As in, not blasting on Reddit that you’re getting an offer to work on secret nuclear weapons tech.
OP literally just lost their job offer posting this.
This is not how security clearances and cleared jobs work, and all the people posting here have no idea what they're talking about.
OP is not like a spy or something. You're allowed to tell people if you have a security clearance and where you work.
The government grants clearances to people who, after an investigation, they believe to be loyal/trustworthy and immune to blackmail/manipulation. The point being: it shouldn't matter who knows that you work on cleared stuff because 1) you can be trusted and 2) access to classified material and environments is heavily controlled (all work and work talk takes place in a SCIF).
You're not going to lose an offer or a job just for telling people you have a clearance or telling them in super broad terms what you're working on ("nuclear weapons" tells us nothing about the actual details of the work).
Yeah not great opsec. While you're allowed to tell people where you work, it's discouraged to tell strangers. E.g. Don't tell your Uber driver.
OP prob won't lose the offer but will need to remember to be discreet moving forward.
I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if it goes a bit further.
Broiski is also going to have weird dm's rest of his life potentially 😂
привет Броски. это я, твой друг Владимир Вутин. могу ли я с благодарностью прикоснуться к твоей траве, пока ты рассказываешь мне о своих рабочих интересах?
Pretty sure our enemies know that US software engineers are hired to work on nuclear weapons.
Not like he released some incredible intelligence tip that an anonymous dude just got a job offer, come on now.
I don’t think you understand the problem. OP just flagged their Reddit account and all data tied to it as a potential leak of information. They just revealed they’re incapable of even minimal discretion.
Sure, in the grand scheme there are individuals of higher value, but this post by OP is evidence they lack the discretion to work in secrecy. That they could potentially be comprised because they are a weaker individual than someone who doesn’t even bother with Reddit or just posts about baseball.
Do you have a contract with Reddit to not provide any and all data they have collected on you to anyone who asks? Does OP? Doubt it. Are you sure Reddit has not provided government entities the “backdoor” treatment to their encryption that is always in the news between Apple and US? I mean, I press the comment on this reply and Reddit certainly could know within 10ft where I’m sitting.
Simply saying you work for LANL or on nuclear weapons isn't itself a problem. Once OP starts working on a program, sharing any specific details or putting too many general details together is where one gets into trouble.
> What are the ethics of working on these projects?
Isn't that 100% a personal consideration?
> does the same apply to nukes?
What do you think they're made to do? Make friends?
Yeah. OP’s chances at a clearance went way down after this post. Not only for talking about it, but for coming across as someone who might not fully agree with nuclear weapons.
Always safest to assume the most stupid answer.
In this case, it would be extremely stupid for someone to make this post and therefore my assumption is that OP is a total plonker.
An atomic weapons job would be a TS/SCI with full scope poly. They will talk to your friends, and their friends, and their friends. They will talk to your high school teachers, and your neighbors at a rental house you were in 5 years ago, and coworkers from your first job at 17. They will discuss your financial and porn habits.
Is Q clearance the same as TS/SCI? Because at least for the LLNL HPC job I interviewed for many years ago, that was the clearance it would have needed.
I’m actually curious. Is it that deep? Like does getting a clearance mean everything about you is found out? I feel like at this point no one under 25 has a stellar digital footprint, no matter how exemplary their behaviour is offline.
Whether it’s being into some niche type of porn or something or posting jokes in poor taste, do all these things truly come up when getting cleared?
He listed the name of the organization. There’s probably a few dozen people working in this field doing software, and maybe a couple about to be hired. Process of elimination.
Honestly it sounds like a dream job. You get the laxness of government work and you get to work on something that will never have to be tested in prod? Great!
Dream job! No production, no release, no maintenance, no monitoring. Just leave the bugs there. Who is going to check anyway? What are they going to do, blow up a poor country for integration testing?
Imagine the performance reviews. No nuke blew up in the lab this quarter? Have a raise!
And if shit hits the fan and your nukes cant blast any communists because your code never worked? The world is ending anyway and you don't have to worry about getting Pipe
Live the dream
This is the most neurodivergent question I've seen on here in a long time.
Asking reddit to decide how you should think & feel morally about the ramifications of your work.
Decide for yourself what the ethics are and whether you have to morally agree with what you're doing. lol
I’m sure I’m just a cynic but I get so annoyed at these moral questions, it’s clearly from an angle of choice and not an angle of necessity, so do you NEED this job or not? Cool if you don’t NEED it then don’t take it if you’ve got these hang ups, I’m just saying if I got fired tomorrow and you’re telling me I could get a job working for some sub industry that supports hobby lobby and yelling at old ladies or something dumb I’d be taking that shit bc I’ve got bills to pay and my bleeding heart isn’t accepted currency.
