I tend to treat politics and religion as subjects best dealt with on my own time. The company is paying me to get results for the company, not the larger society. If I somehow disagree with the perceived politics, I’m free to seek other employment. Implicit in this position is that the company doesn’t get to dictate either politics or religion handled in my personal time.
So if you have a job you like, at a company that up to now has been only making products that you have no problem with, and they started working on something that you found morally reprehensible and assigned you to work on it, either you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
The problem is almost never an issue of the ethical nature of the company's own product or service. The "politicization" problem is largely around social activism that is adjacent to the company's mission.
Which is why Coinbase is saying specifically there are politics which are central to their mission that they still must naturally engage with.
I think any engineer who has a moral quandary about the work the are doing should absolutely take it up with management, up to including whistle-blowing or resigning. Professional Engineers put their license on the line with this, mere computer engineers may not have so much at stake professionally but are equally ethically bound.
> you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?
Well, in my case, that situation would never arise (see previous comments). But, if I were the boss, I would advise the employee to either do that on their own time, or seek other employment. Again, I believe strongly that a work environment is not the place for personal politics or religion, unless that is the purpose of the business (the one concession I’ll make).
If I worked for a toy maker who suddenly decided to make land mines disguised as teddy bears, then I would absolutely have to quit, if we were in a disagreement over why this should happen.
If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.
Except that isn't what's happening at Coinbase. Coinbase is still making the same product it made six months ago. It's the activists who want Coinbase to start working on something else.
