in agreement, like, “he might as well have had a powerpoint slide with baby otters dying!”

so I’ve made it my resolution to try to stay out of jobs that involve, say, making bombs, screwing too much with the environment, general badness.  but it’s tough.  who’s to judge what’s good and bad, right?

plus I feel like if I ever want to work someplace REALLY cool, like NASA, i’ll have to start off in defense.  making fighters.

anyway I’ve been in the workforce for a while and luckily I’ve been able to avoid anything controversial, but I still worry what the future brings.  is this something that any of you think about?  have you been able to successfully draw the line and decide which jobs you will and won’t take?  is that even possible?  so much about engineering is about making the world a better place, but it’s powerful, you’ve got to watch out for the other side sometimes!

This is actually a tough one.  What is evil? 

I had a friend who got a job at JPL right out of college but quit after a year because they make weapons systems as well as cool space toys.

I work on code for a CRM project (that died) that would have allowed marketers to send spam emails from an excel list.  It was cool code.  I still apologize for it even though it never made it into production.

I have kids to feed, so I am more likely to stay in an evil job until I find an alternative and try not to do anything to get myself fired.  If I were single or without kids my thinking would probably be different.

You know, I have been able to decide which “evil” jobs I’ll take and which I won’t - to a point.  As a linguist (I engineer grammars, write algorithms, translate, analyze, basically I do everything you could possibly think of in the realm of language as a science), it was a real pull to go into defense because:
1. There’s money in it
2. I am guaranteed most eyes will not glaze over when I start talking about syntax, word order, dative vs. nominative case, etc.
3. There’s a lot of opportunity to learn other dialects and languages, etc.
But I found my heart just wouldn’t let me do it.  I do consult for a company that has defense contracts, but it’s more to do with NLP and translation memory software than violence.  The other companies I work with generally are into educational pursuits and raising awareness, so I’ve been lucky.  But I did have to really think about going for defense contracts because the money is pretty good.  So far, though, I’ve been able to avoid it… I hope I can continue to do so...I think it’s getting harder nowadays.

I considered working for a spam ehhehm, “mass email marketing,” company once. The research was fascinating and the position promising.

I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

As promising as jobs are at defense companies, I also just can’t bring myself to work for them. Yeah, it’s “defense,” but most of their projects can also turn offensive. Its too much a gray area for my tastes.

So, yeah, I can’t take an “evil” job which compromises my ethics or morals. Other people can, but its not for me.

I always have a hard time with defense jobs because I scenario-ize.  You know what I mean?  I think about where this position would take me in the short term and the long term.  Those kinds of jobs are great in the short term scenario, but once you get down the road a little bit, the scenario involves way too much yucky stuff that would make it hard to look myself in the mirror, so I end up chickening out.

Hey ladies :) I’m the Nerd Girls pop culture blogger and, although I’m not an engineer myself, I’ve spent the past decade in integrated marketing communications and have run across scenarios where I was uncomfortable with the subject matter and/or message I was supposed to be supporting.  I started my career at a PR firm that served high-end clients in a luxurious industry, and after a year, all the ego, superficiality and waste of that particular place became too much.  I lucked out and landed a job at a nonprofit org that stood for something I agreed with… and I’ve learned two things:

1. The harder you work and more phenomenal a “footprint” you leave behind you early in your career, the more choices you’ll have later on, which is great because

2. Life is short and we have to spend our time doing something we believe in.

Good luck to all of you in your endeavors - I love writing for this site and learning about so many fascinating people doing awesome things in their careers and in their lives.  Keep kicking butt - you all are amazing. :)

I know this topic is a few months old, but I can’t resist throwing in my two cents.  I work for a defense company.  Every week we have a group of protesters that stand outside our building with signs promoting peace. 

I am all for peace!  I would love to live in a peaceful world where we could feel safe and secure.  Unfortunately, that’s not a reality.  So, I chose to work in the defense industry because it gives me an opportunity to defend innocent people.