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>With so many people losing jobs and everyone else worried about keeping
>them, I'm curious: are there any types of tech-writing jobs that people
>wouldn't take?
All that follows is, of course, only IMO: I wouldn't presume to set ethical
standards for anyone else.
I won't take any job connected with the military. This is an active choice:
I don't apply for jobs where it's clear from the start that part of the work
included military software/hardware, and I wouldn't accept a job that turned
out to be linked with "defense". This is the one area I can honestly say
that it wouldn't matter how hungry/desperate I was: I've *been* that hungry
and that desperate and I won't do it.
I examine carefully jobs in areas connected with the health industry or the
nuclear power industry. I don't want to be in a position where I'm helping
to rook the National Health Service, and I have strong feelings about
expensive and dirty nuclear power stations.
There are some specific companies (I won't name names) that I wouldn't work
for because I don't like what I know about what they do.
There is one company that I worked for that I won't work for again because
they asked me to design a label for pirated software that they were
illegally packaging with their own software to sell to a customer.
Apart from that... <g> This may sound pretty sweeping, but honestly, it's a
small minority of jobs available, and I agree with what Bruce said already:
if you have strong feelings, you're a fool if you take a job contrary to
those feelings.
P*rnography? I might not take a job with a p*rn company because I don't
think it would help me to get my next job <g> but I have no general ethical
problems with legal p*rn. Gambling? Ditto. It's like drinking booze: some
people get addicted, but most people don't. (OT comment: my nephew Stanley
and I went past one of the big Stanley casinos last Christmas, and he asked
me what it was. I explained, and added that while they can be fun, an
essential rule to keep in mind was to decide before going in how much money
you can afford to lose... and to leave once you'd lost it.)
This is something I hadn't thought of:
> snooper ware: I'm thinking here of software that collects information
>on people, whether in e-commerce or in programs like the FBI's
>Carnivore. In the wrong hands (and virtually everybody's hands are the
>wrong ones, so far as I'm concerned), this information can be easily
>abused, and violate privacy.
This hasn't come up so far, mainly because in the UK (up until this week)
all the legal snooperware was in use by the MoD, which put it out of bounds
for me anyway. As of this week, the police may be using it...
Interesting question, Bruce. Thanks for asking it.
Jane Carnall
Apologies for the long additional sig: it is added automatically and outwith
my control.
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