Ethical considerations of working with Microsoft technologies

Miroslav Thompson Posted on May 31 Ethical considerations of working with Microsoft technologies # career # devjournal # discuss # microsoft I’ve been working as a C# dev since 2010. I was 16 years younger back then, and the "ethical considerations" of anything were not really a topic I was interested in. I was young and stupid, but at least smart enough (or so I thought) to see that continuing my career in PHP and its related toolchains had no future. Today, I am grappling with a question that every sane person earning a living by working with Microsoft technologies must ask: am I okay with this? Big corporations are evil If you thought this post was not going to get political, you thought wrong. This is not a statement about Microsoft in particular, but a statement about the biggest corporations in the world. It is not, however, a statement against capitalism and the free market. The counterarguments defending capitalism and the free market, I imagine, probably come from patriotic Americans who are sick in the head. No, I’m not against capitalism and the free market—to an extent. Economics teaches us that companies try their hardest to achieve a monopoly. It’s a logical conclusion and a well-researched fact, not something we have to moralize about. Companies compete to maximize profits and long-term economic rent. But when you’re one of the biggest corporations in the world, you have more tools at your disposal. You break rules, you crush the competition, and you get involved in politics. All to achieve a monopoly. Anyone defending big corporations is either someone whose job is to do exactly that—like someone from PR—or someone insane. Have you ever met someone like that? That 25-year-old woman from HR who convinced herself that her life finally has meaning because she works for JPMorgan? She worships the brand like it’s some sort of religion. And it’s not just a professional mask; it’s her own tragically neurotic personality maintaining the brand worship in her