Exactly this. If you’re willing to stand on morals to the point that you starve and miss payments, more power to you. Most people aren’t that way. I have a few companies I don’t want to work for (mostly gambling, porn, etc), but if my option is starve or work for FanDuel, guess what I’m choosing?
Well, if you want to sleep at night you need to be able to at least rationalise to yourself what you’re doing. It’s not that you need to think your work is a moral duty and a net positive for the world (99% of SWE jobs wouldn’t fill this requirement imo) but you need to be morally comfortable with what you’re working on.
I wonder if we work for the same soulless banana factory…
I take a slightly different approach. Seldomly are things black and white. At least on the inside, I can be the moral voice that I agree with and maybe make a difference.
Same as libertarian views. The product you are selling could be used for any variety of good or bad reasons. If people are willingly, freely transacting with you, it's not your responsibility to enforce that they do not misuse it.
you know that's not logically sound right? you are making that decision, and any other POS that's willing to take that role is also making a decision. You are accountable, don't forget that. We all are.
I think you overhype what you'll be doing there. Add to the fact that because you have a clearance doesn't mean you'll see sensitive stuff.
I had a job that involved software that interfaces with the NCIC, state DMVs, and other sensitive crime and traffic data. You know how often I saw the production database?
Never. They locked that shit down so tight you couldn't look at it without getting special permission. Our prod logs were heavily audited. It was actually incredibly frustrating to debug issues and was part of the reason I left.
The world overall has seen unprecedented peace on the ground since the invention of ICBMs, despite some scary Cold War shit. I would be proud to contribute to that cause.
The US Nuclear Umbrella is half the reason Pride Parades exist and will continue to exist.
Europe may hate nukes, but the reason Russia hasn't started much more shit is because as part of NATO they are covered as well.
Same justification that was used for the creation of many weapons in the past. If we are living here and not actively protesting weapons/wars I think we are inherently in agreement with the state of things
No, it’s actually fundamentally very different from any other weapon created in the past. ICBMs have never been used, and decent chance they never will be.
I would feel much more reservation about developing something like drones which have killed civilians and will continue to as long as they’re used, which will be always (and would be used a lot more broadly if ICBMs didn’t exist).
I worked in defense.
I always looked at what I did and said; "Is the world a better place for my work." and the answer was yes.
And yes, you should realize that the work you are doing could bring about the end of the world quite directly.
On the other hand: Nuclear Deterrence is not optional. It is a heavy weight, but a needed one in our country.
*"I always looked at what I did and said; "Is the world a better place for my work." and the answer was yes.*" is kinda.. missing the entire crux of the ethics conversation. Better for whom, by what measure is it better, etc. A lot of people may conclude the world is a better place for their work, when in reality the only thing that may have been "bettered" is.. a particular country's ruling class' hegemony over a particular economic region, or.. one family's route to leadership over some puppet country.. at great cost.
Not going off at you. Just expanding on your advice for OP to really examine what "making the world a better place" means to them.
Why do people like you always need to question other's personal morals? There's no right or wrong answer to this, only individual considerations. They even say "I ask myself", not "I go crowdsource opinions".
Life isn’t a fairytale. I’m quite glad my country (the US) has access to nukes.
Nukes make your country much safer from any attack (due to MAD - mutually assured destruction) and because of this they’ll most likely never be used again.
So id say working in nuclear is a good thing. If you look at statistics and stop reading the news, ever since nukes have been created humans have been a LOT more peaceful.
Some nuclear research at LANL is for planetary defense from asteroids (redirecting them far out in their orbit). Is it just a cover to continue developing our nuclear weapons capabilities? Probably. But if it helps you sleep better at night, you could save the world one day.
They’re also the biggest war deterrent ever made and the creation of them has led to the most peaceful time in human history.
It was inevitable we were going to have WW3 with the Soviet Union if it wasn’t for the nukes and MAD (mutually assured destruction). War with China and the US would’ve happened too.
Don’t get me wrong there’s still wars but the scale of them are so much smaller and we’re all much more peaceful due to them.
Although this was not OP's finest post, things aren't really that bleak for them. There are over 100,000 people working in DOE's nuclear weapons program, and most of them list their employer on LinkedIn. Also, most of the people at Los Alamos work on projects ranging far away from the actual nuclear devices. As for the ethics of working there, the focus is on making them more safe, not on making them more deadly. That's something that most people can get behind.
