In my high school days, I was a huge server and networking person. My homelab was basically my identity, and not even a good one: consumer-level networking gear running Tomato and a then-7-year-old homebuilt desktop PC running FreeBSD.
Then I joined NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering for Computer Science. It was a full 180 into software engineering. I didn’t just code for assignments, I started with toy projects and went to major Tor contributions writing very complex patches, had two internships and ultimately a job at Microsoft.
Primarily due to “Big Data” experience at NYU CUSP, Microsoft placed me on the Viva Insights team. I’ve always hated the product, feeling it was unnecessary surveillance. I wanted out.
In fact, the disdain of Viva Insights was big enough to make me lose passion for coding and get into obsessive browsing and shopping because facing the music of working on a surveillance product would bother me even more. Open source work outside of package maintenance went to zero.
I’ve tried to discuss this with my mom, and she kept telling me how “lucky” I am for working at Microsoft saying “it’s big tech” and “you’re neurodivergent” and “you won’t survive at a smaller company.” She even bought into the marketing material telling me how it’s “not surveillance.”
I’ve decided that in the shitty job market, it’s not worth being a software engineer even if I make much less. Part of it is being “specialized” in over-glorified surveillance so even if I change employers, what’s the guarantee I won’t be working on another surveillance product. Assuming I can even get another job.
In fact, I’ll just live off dividend income and try to get my new IT startup Fourplex off the ground. Sure, I won’t be able to buy shiny homelab equipment as often as I did in the past, but I at least have the guarantee I’m not working on an unethical product.
While six figures is certainly nice, it’s only nice if it’s ethically done. I’d much rather flip burgers or bag groceries than work on surveillance for six figures. After all, Edward Snowden had a “stable” federal government job (not so stable now thanks to “DOGE”) and he gave it up to stand up for the right to privacy.
And I care more for my values than the name or salary. It’s not like I use Windows at home, I haven’t since 2012. I kept self-hosting email despite having worked at Microsoft 365 and still do even now. And I sacrificed job performance for my values of strong privacy.
Little did I know that my father (who was previously a big Big Data and AI advocate) would come out to hate Viva Insights. He says it’s “bullshit” and nobody uses it. Even when I worked at Microsoft I never used it. Not even once. It’s bloatware. Microsoft is 100% better off porting Office apps to Linux (despite me using a Mac now) or beefing up cybersecurity.
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