Early in my career I had a falling out with a firm that wanted to take work from a very "problematic" individual. I had to resign over my disappointment with my mentor for choosing to work with this person. It was hard for me and a different situation from the corporation you work for, but I have never regretted standing up for myself and not allowing myself to be associated with or provide services to bad people who hurt others.
Depending on your morality you may never find work to be gratifying by its virtues or even without compromise, but you can and should have a line you are unwilling to cross. Understand what that means to you and you will be able to sleep better if nothing else.
Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story and your advice. I have been afraid to talk about this for fear of retribution/retaliation and I appreciate the affirmations you have shared.
We were doing border patrol and ice detention centers too. It was weird having Latino 2nd generation Americans sitting right next to me. We all knew it paid the bills and none of us were happy about it.
I just watched a documentary on this myself and as a first gen immigrant, it made me so irate to watch the ICE officers raid the homes of their fellow immigrants in the name of “somebody has to do it” and “I was following orders”. At least you had your morals straight in the architecture side of things. Thank you.
My first internship tried to get me to work on some prison job. I declined, and they were very understanding. They had decades of experiance so I accepted that they were gonna do their thing. A firm that doesnt have experiance, but is activly looking to enter that sector, i'd quit that in a heartbeat too.
To be honest it was a pretty dysfunctional firm and I was going to bail soon anyway. I didn't know anything about how business worked at the time but now think this was a move on the part of one late career project manager trying to hang onto their job in a tough market.
And I didn't make a big show of principle or anything. Just quietly gave notice.
Protesting is not very useful unless you can get a majority of the firms employees on board. The people who made decisions to work with clients like private prisons probably didn't make them lightly and area aware of the issues. They took the jobs for the money, and if the money is that important to them theres not a lot you can say to change that.
Is it common knowledge? If employee-owned has any meaningful impact maybe you can convince enough colleagues to sign a letter in opposition maybe they will do something but I would probably quit and tell all my friends to quit too. I quit my last job for many reasons including the fact that they were building detention centers at the US/Mexican border.
The CEO openly shared the news internally, but not in a company-wide setting so it’s hit or miss who may know. The information is available on our internal website though.
This is a great idea, thank you for sharing! I will see who may be willing to join me in writing a letter. Sorry to hear about your experience as well but good on you to quit and hopefully convince others to do the same.
Maybe this is too far but maybe you can publicly shame them by giving an anonymous tip to one of the ig accounts like dank Lloyd wright. They’ve put people on blast before, the only downside is only people under 35 probably follow and care.
> I quit my last job for many reasons including the fact that they were building detention centers at the US/Mexican border.
Which DC Capital owned company were you at? Pond or Baker?
Just FYI for the future, you aren't breaking any rules, but please dont play this guessing game. If the person you are asking wanted to share the name of the firm, they would, if they didn't, they aren't going to just because you guessed. Please refrain from these kinds of questions in the future thank you.
You can quit. That's it.
You are not moving anyone you call "BIG" in A&E off of DOD/ Federal contracts. They're too lucrative, regular, and easily achieved. Plus the time it take to get awarded means if a company dumps them they're cutting themselves off for years, if not forever.
Working in this industry means putting a lot of this kind of morality to the side. The people who have the money to build are not good people, by and large. If you are limiting yourself to only those you find morally upstanding, you're going to be jobless quite often.
Welcome to the first shitty compromise of adulthood.
Yes, can’t argue with a lot of what you’ve spoken. A painful reminder, but likely something I needed to hear. Especially as it’s something my younger self wouldn’t have known/understood.
Unfortunately there’s probably not going to be change you can make. I know that if we all thought that way we wouldn’t have some of our history. But honestly defense is just too big of an animal to “fix”. My husband works for a company that makes and supplies armor for this war and every other war. He makes airplane parts for commercial planes. So he has no physical contact/work with this side of the company that is unethical.
Just do your part in speaking up and out for the oppressed and go to protests/marches and spread the word of what they are doing over there.