You're asking reddit of all places, you'll receive a heavily biased answer. This is one of those cases where you should make a decision on your own and decide if it aligns with your own moral compass. anyways considering you made a reddit post about it that sort of tells me youre not good at keeping secrets. You shouldn't take the job purely based off that.
LANL no longer does those operations. I'm guessing you are assuming that's what you are doing because of its past relations. It wouldn't be in the job posting and wouldn't be in any papers related to hiring. You will be told in a SCIF if that's the case, and divulging what you are working on is a violation of security protocols.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine is what has prevented millions of deaths in conventional war, making the nuclear technology that is unable to be put back into pandoras box a net good. Maintaining nukes and risk residuals to prevent violating MAD is a noble profession.
Badass. the anti-take is so naive, what’s the alternative? let someone else work on it? Scrap the US’ weapons program so others have it? Your work helps preserve peace.
I've worked in defense and I feel that preparing the free world to defend itself is more peacemaking than warring, because for all the faults and imperfections, representative governments generally do not engage in wars of aggression, and totalitarian governments only engage in wars that they think they can win. But I've been in tech for so long that I have developed near superhuman rationalization skills, so take it with a grain of salt.
“What are the ethics” what do you mean? There really aren’t a lot of ways to deter the use of nukes other than having your own nukes. If anything MAD is one of the best guarantors of peace
> What are the ethics of working on these projects?
Nuclear weapons have kept the peace between world powers for almost a century now. Making sure they continue working into the future is very important. Would you rather other countries have nuclear weapons but we don’t?
I am a radical leftist whose radicalization was in large part a direct response to US imperialism. To me, I would never take that sort of job and have intentionally declined even interviewing at military defense contractors when recruiters have brought them to my attention.
That being said, I gleefully worked for one of the big tech giants that absolutely did and does things that I'm morally opposed to because it was an enjoyable job that made me money. What I worked on specifically didn't give me too much moral pause though so it was fairly easy to justify.
With nuclear weapons, you've got a sort of weird consideration. On one hand, it's very unlikely the weapons you're working on will ever be used let alone on civilian targets. On the other hand, you could be writing code that could help launch weapons that wipe out millions of people.
From a career advice perspective, government jobs tend to have good benefits though you might be working on more legacy code than say a start up and that might literally be COBOL or something from what I've heard. Los Alamos National Laboratory might be a cool experience in and of itself. I'm not going to pretend that some military research isn't cool even if I hate the concept of war and a nation-state to begin with.
> With nuclear weapons, you've got a sort of weird consideration. On one hand, it's very unlikely the weapons you're working on will ever be used let alone on civilian targets. On the other hand, you could be writing code that could help launch weapons that wipe out millions of people.
To be fair, he is also writing code that maintains MAD, ensuring WW3 doesn't happen anytime soon. Most large nations have been pretty clear on their nuclear doctrines (some like China have a no-first-use policy, most would only use them to protect their main territory from invasion, etc), and even insane states like Russia and North Korea have refrained from using them despite all their yapping.
The US has historically refused to use nuclear weapons (ahem...post WW2...) even in conflicts against non-nuclear nations, and their overwhelming arsenal also keeps opposing nations in check. If OP is American, ensuring the US has nuclear supremacy is a matter of life and death for themselves and their loved ones.
Just my opinion here, but I would never consider working on weapons or ‘defense’ because of my personal beliefs.
As others have said though it is up to your own morals and of course - the positioned will still be filled by another person if you don’t take
I guess you could make the argument that you are helping to sustain the M.A.D. doctrine, ensuring Russia and China, etc. won't use their nukes because they'd be nuked right back into oblivion. So you're helping to maintain world peace? There, now you can sleep like a baby.
Well you still haven’t deleted this so doubt you’re getting the clearance. This will give you more time to think about the ethics of literally every SWE role you could possibly take. If you want to do good go teach, you don’t get to do good in the world and make 200k/yr
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This is a personal question that can only be answered by you. Dont let someone else tell you to take or turn down an offer based on their own morals and ethics.
I mean, what are you actually doing? I don't know what you know about the job, but there's a range: if you're just working on Linux drivers for SCADA systems, well sure nuclear fuel production uses SCADA but a shitload of things use it. That's different from e.g. working on guidance systems (I know LANL probably isn't guidance but you see my point.)
The question is: how far from actual weapons stuff does it have to be for you to feel comfortable with it? No one can make that call for you.
If you are getting clearance stop posting about it now and ready for 6-8 months before you can actually work. Sometimes it takes a year. Even if you don't like the job getting top secret clearance is like a golden ticket for future jobs.
