Quote:
Originally Posted by icarus
I bumped into a guy I knew the other night who works for an investment bank. I asked him how it was and he said he feels as though he's working for Satan. He said he'd rather be working for his old company, British American Tobacco. So take from that what you will.
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Given how the investment banks have screwed so many hard working people out of their life savings, I can see why someone could lose sleep working for them. However, selling a product that kills people I think would be worse.
Interesting that the OP's wife is solely concerned about how others, including their children, would perceive them. There is no ethical conundrum for the OP or his wife.
As to the original question, I was hired by a consulting company that told me that if I came in for a year and worked on project X doing Cobol, they would see to it that in year 2 I would be transferred to an Oracle project, which is really what I wanted to be doing. At the end of year one they came to be and offered me a choice. I could stay on doing the COBOL project or I could go to the Oracle project for Phillip Morris. Neither being appealing, I simply quit the company. There was no way in hell that I was going to put my talents behind helping Phillip Morris sell more death sticks.
The way I see it, I work about half of my non-sleeping life. I need to see that time as being productive... as something adding to society. Producing oil, even polluting tarsands oil, is necessary to keep people warm and keep society moving... should we be moving towards cleaner energy - absolutely. But I do see producing oil as contributing to society as it now stands. I don't see any redeeming qualities to working for a tobacco company.
BTW - I *DID* also turn down a job with Irving given their incredibly poor environmental record. Even within oil production, there are shades of grey. Some companies are trying to produce oil responsibly while others are simply trying to make the most profit possible. I don't think there is a responsible way of selling cigarettes.