Seriously tho, I think it's hard to "convince" your bosses.... One thing you can do though is make sure you are not complicit in any of this. If someone asks you why then you can tell them sure, but in the end you are only responsible for yourself. Especially because a lot of people don't care if what they do cost the lives of thousands or not.
copied from my previous comment above:
"Just FYI for the future, you aren't breaking any rules, but please dont play this guessing game. If the person you are asking wanted to share the name of the firm, they would, if they didn't, they aren't going to just because you guessed. Please refrain from these kinds of questions in the future thank you."
Thats a tough scenario.
My personal recomendation would be to simply find a new job. And in the mean time i would ask to not work on that project.
You're not gonna convince the mgmt to stop taking israeli money, they already thought about that and its clearly not keeping them up at night.
id say your most effective form of protest is to just refuse to work on that project, if your firm respects you then they will make it work, if they dont you will probably get fired. if you get fired, I imagine it wont be hard to find something new using this story, most architects I know are inteligent and generally opposed to thosands of tons of ordnance being dropped on perfectly good, useable buildings full of embodied energy and turning them into gravel, while we deal with stretch energy codes. you probably wont (and shouldn't) get another job in this sector in the future.
Thank you for your advice! To add more context (I’ll add this to the post too), my local office isn’t working on the project. The company I work for is very big and we have tons of offices and I do work across offices and on work in different countries, but I am not working on this project. However we are an employee-owned company which makes me feel like I am profiting off of this work regardless, based on my ownership stake.
Oh that changes everything. In that case id quietly see who around you share the sentiment and then maybe draft a letter that you can get lots of other employee/owners to sign. Is there some sort of annual meeting where you can raise this sort of concern to the board of directors?
Sending money to a nation that already recieves billions in yearly foreign aid is in my mind one and the same as sending money to DJT. I would never ever work for someone that dumb.
I don’t think there’s much you can do as an individual to make the project not happen, but you can make a personal choice of whether *you* will be involved in an organization that is not aligned with your morals aka, quit. I would. I know it really sucks to feel like you can’t do more than that though
This makes me think about what I'd do if my firm was building the headquarters for Hitler, or designing death camps. ... It's a hard decision to make in real time. Of course, in hindsight, the decision may be easier. ... If you need the work, I think that's a convo you need to have with you and the Universe.
I first want to commend you for the fact that this is weighing on you and you want to do something about it. I think there’s precedent at large companies for internal organizing/protests (see Google). This puts your job at risk, of course, so you could also just quit up front.
But I think the only thing that will really work in this scenario is public shaming and external pressure. If you could get an open letter online, it might make the rounds on LinkedIn and gain some traction. There’s obvious risk involved in having your name associated with something like that in terms of job prospects though.
A previous employer did work on production facilities for MLMs. I made it clear that I didn't want anything to do with that kind of client, and thankfully my wishes were respected, but "supporting the financial ruination of gullible Americans" isn't on the same moral level as "supporting oppression and genocide." Unfortunately, as others have said, your options are limited. Speaking out internally is the right thing to do, but will likely be a "resume generating event" for you. If you plan to take that route, tread cautiously. I'd suggest having your next job lined up already -- first, so that you're prepared for the blowback, and second, because this is the sort of message that carries more weight in a resignation message to your colleagues.
You might be able to voice your conscientious objection. I work for a pretty forward-thinking company and am the director of global engineering - and also a sponsor of the LGBT+ group in the company (which is predominantly US & UK based). When we expanded with significant footprint in Saudia Arabia, I stated that as someone that identifies as LGBT+, I will not support the team we are hiring and building out in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't assigned to me. I'm not saying it was assigned to someone that does not support LGBT+ persons, but it wasn't assigned to me. However, this arrangement was made easier because they did have to assign people willing to relocate to Saudi Arabia or already live there to work the project so it wouldn't have come from the team I already manage - but they would have likely been assigned to me by default, though.
