Shout out to my engineering homies.

Hell would be an upgrade! Where do I get my blood monies plz?

Defense industry, law enforcement, and surveillance are all instant dealbreakers for me whenever a recruiter reaches out to me. And sadly that seems like the vast majority of positions for which recruiters are looking for candidates.

That or AI shit.

I'm so tired of the tech industry.

When you're 60 and the choice is either a permanent contract for the army or 1 or 2 years elsewhere, you're going to choose army.
- Not everyone is morally bankrupt. Stop projecting
- Nope
Science grad with 10 years engineering experience. I had to turn down a lot of jobs before I found one that didn't involve killing people. It took two years. I'm paid about half of what I could get if I sold my morals. Totally worth it.
Depending on engineering discipline, oil & gas is another common one.
There's positive tech stuff out here too, bud. You'll likely need to look for yourself though, the recruiter reaching out to you is better funded for some reason.

I don't think anyone with an engineering degree would believe there's a hell. Neither should you.

Leave it to an engineer to think that this meme is literally claiming there's a hell.
True, these people will not face justice through any natural force of the universe, only by people holding them accountable for the harm they cause.
Although I can imagine what hell would look like: commuting for 1h to sit in an office that has more people than desks to have a zoom meeting over VPN with flaky wifi and AC that is set to overheat whoever sits under the vent and under heat everyone further.
Oh did I tell you that meeting could have been an email? And the coffee machine broke yesterday. And there's a bathroom queue.
- Well, tomorrow morning, commuting hell will be sitting next to me. I don't know what those samosas had in them but I sound like a WWII machine gun nest and smell like aisle 3 at the spice store.
there’s probably an infinite number of paths, and an even greater number of perspectives to be considered across each moment and position along each of them. or absolutely nothing at all. most other possibilities seem so unlikely, they probably aren’t worth considering

I desperately wanted to get a degree in mechanical engineering so I could go to work for an arms company (like Heckler & Kock, FN Herstal, etc.). Never happened, got an art degree instead. Then I met a guy that owns a very small firearms company, and, well, yeesh. It's a brutally hard business. He makes a good product, he has good morals and ethics, but the market is so saturated that anyone smaller than the largest arms companies are hemorrhaging money. Glad I didn't try to live my dream now.

I may not like what governments do with arms, but good goddamn, the arms themselves are neat.

“He has good morals and ethics”
How could he possibly if he has devoted his life to creating weapons? What’s his response if and when his guns are used for violence, be it murder, suicide, armed robbery, etc? Even if he is “small time” for “enthusiasts” of the “sport” it is only a matter of time until this occurs. How does he reconcile this? That it’s not the guns fault? Just the glamorization of them, the obscene amount of them, the fact that they are readily available, pushing it onto “mental health”, or some other scapegoat that allows him to escape accountability for facilitating mortal violence.
I hope your friend goes out business and his entire industry collapses.
- Are you thinking mental health is just a scapegoat and the mental state of shooters has nothing to do with the reason they commited the crime?
- His response, as is mine, is that what people use his guns for simply isn't his business. If people used Stanley hammers to beat people to death, would it mean that Stanley was an immoral company? Or would it mean that people used the product in an unlawful and immoral way?
  I happen to very, very strongly believe in 2A, and I think that the US is in the shitstorm it is currently in in no small part because liberals--but not leftists--have been working their asses off to disarm themselves. And I will note that the person in question has consistently employed furries--he loves their work ethic--and strongly supports the rights of LGBTQ+ people to arm themselves.
I find that there's a lot of overlap between people who like engines, clocks, and guns. They're all machines with a concrete goal, harnessing an incredible force in a very controlled way, through precise, complex mechanisms and allow near complete freedom on how exactly you achieve that goal. There's a beauty to it that's hard to find anywhere else.

Instructions unclear, I work at a prosthetics company.

Im currently in school and trying to get into the prosthetic industry after I get my engineering degree. Any recommendations on projects that could help me flesh out my skills?

That moment when you quit the arms company and joined the legs company:

I'm stealing this

Not an engineer, but I have I have Asian parents, if I were an engineer and worked for a genocidal dictator, they wouldn't care, that's success anyways.

So... yea...

people value success over ethics

welcome to life

society...

