I'm not sure whether I can take this statement at its word. If that's the response when questioned about working at a company whose entire purpose is purportedly ethical, I would strongly reconsider your position. There are many corporate cultures where this kind of apathy and whatabout-ism would be considered a red flag. That would certainly be the case for any process I've run.
Let me put it this way, asking why you left an employer is fine. Expecting a certain answer for a subjective situation and rejecting an applicant because they didn't give you exactly that answer is not exactly a healthy behavior.
I'm not sure why it's so hard to say "Yes, company X did a lot of things well (Y, Z, AA) but could have improved in sectors AB, AC, AD." Actually, I do understand why -- you may be risk averse, and the fear of losing your job or rocking the boat precludes you from making a critique even if other people get hurt. Maybe in part because you too have mouths to feed and folks who will get hurt if you do so. So you downvote and make up excuses for it. After all, that's easier than addressing the cognitive dissonance, no?
It's understandable, but I still can't agree that it leaves you without some amount of ethical culpability. Maybe significantly less than an executive. But still, some. It's more understandable for roles that don't have as strong a position in the labor market as engineers, but I find it a little bit less so for myself, as someone who works in engineering.
I think you (and anyone else downvoting) should read Eichmann in Jerusalem [1]. It's about this exact ethical quandary. I would hope it would change your opinion on these things, but if it doesn't, agree to disagree. And certainly don't expect any sympathy from me or the rest of society.
Then why ask? All job interviews are weird mind games. My assumption when I'm asked why I left my last employer is that they're looking to second-guess my other answers based on what I say, or checking to see if I'm a disagreeable person who is willing to badmouth somebody generous enough to employ me. This is just taking the latter in the opposite direction.
There are plenty of reasons to move employers that doesn't involve saying that company you were working for is unethical. You could say that you've reached your ceiling and are looking for the next step up. That's a fair one. The company you are leaving may not be able to promote you. You're looking to work on new projects and your current company is just maintaining and/or adding features. That's also fair.
> checking to see if I'm a disagreeable person who is willing to badmouth somebody generous enough to employ me.
Ah, but you see, the guy I originally replied to is checking to see if you're willing to badmouth companies he dislikes. And if you don't, he will dismiss your application. It's an unspoken rule you can violate without ever knowing you're in violation of it and has a huge affect on the outcome of the scenario.
No reasonable interviewer is going to put you in the position of having to cast aspersions on a previous employer. That's a minefield for all sorts of reasons.
Not convinced you have much space to declare some global idea of "reasonable interviewer" although you're more than welcome to complain about you personally not getting an offer from a company that clearly doesn't share your values. Your words say "badmouth" but that's just a way of hyperbolizing the ability to be vocally self-critical, which is necessary to learn lessons and achieve actual growth as a company.
Most startups have to do this, in my experience. You can't experiment without it. If you can't identify one weakness in your prior employer's model (whether ethically or functionally) or you'll get huffy about talking about that in an interview setting, why would I trust you with the responsibility of being in my organization? I'm going to get to those answers eventually. Why waste your time?
Looking back at history, do you think they called them the "traitorous eight" [1] because they were "reasonable interviewers" who would never "cast aspersions on a previous employer?" No. The history of this industry in the USA is based on vocal critique, competition and paper chasing in the pursuit of out-executing your competition.
If you don't have that culture of critique and open communication, it will be very hard to become #1 in whatever you're trying to do. Maybe that will never matter to you and the companies you join. Okay. If that works for you, great. But I'm a career startup person, so it does matter to me. I would literally /never/ have gotten anywhere without being able to earnestly note what my previous employers did right and wrong, and use those learnings in my next opportunity -- often very vocally.
Now you're being condescending and projecting things onto me simply to try and undercut my point. Try talking to people without calling them huffy or assuming the people you're talking to are stupid. Maybe they just have different opinions from you.
I have no problem with honest critique. But once you get into talking about the ethics of a company, especially one you may have taken money from for an extended period of time, that's an entire subjective area. I'm not willing to go there with either employers or employees.
My way of avoiding the issue is to simply not work for companies I find ethically questionable. And if I were working for a company that I found later to be ethically questionable, I'd get another job.
The eight didn't get new jobs, they started a new company. It's like Activision and Atari. And it's a far cry from "I don't agree with their management structure" or "I don't like their method of crediting work" to "I think they're unethical".
> But once you get into talking about the ethics of a company, especially one you may have taken money from for an extended period of time, that's an entire subjective area.
It may sound subjective, but that's a view that may not be shared by the rest of the world; not in the eyes of the law, legislators, prospective employees. An accomplice is an accomplice. Especially in 2021, if you can't accept some responsibility to interrogate what the side effects are of the paycheck you accept (even if you don't agree with it), you're going to have a very difficult time participating in public discourse.
You could risk giving the impression that you'd rather ignore any negative externalities of your own work due to your own selfish motivations, even if it comes at the expense of society at large. And many members of society at large may deem you a coward and a liar by omission (I can't say I'd blame them). Some of those members may be people you'll never work with, but some of them may be companies that are interviewing. It won't matter if you want to hand-wave that away by saying "maybe they just have different opinions from you" -- when you're taking the money, you're either taking the responsibility that comes with taking that money or not.
Your vocation is part of your civic duty because it forms the basis for how you materially contribute to the taxes that fund society. If the path by which you earn those funds is compromised, then incrementally, so too is your little equity slice of society. Do you think it's reasonable to accept your desire to bow out from that conversation altogether? Or do you think that such a request will sound immature, evasive and tone deaf, that it will only succeed in drawing suspicion and ire?
Rather than accuse me of undercutting your point, I'd ask you to consider whether your point undercuts itself.
Bingo. If you discard my resume because I refuse to badmouth a previous employer in an interview then that's just a sign that I'd probably rather not work for you.
And as other people mentioned, especially in an interview where you're being intensely judged and have to give second thought to everything you say, I'm not about to give anything other than a neutral answer that's supposed to appease most people.