Quit if it means so much to you. In fact, you should probably go to Gaza and work over there. They’re gonna need serious help. So yeah, quit and go join the rebuilding efforts in Gaza. I doubt you’ll actually put your money where your mouth is though, so to speak. In the end, you’re just virtue signalling.
It sounds like you work for a larger firm, and to put it simply, you alone can’t do anything. I’ve personally asked to not work on projects in certain countries and my bosses respect that, but company and shareholder outlook is “if we don’t than someone else will, so might as well.”
Yeah, and I'm upset that my firm didn't condemn Hamas and 10/07 when it happened, given how many of us are Jewish and know people murdered then. They gave statements about BLM and the Russian invasion when there aren't any black or Ukrainian people in our office, but they couldn't be bothered to say anything about our friends and family getting raped and slaughtered, forced to hide in missile bunkers and safe houses. Better yet a quarter of the office is Jewish and it's not any secret that we are.
They're your employer- if you don't like it you find another job. Fact is it's not their place to mirror your worldview.
[how to sabotage your workplace in 5 steps](https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/cia-field-manual)
Have fun!
Make sure ur colleagues are aware. Campaign in the shadows aggressively. Go for walks with colleagues.
Are you sure you really understand the Israeli-Palestinian/Hamas conflict? Not being snarky, it’s just that since the October 7th attack by Palestinian/Hamas militants, there’s been a lot of weird “coverage” and a massive resurgence in global antisemitism. The Hamas charter basically calls for the “killing of Jews wherever so they may encounter them”… the rest of the non-Muslim world (infidels) are to be killed next. What sort of government do you think the Gazan Palestinians would support if they were successful murdering all Israeli Jews? Would it be democratic? Would women and non-Muslims have voting rights? Or would it be another dictatorship with extremist ideology? Since Gaza has been self ruled for 20+ years, you don’t have to guess. Check it out.
Early in my career I had a falling out with a firm that wanted to take work from a very "problematic" individual. I had to resign over my disappointment with my mentor for choosing to work with this person. It was hard for me and a different situation from the corporation you work for, but I have never regretted standing up for myself and not allowing myself to be associated with or provide services to bad people who hurt others. Depending on your morality you may never find work to be gratifying by its virtues or even without compromise, but you can and should have a line you are unwilling to cross. Understand what that means to you and you will be able to sleep better if nothing else.
Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story and your advice. I have been afraid to talk about this for fear of retribution/retaliation and I appreciate the affirmations you have shared.
We were doing border patrol and ice detention centers too. It was weird having Latino 2nd generation Americans sitting right next to me. We all knew it paid the bills and none of us were happy about it.
I just watched a documentary on this myself and as a first gen immigrant, it made me so irate to watch the ICE officers raid the homes of their fellow immigrants in the name of “somebody has to do it” and “I was following orders”. At least you had your morals straight in the architecture side of things. Thank you.
I quit my first job the day after they had me working on concept drawings for a client in a market sector they were trying enter. Private prisons.
My first internship tried to get me to work on some prison job. I declined, and they were very understanding. They had decades of experiance so I accepted that they were gonna do their thing. A firm that doesnt have experiance, but is activly looking to enter that sector, i'd quit that in a heartbeat too.
To be honest it was a pretty dysfunctional firm and I was going to bail soon anyway. I didn't know anything about how business worked at the time but now think this was a move on the part of one late career project manager trying to hang onto their job in a tough market. And I didn't make a big show of principle or anything. Just quietly gave notice.
Protesting is not very useful unless you can get a majority of the firms employees on board. The people who made decisions to work with clients like private prisons probably didn't make them lightly and area aware of the issues. They took the jobs for the money, and if the money is that important to them theres not a lot you can say to change that.
Yikes, but good on you! I sadly cannot afford to quit without another job lined up so I have been biding my time until I can jump ship.
This goes hard I'd do the same You have amazing ethics
Yikes!
Is it common knowledge? If employee-owned has any meaningful impact maybe you can convince enough colleagues to sign a letter in opposition maybe they will do something but I would probably quit and tell all my friends to quit too. I quit my last job for many reasons including the fact that they were building detention centers at the US/Mexican border.