Wouldn't they still be disappointed that you are an engineer and not a doctor?
- what are engineers, if not machine doctors?
- 💀
Do you think your Taiwanese background plays into that kind of thinking?
- Also if you have any disabilities, like if you have depression. Oh your parents are gonna be so cruel to you. You are a "useless eater".
  What the fuck is this life. Why?
  I wasn't even supposed to be born. Why the fuck am I here. This fucking suffering.
- I'm from mainland China (currently residing in the US), profile pic is because I hate the 5-Star Red Flag and the politics it represents.
  Probably something with Asian cultures's obsession with the idea of "success". Like... my parents literally wouldn't care if I became some corrupt government official as long as I don't get caught. Success is worshipped, failure is shamed. I talk shit about trump, and like my mom said "at least he became president, can you do that?"
  I'm like: "naturalized citizens can't be president"
  omg immediately less than 1 second later, mom goes: "but Gary Locke became Governor" (Gary Locke is a Chinese American)
  And like you know Mamdani won, immedialy after, she told me "an immigrant managed to become Mayor, you are an immigrant just like him, why can't you do the same?" bruh... maybe I could if I didn't get so much emotional damage, mom.
  Like they worship success, regardless of if they are "good" or "bad" people.
  If you try to be a good person and you "fail" in life, you are considered worse than the bad person in power making a lot of money.
  I'm like just so close to killing myself, even though I really wanna live, this is too painful, depression is too painful.
  My parents are slowly killing my ethics and empathy, like one day I might just not care.
  Either you die young with your morals intact, or you seek success and survival, and you corrupt your soul...
  This world is cruel. The world wants you to be cruel to be able to even live a comfortable life.

Raytheon would be equally accepted here.

Gods, I'm considering Job hopping and I saw Lockheed was hiring for my role, less experience, less certs, full remote, and quadruple my pay.

I had to block them on indeed and LinkedIn. I hated that I was considering it.

yeah they're an option in my area and I've made the decision several times to not look at any positions they have
I sometimes wonder if we all truly have a price for our souls. I felt similarly when seeing positions at health insurance companies, pay was high enough that I paused despite how much I despise them.

This is why I focused on graphics hardware for so long.... Then some arsehole came up with running AI on GPUs.

series of increasingly large dominoes where the smallest is "NVIDIA releases CUDA" and the largest is "the entire global economy has become dependent on running a useless computer program that tricks stupid people into believing it can do anything worthwhile"
Yeah, I got started in silicon thinking cheaper, faster, more power efficient chips would be a net benefit to the world... Then we became a social media surveillance state and AI dogshit is just the icing on the cake.
Now I drink to forget we're boiling the oceans to ruin society. One day this capitalist hellscape will end.
There's still a few of us out here using ROPs and texture units

I just use my skills to make gooner games. My soul is pure. To heaven I shall go. Unironically.

I would like to goon to some of your games
Thank you for your service.

Yea I'm an LGBTQ+ ally:

The ally they're talking about:

L ockheed Martin

G eneral Dynamics

B AE

T exas Instruments

Q inetiq

"our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!" -their motto, probably

"our hiring system is even less discriminatory than our targeting system!" -their motto, probably
Bravo!
I know TI had a history of weapons manufacturing, but haven't they stopped now?
- I believe so. I guess a more appropriate one would be Textron since they still make helicopters?
- How many children have they tortured with their graphing calculators?

Look man, making missile killing lasers is just way more interesting than building another pointless SUV to a price target.

Then they become human ablating lasers as the tech keeps shrinking...
Building the SUV would be more ethical though.

I may be an engineer, but I am still too fucking stupid to get a job at an arms company

It’s easier than you’d think. The applicant pool doesn’t tend to be the best and brightest.
- One of the guys I went to college with is an amazing programmer and had such a great understanding of C that hes why i got as far into CS as i did, couldn't get a job after grad because 1) Covid and more importantly 2) he's insufferable.
  He got a job making $100k a year for I wanna say Lockheed because he quote "Wrote good looking code". That's all they needed because Tue DoD already told them that the project he was hired for was not going to be adopted, but they were still contracted for minimum 2 more years of development and Lockheed would be in breach of contract if they weren't making progress even though it was already Dead.
  The Military industrial complex is JUST a grift to put tax dollars in private hands.
That's why I work at a legs company

The groomers in the MIC have claimed soooo many kids who just wanted to make video games. Gross and sad.

I have no ethical qualms with those who make weapons. Horizontal communities need the means to defend themselves against external domination. The dilemma is, under capitalism, dominators employ weapons against those unable to defend themselves thereby realizing the idea of Hell on Earth.

