Comment by 1dom

I'm really torn here. It feels like a good thing for society if everyone has that attitude of "do the right thing".

But I also feel that it's important not to be naive: the sad/harsh reality is that there are people and bodies and organisations out there who will exploit others, and will use their gains to further carry on exploiting.

Now obviously, "exploiting" here is paying huge salaries, shiny offices etc. but I think HN is generally in agreement that Amazon is one of those organisations that regularly oversteps the mark with employee rights/respect.

If we accept that, then I have a really hard time shaking the idea that responding to them making employees lives hard by continuing to perform above average is no different to appeasing an alligator.

What if employers exploit employees because they know there will always be employees who respond to it like this? It kind of makes sense. If we accept that, then all of a sudden "I'm doing the right thing of working hard for my own moral compass" becomes "I'm helping the bad guys because, because it makes me feel better".

Again, I'm aware that thinking about this in terms of "exploitation" and "suckers" is a little extreme, but thinking about it in terms of incentives: isn't this person letting their moral compass incentivise a behaviour they object so much to that they're looking to leave?

edit: for clarity, I do hugely respect working hard for personal motivation of "doing the right thing", and I have taken this approach before. But when I got older, and reflected, I concluded I let my own ego enable things which make the world a worse place, which is a bigger no-no for me personally. It does need to be balanced off against falling into an almost paranoia of "is this person/group just trying to exploit me".