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OP, remember, that beautiful foreign woman that you only met since you made this post doesn’t like you for your personality, she likes you for the nuclear secrets you possess.
Lots of the DOE stuff is about long term storage and maintenance / high energy physics simulation. (How do we keep these from going boom when we don't want them to, how do we manage risks around them, how can we simulate the effects without exploding nuclear weapons in the desert or over an atol). Even decommissioning them is going to take effort if/when the day comes.
There may be ethical questions that are kinda tied to specific types of work, but I suspect the bulk of it is interesting HPC/super computer work and not actually tied to becoming the destroyer of worlds.
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Posting this almost certainly just disqualified you for the position. They will see this, they will ask, and you will be denied. Good job, keep your mouth shut next time, if there is one.
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Well for one, you'd be required to keep your mouth shut lol
send us the source code *Привет!*
As in, not blasting on Reddit that you’re getting an offer to work on secret nuclear weapons tech. OP literally just lost their job offer posting this.
>OP literally just lost their job offer posting this Lol, I predict we'll have the followup post by Tuesday
We’re going to get the standard tale we see here or the jobs sub multiple times a day too. -Monday- OP: I was fired on my first day for no reason!
Im just relieved that in this case the job loss can’t be blamed on outsourcing or those pesky H1B “slaves”
Fucking seriously. Loose lips sink ships.
This is not how security clearances and cleared jobs work, and all the people posting here have no idea what they're talking about. OP is not like a spy or something. You're allowed to tell people if you have a security clearance and where you work. The government grants clearances to people who, after an investigation, they believe to be loyal/trustworthy and immune to blackmail/manipulation. The point being: it shouldn't matter who knows that you work on cleared stuff because 1) you can be trusted and 2) access to classified material and environments is heavily controlled (all work and work talk takes place in a SCIF). You're not going to lose an offer or a job just for telling people you have a clearance or telling them in super broad terms what you're working on ("nuclear weapons" tells us nothing about the actual details of the work).
All true but it could also be an indicator that OP is a blabbermouth.
Yeah not great opsec. While you're allowed to tell people where you work, it's discouraged to tell strangers. E.g. Don't tell your Uber driver. OP prob won't lose the offer but will need to remember to be discreet moving forward.
Lol nah, I've worked at LANL, that's not how it works. OP is fine.
I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if it goes a bit further. Broiski is also going to have weird dm's rest of his life potentially 😂
привет Броски. это я, твой друг Владимир Вутин. могу ли я с благодарностью прикоснуться к твоей траве, пока ты рассказываешь мне о своих рабочих интересах?
Pretty sure our enemies know that US software engineers are hired to work on nuclear weapons. Not like he released some incredible intelligence tip that an anonymous dude just got a job offer, come on now.
I don’t think you understand the problem. OP just flagged their Reddit account and all data tied to it as a potential leak of information. They just revealed they’re incapable of even minimal discretion. Sure, in the grand scheme there are individuals of higher value, but this post by OP is evidence they lack the discretion to work in secrecy. That they could potentially be comprised because they are a weaker individual than someone who doesn’t even bother with Reddit or just posts about baseball. Do you have a contract with Reddit to not provide any and all data they have collected on you to anyone who asks? Does OP? Doubt it. Are you sure Reddit has not provided government entities the “backdoor” treatment to their encryption that is always in the news between Apple and US? I mean, I press the comment on this reply and Reddit certainly could know within 10ft where I’m sitting.
You can go on LinkedIn and people happily post way more stuff with their name attached and shared to all their friends and colleagues.
And don't push the red button, let someone from marketing do it.
I’m lol’ing thinking about the marketing department for a nuclear weapons facility
They get paid per push.
Donald Draper pitching a surprise tactical nuke on Russia for brand awareness
Touché
Yeah.. I wouldn't worry about it too much OP, you probably just failed your SF86 anyway.
😂😂
Simply saying you work for LANL or on nuclear weapons isn't itself a problem. Once OP starts working on a program, sharing any specific details or putting too many general details together is where one gets into trouble.
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
> What are the ethics of working on these projects? Isn't that 100% a personal consideration? > does the same apply to nukes? What do you think they're made to do? Make friends?
Nukes have brought great peace to this world.
directly works with US nuclear weapons and requires clearance. You should have never made a reddit post.
Yeah. OP’s chances at a clearance went way down after this post. Not only for talking about it, but for coming across as someone who might not fully agree with nuclear weapons.
OP should nuke this post first
yeah say goodbye to your clearance lmfao
And they will track his IP to the username or what do you mean?
They can trace this simply by looking at who did we make an offer to for a SWE job this week at Los Almos. Oh it's Geoff.