Right, and we live in a capitalist world, so I feel like it shouldn't be a dilemma. Seems pretty clear cut.
It's like you're basing your ethical judgment of it on a world that you admit doesn't exist

Here's a great idea: let's not produce any weapons and disarm unilaterally. What could go wrong?

The US could cut its arsenal by 90% and still have nothing to fear from anyone. That shit isn't for defense it's to threaten the rest of the world.
How about we split the difference and only cut two thirds of all military spending? We would still be pouring more money into it than any country on earth.
- There will still be people working for arms companies. All of them will deserve hell?
Who is "us"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
- The good guys. Define them as you like.

Doing engineering is more like an any% run to do something that eventually, even just statistically, hurts people.

So. Stop enabling us, scientists :P

Lots of people are better off for science, it's the capitalists that ask us to wield it against others
- Communists and capitalists both made WMDs and murdered millions for their own gain
- No. That evil has nothing to do with whichever socio-economic system is your particular choice of boogie man.
This is part of the reason I moved to CA. As an engineer I'm always going to have some kind of environmental impact, and I think a direct initiative is necessary for the public to consent.
This comment is known to the state of California to cause birth defects.

Some of us turned down Lockheed and Raytheon.

You turned down lockheed, lockheed rejected me.
Yeah, their equity package wasn't as good as Anduril.

Good that I only work for Palantir then

Can't go to hell if you have no soul.
*taps temple

I think this is also true for investing in war companies (its the department of war now, so no need to keep up the defense charade), even if it's just part of an index fund or ETF.

This is literally everyone with a 401k.
- Yes, violence is literally all of capitalism.
- Sadly, a matching 401k became the standard corporate retirement package over a pension.
  However, you do still have a choice of what to invest in, even with a 401k.
Department of War*
DBA Department of War Crimes

Engineers are rich, right? So let's blame the working class in this one particular case. /s

People talking about morality when space Jesus explicitly told us to EXTERMINATE all the XENOS

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-company-but-outside-work-im-actually-a-really-good-person

It's almost winter, I thinks it's freaking cold today.

Almost? Tell that to the snowstorm that attacked me yesterday.
- It's still autumn for 18 more days, unless you're on the southern hemisphere.

My university is practically owned by weapons manufacturers which sucks. Idk if that's the norm or not

think it's hot today?

No

For my computer science internship I just dodged a drone-shaped bullet... I'm working on abstract verification of access policies instead

I’m working on abstract verification of access policies instead
😅 Here's an article on how that contributes to killing people: https://arxiv.org/html/2508.17043v1
- Noooooo 😭
  It's not the kind of validation I do tho 🤓😉

Tools don't kill. It's the ones wielding the tools that do.

A black home bomb is harmless until someone uses it to wipe out an entire solar system.

Yeah, but we all know what those bombs do, so many don't participate in building them.
- I dunno. I would love to make things go boom.
  Fire is cool af. It's our signature weapon.
But you are fully aware who's wielding the tools you build...
Ok, Mr. Hitler, I'll give you this truckload of bombs, but you have to pinky promise that you won't drop them on Britain.
Dangit, he dropped them on Britain, didn't he? Oh well, not my fault. Guess I'll go get him another truckload of bombs, he'll be needing them now.
-The average day of a Lockheed Martin employee
- Oh well, it's just Britain. Nothing of value will be lost

Hey! Thanks bro. I'll be nice and cool by my pond. Im Canadian and I was working for a US defence contractor. I was in their industrial sector and worked in Europe, never touched a defence product and wouldn't be allowed to. But every time the quarterly numbers came out and number went up. I couldn't help but feel responsible for steering them profits.

I'm unemployed and the happiest I've ever been

Do you ever imagine your pond is colored red, symbolizing the blood of millions of innocent lives taken by your industry?
Do you wonder how many of your industry's victims dreamed of having a nice, quiet, peaceful life by a pond?
- The aerial work platform industry? Yeah I mean people do die working at height, I was there actually to help specifically prevent that, as I was a product safety engineer.
  So yeah sometimes I think about the people who went home to their families at the end of the day because of that.
  I literally said I wasn't in the defence division, never touched a defence product, and literally didn't even work in North America.
  Then I told you I quit my job because I couldn't do it anymore.
  And you're gonna come here and give me a bunch of shit for it?
  I don't even have to guess, you're pretty obviously a rabid leftist. Which is fine, I am too. But don't you think it's funny how I know that just because of how absolutely fucking unhinged your comment was

I'll be honest, I'd rather the best engineers be there to create weapons that are extremely precise. The weapons are gonna be made regardless, but I've seen photos of what happens to cities when bombers are dropping unguided munitions. Back during WW2, if you wanted to hit a factory in London, you didn't just drop 1-2 bombs, you dropped hundreds of bombs, you flattened absolutely everything in the area because that was the only way you were gonna hit your target.

