That moment when you quit the arms company and joined the legs company:
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
That moment when you quit the arms company and joined the legs company:
I'm stealing this
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!
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.
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 just use my skills to make gooner games. My soul is pure. To heaven I shall go. Unironically.
This is why I focused on graphics hardware for so long.... Then some arsehole came up with running AI on GPUs.
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.
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
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.
Weapons can be used for defense or offense. Just be sure that you can sleep at night with the potential consequences - and that your work may be used on the wrong side just as easily as the right side.
On the other hand, if you're working for an Israeli defense company, you can be pretty certain where your results are going to go, and should maybe just... not.
Good that I only work for Palantir then
Can't go to hell if you have no soul.
*taps temple
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 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.
I don't think anyone with an engineering degree would believe there's a hell. Neither should you.
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.
Leave it to an engineer to think that this meme is literally claiming there's a hell.
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?
The groomers in the MIC have claimed soooo many kids who just wanted to make video games. Gross and sad.
To quote Casually Explained:
"The only real question engineering students and new grads need to know the answer to is 'When is it ok to violate your moral principles?'
...
Exactly. It has to be at least 6 figures."
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.
Look man, making missile killing lasers is just way more interesting than building another pointless SUV to a price target.
Engineers are rich, right? So let's blame the working class in this one particular case. /s
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
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.
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.