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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Ethics of Work
Message-ID: <556@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Aug-86 21:16:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.556
Posted: Wed Aug 13 21:16:09 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Aug-86 08:24:21 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!sun!llewelyn!clt@hplabs.HP.COM
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 37
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <524@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from sun!llewelyn!clt@hplabs.HP.COM (Charlie Tierney)
 and was received on Wed Aug 13 16:55:03 1986
 
		    [slightly reformatted]

Dave,

I used to work at Raytheon Missile Systems Division (MSD) from (I think) 80-81.
I had a good job, doing radar simulation for a surface to air missile 
engineering group.  The system was purely defensive in nature.

But after 7-8 months, I began having nightmares.  These got progressively 
worse as I continued work.  And eventually it dawned on me that some part of 
me did not want to have *anything* to do with killing other people.  No 
matter if it was "defensive" or not.

I lasted 13 months before I resigned.  My resignation was based solely on 
my moral dilemma.  Raytheon is a good place to work.

Why do people work for the Defense Establishment?

  1.)  The work is often very interesting, I think a lot of the best 
       engineers simply put on their moral blinders in the morning and are 
       able to live with it.

  2.)  Many older engineers are from the pre-Vietnam "We must defend our 
       freedom from the USSR" mindset.  I am not knocking this belief, just 
       saying it exists.

  3.)  It is often the only place where you are working with high budget, 
       truly state of the art processes, etc.  (Other places:  Xerox PARC, 
       HP Labs, Bell Labs, IBM Research, etc.)

  4.)  The younger engineers often take defense jobs as resume builders.  


Charles Tierney