At least with precision munitions, if you're doing war 'nicely', you only hit what you intend to hit, not your target + everything else even remotely close to said target. With precision munitions, you can't 'accidentally' bomb a hospital, so when you inevitably do bomb a hospital, you don't get to go "Oh oops no it's not my fault it's the bombs' fault!". The sights are crystal clear, the plane/drone moves exactly where you want it to, there's nothing interfering with the guidance, the bomb locked onto the target you wanted to hit, and you dropped it, all thanks to engineers making those systems. You had everything going for you as a bomber to know exactly what that target was, and you dropped the bomb anyway.

This is the most this clip thing I have ever read in my life.
Points israel
- Yeah, and Israel can't pretend they aren't choosing to bomb hospitals. It's almost never "Oops we didn't intend to do that", it's "Well there was a Hamas bunker under that. They were using those playing children as sandbags, we simply had to blast through them!"
I don't think, specially with current events unfolding before our eyes, of war as a precise thing.
We have precise enough weapons already.
- Israel's primary weapon is starvation via blockade. Yea, it's not very precise.

I just wanted to build scientific instruments on satellites. Sucks when the company you worked at for 18 years gets sold to an arms dealer.

That's why I design targets.

I don't work for them because I chose not to, but honestly, work for them, don't work for them, it's not like they'll lack for employees. If you write that line of code that eventually blows up a hospital or someone else does, it will still happen. You're not going to stop them by turning down job offers. You're going to need to change politics.

This argument is deeply flawed, and I've heard engineers working on arms projects using it to justify what they're doing. That, and the "I just build it, it's not me pulling the trigger" are trotted out to soothe dying moral consciences all the time. There are far too many bright minds being used to create death and suffering.
The fact that by partaking in this industry, you form a critical part of the decision and event chain that leads to bad people killing innocent people is important, morally, and completely unchanged by whether it not someone else will do it. So it does matter if you turn that job down, and not just for your own conscience. If enough people turn down these jobs then that will change politics. And those that do choose to take them need to face up to their responsibility in enabling and perpetuating horror.
- I think the issue is that there are people for whom it is necessary and proper to use military violence against, and when you don't continually invest in it, you find yourself subject to those who have (see: Europe vs Russia and/or the US).
  Further the decision and event chain that you mention has been used just as frequently by the US military to head-off and prevent escalation of violence.
  As I pointed out elsewhere, putting psychopaths in charge can make most things dangerous. The Trump administration is currently weaponizing financial fraud against all of us so the billionaires can feast on the remnants of the middle class. Now obviously, military tools are made to be dangerous, which is not in line with a pacifist morality. But most people aren't pacifists, and sociopath leaders will always find a cornucopia of tools to murder their opposition.
  It was immoral to hand these tools to Trump. It was immoral to hand these tools to Netanyahu. But that's a problem with these systems of government, not with the creation of militaries and their equipment.
- deeply flawed
  Direct me to the flaw.
  Will someone passing them up make ANY difference to what they're doing?
It will still happen is a bit of a fallacy. It’s one less person doing that job but I agree that one person won’t make a meaningful change
However the thing that changes is that if you reject that job you reduced by 100% your direct contribution to people killing missiles. Someone else will design that missile but at least you won’t have to live with the guilt that you did
Now, if it’s between that and a much worse life, I won’t blame anyone. But it’s a choice that everyone has to make for themselves. Personally I have possibility to reject those offers, and so I do.
- They aren't immune to supply and demand, the job market is the agreegate of us all deciding what we will put up with to stay alive.
- I totally agree, not taking the job can mean a HUGE thing to you. It just won't affect the company whatsoever.
  I don't do it because I don't like it. I worked for DOD years ago, on non-dangerous stuff but it wasn't something I wanted to personally support.

Sounds like something an architect would say...

Shame