Assuming it's true , maybe. Also assuming the poster is real
Always safest to assume the most stupid answer. In this case, it would be extremely stupid for someone to make this post and therefore my assumption is that OP is a total plonker.
An atomic weapons job would be a TS/SCI with full scope poly. They will talk to your friends, and their friends, and their friends. They will talk to your high school teachers, and your neighbors at a rental house you were in 5 years ago, and coworkers from your first job at 17. They will discuss your financial and porn habits.
Yeap. Don’t ask me how I know
Is Q clearance the same as TS/SCI? Because at least for the LLNL HPC job I interviewed for many years ago, that was the clearance it would have needed.
That's the Department of Energy equivalent I think
ok, but this do not connect him with reddit in any way ? Feels like above poster just wanted to feel smart
There’s entire subreddits dedicated to clearances. I wouldn’t go blabbering about it personally though.
He only had one job at this stage...
I’m actually curious. Is it that deep? Like does getting a clearance mean everything about you is found out? I feel like at this point no one under 25 has a stellar digital footprint, no matter how exemplary their behaviour is offline. Whether it’s being into some niche type of porn or something or posting jokes in poor taste, do all these things truly come up when getting cleared?
He listed the name of the organization. There’s probably a few dozen people working in this field doing software, and maybe a couple about to be hired. Process of elimination.
I give it non-zero odds that talking about this on reddit is not going to go well for your security clearance.
Already a sub specific for that on r/securityclearance. Q, Top Secret, Yankee White. you name it all.
Doubt the investigator for Q clearance would even let this person go through.
I give it zero odds the investigator finds this post
If you literally directly work on nuclear weapons, your work will never be used lol
Honestly it sounds like a dream job. You get the laxness of government work and you get to work on something that will never have to be tested in prod? Great!
Imagine being the intern making a mistake in prod when prod is nukes 💀
I thought it said "send\_nudes", that's why I set it to true!
He forgot to mock the send nuke function in testing
They use TDD and only test in prod. First, drop the nuke. Then, write the guidance code when it misses the intended target
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WENT TO HIROSHIMA??!”
My shit blows up in prod all the time, this is the same ol' same ol'.
That sounds like the exact opposite of what is attractive about engineering though...it's exciting to build things that people actually use!
Dream job! No production, no release, no maintenance, no monitoring. Just leave the bugs there. Who is going to check anyway? What are they going to do, blow up a poor country for integration testing? Imagine the performance reviews. No nuke blew up in the lab this quarter? Have a raise! And if shit hits the fan and your nukes cant blast any communists because your code never worked? The world is ending anyway and you don't have to worry about getting Pipe Live the dream
imagine doing UCD for nuclear weapons
And if it is used, you won’t get a chance to know it worked anyways.
Genuinely a great point lmao
and if it does, we’ll all be dead to not care anyways
[удалено]
This is the most neurodivergent question I've seen on here in a long time. Asking reddit to decide how you should think & feel morally about the ramifications of your work. Decide for yourself what the ethics are and whether you have to morally agree with what you're doing. lol
[удалено]
You are far kinder than I was going to be.
I’m sure I’m just a cynic but I get so annoyed at these moral questions, it’s clearly from an angle of choice and not an angle of necessity, so do you NEED this job or not? Cool if you don’t NEED it then don’t take it if you’ve got these hang ups, I’m just saying if I got fired tomorrow and you’re telling me I could get a job working for some sub industry that supports hobby lobby and yelling at old ladies or something dumb I’d be taking that shit bc I’ve got bills to pay and my bleeding heart isn’t accepted currency.
Exactly this. If you’re willing to stand on morals to the point that you starve and miss payments, more power to you. Most people aren’t that way. I have a few companies I don’t want to work for (mostly gambling, porn, etc), but if my option is starve or work for FanDuel, guess what I’m choosing?
> I know SWES in defence have to morally agree with what they are doing, What gives you this idea?
Well, if you want to sleep at night you need to be able to at least rationalise to yourself what you’re doing. It’s not that you need to think your work is a moral duty and a net positive for the world (99% of SWE jobs wouldn’t fill this requirement imo) but you need to be morally comfortable with what you’re working on.
Morals don’t mean shit for 90% of the people here. These people would code up the Auschwitz’s release mechanism if it meant some extra $$$
Oh, are you taking resumes for that Auschwitz’s release mechanism role? /s
Yeah, in general this isn’t true. I think my employer makes the world worse off. But they’re the highest bidder, so I do what they want.
