While I agree with the general ideas mentioned, each of them is much more complicated than that, except for the first point, that’s a point that’s nearly impossible to counter honestly.

Point 1 is, in my opinion, it 100% accurate, ad I mentioned above.

On point 2, pero everything, from my perspective, is absolutely correct, except for: “Yet they choose to ignore all this continue working / seek to join these companies.”. A lot of people don’t really have an option at the beginning. We all need to make a living, and finding well paying jobs is difficult enough across the board, and becomes infinitely harder if you get" picky" about where you apply or which companies you accept offer from. In a perfect world developers that get hired and well paid by any of these disgusting corporations would accrue some good cash to be financially secure for a few years and then quit and move to, like you said, creating the “counter-product/service” to what they were working on, adding the ethical factor. In reality, unless you’re loaded, we all need to start somewhere, and everything costs money.

Point 3, I would say there is some true to the cowardice side, but I also believe that, at least temporarily, some just don’t have a choice, for the factors mentioned in my response to point 2. “They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.”, as mentioned above, everything costs money. A more realistic approach would be getting that spiteful job, cashing out with a good sense of financial freedom, and then endeavoring into countering these companies.

It’s taken me 12 years to finally be in a place where I can make a slight difference in my industry by opening my own business, and after almost a year since I started, while my employees and contractors all earn good money and get paid always on time and gather pretty good benefits, and my clients are (I believe) the happiest in the industry, my wife and I (the owners) have still to get paid the first time. Imagine the shit show that my life would be I’d I had gone the ideallist way without considering all the financial aspects of trying to improve this industry.

I do not work in the tech sector, but we do use tech for everything. My platform is currently the most secure and private of the whole industry in the US, and that alone ate through around 75% of the starting budget, the rest has been allocated to pay staff and services while we bring this to cash-positive status.

It’s not as black and white as some may think.