this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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I understand your moral qualms because I would have them myself. Are you an actual employee of the MLM and be paid as a W2 employee? Or are you being offered equity in the company? How are you being compensated is what I am getting at. MLMs by their very nature are legal scams. Most operate out of Utah because Utah is legally friendly towards that model of operation.
Company is taking contracts and giving it to some of ,,their freelancers,,. So just another middleman in the shitstorm. My position will be somewhere in the middle of designing the scheme and actually implement it to their proprietary software. Edit : so I am looking at it from two standpoints - if I’m not going to do it, someone else will happily do it. I will never be client or supporter of this kind of business, but I am a developer so I ,,can do it,,.
This "justification" works for everything, from parking on the disability park spot to genocide.
Having said that, my first task at a new job in '94 was "you see these three workers counting, stacking and feeding the product into the packing machine? You'll design a stacker to replace them". "ah, three workers three shifts, so you're saying my first task is to make 9 people jobless?". "yup, but we'll replicate it to other lines, so...".
Someone would do it anyway.
Yup, there’s a reason that engineering degrees require ethics classes. On the surface, you don’t realize civil engineering can be racist, until you learn about engineers designing bridges too short for busses to drive under, so white neighborhoods can keep bus-riding minorities out.
Yes, someone will always do it anyway.
You must ask yourself how you will feel about providing professional support to this MLM. Can you imagine looking yourself in the mirror? Can you imagine how you will feel once the job has been completed?
I had a dilemma like this back in 2007. I was an auditor at a CPA firm, and my boss tried to assign me to a new client...a PAC... back when PACs were just starting to register in the general public's awareness. This PAC was in support of a politician that stood for the opposite of nearly every social issue I cared about. I did try to keep an open mind. Auditors are supposed to be unbiased, but usually the worry is don't get too friendly with your clients, not the other way around. But I couldn't do it. I imagined what it would be like to go to this place for 2 weeks to do the fieldwork. And I couldn't do it. Just 2 weeks of my life. Nope. The politician was too polarizing.
I told my boss to assign someone else. He gave me a little flack for it, but overall he was a good boss who appreciated me as a professional. He assigned someone else and that's the last I heard of it... until that PAC was getting targeted by tv talking heads waving our audit report in front of the cameras.
I'm soooo glad I declined that assignment. Not only am I proud of myself for standing up for my issues, not actively undermining them by working for the "other side", but I dodged a bullet by not being associated with them on actual television.
My advice to you. Get the compensation structure in writing and have an attorney go over it. MLMs will find any reason to fuck you over.