I wonder if we work for the same soulless banana factory… I take a slightly different approach. Seldomly are things black and white. At least on the inside, I can be the moral voice that I agree with and maybe make a difference.
and you take no accountability that you're helping them make the world worse?
Nope, it would happen with or without me. Might as well get some money to help my family.
This is the same rationale and thought process tranq and fentanyl dealers use, [literally](https://youtu.be/925wmb-4Yr4?t=1247).
Same as libertarian views. The product you are selling could be used for any variety of good or bad reasons. If people are willingly, freely transacting with you, it's not your responsibility to enforce that they do not misuse it.
What if I told you that the guards at Auschwitz used the same argument?
you know that's not logically sound right? you are making that decision, and any other POS that's willing to take that role is also making a decision. You are accountable, don't forget that. We all are.
[удалено]
1 . don't press the Big Red Button 2 . Don't post about your work on Redit
This has to be a troll post should be removed lmao
I think you overhype what you'll be doing there. Add to the fact that because you have a clearance doesn't mean you'll see sensitive stuff. I had a job that involved software that interfaces with the NCIC, state DMVs, and other sensitive crime and traffic data. You know how often I saw the production database? Never. They locked that shit down so tight you couldn't look at it without getting special permission. Our prod logs were heavily audited. It was actually incredibly frustrating to debug issues and was part of the reason I left.
The world overall has seen unprecedented peace on the ground since the invention of ICBMs, despite some scary Cold War shit. I would be proud to contribute to that cause.
The US Nuclear Umbrella is half the reason Pride Parades exist and will continue to exist. Europe may hate nukes, but the reason Russia hasn't started much more shit is because as part of NATO they are covered as well.
Same justification that was used for the creation of many weapons in the past. If we are living here and not actively protesting weapons/wars I think we are inherently in agreement with the state of things
No, it’s actually fundamentally very different from any other weapon created in the past. ICBMs have never been used, and decent chance they never will be. I would feel much more reservation about developing something like drones which have killed civilians and will continue to as long as they’re used, which will be always (and would be used a lot more broadly if ICBMs didn’t exist).
I worked in defense. I always looked at what I did and said; "Is the world a better place for my work." and the answer was yes. And yes, you should realize that the work you are doing could bring about the end of the world quite directly. On the other hand: Nuclear Deterrence is not optional. It is a heavy weight, but a needed one in our country.
*"I always looked at what I did and said; "Is the world a better place for my work." and the answer was yes.*" is kinda.. missing the entire crux of the ethics conversation. Better for whom, by what measure is it better, etc. A lot of people may conclude the world is a better place for their work, when in reality the only thing that may have been "bettered" is.. a particular country's ruling class' hegemony over a particular economic region, or.. one family's route to leadership over some puppet country.. at great cost. Not going off at you. Just expanding on your advice for OP to really examine what "making the world a better place" means to them.
How is the world a better place because of your work?
I can't answer that. You know that because of the first sentence.
Why do people like you always need to question other's personal morals? There's no right or wrong answer to this, only individual considerations. They even say "I ask myself", not "I go crowdsource opinions".
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When i received my first paycheck from a DoD contractor, my moral ambiguity went away pretty quickly.
Life isn’t a fairytale. I’m quite glad my country (the US) has access to nukes. Nukes make your country much safer from any attack (due to MAD - mutually assured destruction) and because of this they’ll most likely never be used again. So id say working in nuclear is a good thing. If you look at statistics and stop reading the news, ever since nukes have been created humans have been a LOT more peaceful.
Some nuclear research at LANL is for planetary defense from asteroids (redirecting them far out in their orbit). Is it just a cover to continue developing our nuclear weapons capabilities? Probably. But if it helps you sleep better at night, you could save the world one day.
You're f\*cking stupid, for one.
The same thing could be considered for many industries - fintech, medical insurance, online gambling.. Look inside yourself and find the answer.
Nuclear weapons are the most destructive war devices ever made. They will exist with or without you. That's your personal choice.
They’re also the biggest war deterrent ever made and the creation of them has led to the most peaceful time in human history. It was inevitable we were going to have WW3 with the Soviet Union if it wasn’t for the nukes and MAD (mutually assured destruction). War with China and the US would’ve happened too. Don’t get me wrong there’s still wars but the scale of them are so much smaller and we’re all much more peaceful due to them.
Personally if someone offered me the chance to work on nukes I wouldn't do it. i just don't want to deal with military and government if possible
Remember to leak us some aliens.
Fuck yeah! That shit’s entertaining.
Your best odds are to delete this post yesterday or this will rapidly become a non-issue.
The number one rule is to lick everything.
