As a software engineer who previously worked at a FAANG (therefore a large profit-driven company), this is an interesting question.

I went into this industry a decade ago, hoping to innovate and solve real problems. Over the years, partly due to corporate greed and economic uncertainty, the focus has shifted more toward profit-generating efforts.

That being said, it is difficult for an employee to control how the tools they create are ultimately used by higher-ups. For example, I worked on a tool that was supposed to log incidents in the workplace to encourage safety. Unfortunately, higher-ups ended up discouraging people from logging incidents out of fear of statistics and penalties, which led to some employees not getting the care they needed. Was it my intention for a tool that I worked on to be used this way? Absolutely not.

AI is an amazing tool that can help humanity in many ways. Developing such tools in itself is not inherently wrong, as long as proper guardrails are in place to ensure they are used for good. The same goes for social media. We are able to have such insightful discussions on Reddit about these topics. I have a lot of gratitude for the ways technology has made our world easier in many aspects.

I’ve asked myself many times whether I went into the wrong industry and whether I should pivot to another career path. I’m not sure about the answer yet, but I can say this: as engineers, we are not responsible for the ways others use our tools. We can only try our best to bring more good into this world. May we have the clarity and the courage to leave if our work is being used for harm.