Big Technology
Should Big Tech Whistleblowers Quit Their Jobs?
Leaving is easy. Staying is constructive.
Whenever big tech employees protest their companies’ policies, there’s always a contingent of people who demand they leave their jobs. “Quit, you losers!,” one such critic said last month, speaking of whistleblowers at Facebook. “At this point working there shows you have no values.”
Whether it’s Facebook employees standing up for election integrity, or Amazon employees protesting warehouse conditions, some people will suggest these employees are ‘complicit’ in wrongdoing if they continue to draw a paycheck from the companies they decry.
But leaving in protest may actually do more harm than good. While quitting may feel comforting in today’s all-or-nothing world — and telling someone to quit especially so — the people most likely to bring about change are those who push diligently from the inside. Not those who rage quit.
“It’s important for a dissenter to stay in the organization as long as they can to make a productive difference,” Gregg Pascal Zachary, a technology historian, told me. “Leaving too…