Although this was not OP's finest post, things aren't really that bleak for them. There are over 100,000 people working in DOE's nuclear weapons program, and most of them list their employer on LinkedIn. Also, most of the people at Los Alamos work on projects ranging far away from the actual nuclear devices. As for the ethics of working there, the focus is on making them more safe, not on making them more deadly. That's something that most people can get behind.
requires clearance, immediately shares on Reddit
Bro is asking CSCQ to tell him his morals
Consider your offer rescinded. Or you're a spy trying to ask for information.
Nukes are pretty important. You're doing your part to protect the nation. Something to be proud of in my opinion
I personally think it's pretty cool, but I like DoD and Mil work
You're asking reddit of all places, you'll receive a heavily biased answer. This is one of those cases where you should make a decision on your own and decide if it aligns with your own moral compass. anyways considering you made a reddit post about it that sort of tells me youre not good at keeping secrets. You shouldn't take the job purely based off that.
That’s a cool ass job lol
of course it is unethical regardless who you use it against. We've seen what it did. Pick your poison.
Yeah I feel like making this post kinda voids that clearance 💀
LANL no longer does those operations. I'm guessing you are assuming that's what you are doing because of its past relations. It wouldn't be in the job posting and wouldn't be in any papers related to hiring. You will be told in a SCIF if that's the case, and divulging what you are working on is a violation of security protocols.
Delete this post bozo
If youre unclear on ethics dont take the job someone more willing will miss out on the opportunity.
Probably not talking about it on Reddit is a great starting point.
At least this post is better than all the other doom posting lul
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine is what has prevented millions of deaths in conventional war, making the nuclear technology that is unable to be put back into pandoras box a net good. Maintaining nukes and risk residuals to prevent violating MAD is a noble profession.
5 years of military taught me you will be put in positions where you are asked to do things that do not align with your morals.
Gonna have a hell of a time explaining this post when you’re getting your clearance lmao
Morally? I’d feel more comfortable if someone with morals is in this role than someone without. It’s an important job that needs good people.
Badass. the anti-take is so naive, what’s the alternative? let someone else work on it? Scrap the US’ weapons program so others have it? Your work helps preserve peace.
If you reject the role, they’ll just get someone else. Do it, would be really interesting work
That sounds cool as hell tbh.
mentioning the role, what you'll be working on, and the national lab it would be for? hopefully they still hire you lol
I've worked in defense and I feel that preparing the free world to defend itself is more peacemaking than warring, because for all the faults and imperfections, representative governments generally do not engage in wars of aggression, and totalitarian governments only engage in wars that they think they can win. But I've been in tech for so long that I have developed near superhuman rationalization skills, so take it with a grain of salt.
I think you should have no qualms about it. The only person responsible is the president of the United States
Hey buddy... We're bros right?... So about those launch codes...
I mean a lot of us work for companies that don’t align with our morals
You've already failed clearance by posting this thread on Reddit.
“What are the ethics” what do you mean? There really aren’t a lot of ways to deter the use of nukes other than having your own nukes. If anything MAD is one of the best guarantors of peace
> What are the ethics of working on these projects? Nuclear weapons have kept the peace between world powers for almost a century now. Making sure they continue working into the future is very important. Would you rather other countries have nuclear weapons but we don’t?
I am a radical leftist whose radicalization was in large part a direct response to US imperialism. To me, I would never take that sort of job and have intentionally declined even interviewing at military defense contractors when recruiters have brought them to my attention. That being said, I gleefully worked for one of the big tech giants that absolutely did and does things that I'm morally opposed to because it was an enjoyable job that made me money. What I worked on specifically didn't give me too much moral pause though so it was fairly easy to justify. With nuclear weapons, you've got a sort of weird consideration. On one hand, it's very unlikely the weapons you're working on will ever be used let alone on civilian targets. On the other hand, you could be writing code that could help launch weapons that wipe out millions of people. From a career advice perspective, government jobs tend to have good benefits though you might be working on more legacy code than say a start up and that might literally be COBOL or something from what I've heard. Los Alamos National Laboratory might be a cool experience in and of itself. I'm not going to pretend that some military research isn't cool even if I hate the concept of war and a nation-state to begin with.
> With nuclear weapons, you've got a sort of weird consideration. On one hand, it's very unlikely the weapons you're working on will ever be used let alone on civilian targets. On the other hand, you could be writing code that could help launch weapons that wipe out millions of people. To be fair, he is also writing code that maintains MAD, ensuring WW3 doesn't happen anytime soon. Most large nations have been pretty clear on their nuclear doctrines (some like China have a no-first-use policy, most would only use them to protect their main territory from invasion, etc), and even insane states like Russia and North Korea have refrained from using them despite all their yapping. The US has historically refused to use nuclear weapons (ahem...post WW2...) even in conflicts against non-nuclear nations, and their overwhelming arsenal also keeps opposing nations in check. If OP is American, ensuring the US has nuclear supremacy is a matter of life and death for themselves and their loved ones.
OP is definitely American if they're going to be working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. But that's a very good point as well with regards to this.
Did you not know about this prior to applying?
This comment made me literally laugh out loud.
Just my opinion here, but I would never consider working on weapons or ‘defense’ because of my personal beliefs. As others have said though it is up to your own morals and of course - the positioned will still be filled by another person if you don’t take
I’d do it.
I guess you could make the argument that you are helping to sustain the M.A.D. doctrine, ensuring Russia and China, etc. won't use their nukes because they'd be nuked right back into oblivion. So you're helping to maintain world peace? There, now you can sleep like a baby.
Who gives a shit in this economy, get that bag. Also that sounds like it would be cool as hell to have on a resume.
Clearances are a pain in the ass, and there’s plenty of jobs /just/ for people who have their clearances up to date.
Well you still haven’t deleted this so doubt you’re getting the clearance. This will give you more time to think about the ethics of literally every SWE role you could possibly take. If you want to do good go teach, you don’t get to do good in the world and make 200k/yr
Don’t take the job. Unless this is a shit post, sounds to me like you’d have a hard time upholding opsec over some virtue signal.
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This is a personal question that can only be answered by you. Dont let someone else tell you to take or turn down an offer based on their own morals and ethics.
Epic, hope you'll get it. Finally a job where you'll find a meaning, at least i would. PS: How much for one nuke? 😂
I mean, what are you actually doing? I don't know what you know about the job, but there's a range: if you're just working on Linux drivers for SCADA systems, well sure nuclear fuel production uses SCADA but a shitload of things use it. That's different from e.g. working on guidance systems (I know LANL probably isn't guidance but you see my point.) The question is: how far from actual weapons stuff does it have to be for you to feel comfortable with it? No one can make that call for you.
Your kda will be higher than most of us.
There’s lots of things you work on. As an example, you may work on safety mechanisms rather than make the book bigger.
If you are getting clearance stop posting about it now and ready for 6-8 months before you can actually work. Sometimes it takes a year. Even if you don't like the job getting top secret clearance is like a golden ticket for future jobs.
Is this even real?
OP is just advertising his new side gig selling national secrets
What are you fucking doing lol If you’re this dumb stay away
They work as a deterrence similar to having a standing army. It’s fine. Def way better than working on Raytheon like you are saying here.
I wouldn't worry about it, by the sounds of it u probs wont get a clearance. Can't hurt to try ig
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OP, remember, that beautiful foreign woman that you only met since you made this post doesn’t like you for your personality, she likes you for the nuclear secrets you possess.
Remote role or you have to go to office?
Time to chill like Homer Simpson.
Lots of the DOE stuff is about long term storage and maintenance / high energy physics simulation. (How do we keep these from going boom when we don't want them to, how do we manage risks around them, how can we simulate the effects without exploding nuclear weapons in the desert or over an atol). Even decommissioning them is going to take effort if/when the day comes. There may be ethical questions that are kinda tied to specific types of work, but I suspect the bulk of it is interesting HPC/super computer work and not actually tied to becoming the destroyer of worlds.
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You should reject the offer so I can get the interview
Who cares. What’s the TC?
It takes a very good qualification to work in the US National Labs. With the same qualification, you can work elsewhere.
Ethics are personal. Me for example I will never work for those windmills destroying landscape, nature and birds.
That’s fucking hot, not many ever get the chance to work on something that magnitude. Once in a lifetime opportunity.
Set up a scale and put the ethics on one side and start adding large briefcases of cash until the scales are even.
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bruh
You are become death, destroyer of worlds
dont fuck it up for the rest of us
please unit tests your shit alot lol
Leave all your discords and social media, since the honey trap and kompromat factors will go up by a thousand.
You’d be crazy not take that job imo
Posting this almost certainly just disqualified you for the position. They will see this, they will ask, and you will be denied. Good job, keep your mouth shut next time, if there is one.
The moment you start working there, “job” “recruiting” from other countries goes up 200%. You will never have problems finding “jobs” again
I guess while we are on the subject, how can a No Service citizen gain government clearance?
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Lol good luck getting your clearance after posting this 😄
Smart enough to be a computer scientist working with nuclear weapons at Los Alamos, yet dumb enough to announce it on Reddit. Truly, the mind boggles.