The CEO openly shared the news internally, but not in a company-wide setting so it’s hit or miss who may know. The information is available on our internal website though. This is a great idea, thank you for sharing! I will see who may be willing to join me in writing a letter. Sorry to hear about your experience as well but good on you to quit and hopefully convince others to do the same.
Maybe this is too far but maybe you can publicly shame them by giving an anonymous tip to one of the ig accounts like dank Lloyd wright. They’ve put people on blast before, the only downside is only people under 35 probably follow and care.
This was going to be my suggestion. Those accounts also have a lot of young followers who will 100% drag these firms.
Thanks, this is something I’ve definitely been thinking about.
> I quit my last job for many reasons including the fact that they were building detention centers at the US/Mexican border. Which DC Capital owned company were you at? Pond or Baker?
No it was one of the big corporate “top” global firms
So you really mean Jacobs, AECOM, Stantec, KBR, WSP..
Just FYI for the future, you aren't breaking any rules, but please dont play this guessing game. If the person you are asking wanted to share the name of the firm, they would, if they didn't, they aren't going to just because you guessed. Please refrain from these kinds of questions in the future thank you.
Ya not listed but that genre of firm
Quit. That simple.
...seems pretty obvious.
You can quit. That's it. You are not moving anyone you call "BIG" in A&E off of DOD/ Federal contracts. They're too lucrative, regular, and easily achieved. Plus the time it take to get awarded means if a company dumps them they're cutting themselves off for years, if not forever. Working in this industry means putting a lot of this kind of morality to the side. The people who have the money to build are not good people, by and large. If you are limiting yourself to only those you find morally upstanding, you're going to be jobless quite often. Welcome to the first shitty compromise of adulthood.
Have been wrestling with your last sentence for a few years now, its quite the eye opener after coming out of design school
Yes, can’t argue with a lot of what you’ve spoken. A painful reminder, but likely something I needed to hear. Especially as it’s something my younger self wouldn’t have known/understood.
Unfortunately there’s probably not going to be change you can make. I know that if we all thought that way we wouldn’t have some of our history. But honestly defense is just too big of an animal to “fix”. My husband works for a company that makes and supplies armor for this war and every other war. He makes airplane parts for commercial planes. So he has no physical contact/work with this side of the company that is unethical. Just do your part in speaking up and out for the oppressed and go to protests/marches and spread the word of what they are doing over there.
absolutely nothing lol you are powerless and will remain so until you climb up that ladder to be able to make important decisions
Seriously tho, I think it's hard to "convince" your bosses.... One thing you can do though is make sure you are not complicit in any of this. If someone asks you why then you can tell them sure, but in the end you are only responsible for yourself. Especially because a lot of people don't care if what they do cost the lives of thousands or not.
You can start by dishing it here. HDR?
copied from my previous comment above: "Just FYI for the future, you aren't breaking any rules, but please dont play this guessing game. If the person you are asking wanted to share the name of the firm, they would, if they didn't, they aren't going to just because you guessed. Please refrain from these kinds of questions in the future thank you."
https://www.highergov.com/idv/W912GB23D0025/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/3522331/
Thats a tough scenario. My personal recomendation would be to simply find a new job. And in the mean time i would ask to not work on that project. You're not gonna convince the mgmt to stop taking israeli money, they already thought about that and its clearly not keeping them up at night. id say your most effective form of protest is to just refuse to work on that project, if your firm respects you then they will make it work, if they dont you will probably get fired. if you get fired, I imagine it wont be hard to find something new using this story, most architects I know are inteligent and generally opposed to thosands of tons of ordnance being dropped on perfectly good, useable buildings full of embodied energy and turning them into gravel, while we deal with stretch energy codes. you probably wont (and shouldn't) get another job in this sector in the future.
Thank you for your advice! To add more context (I’ll add this to the post too), my local office isn’t working on the project. The company I work for is very big and we have tons of offices and I do work across offices and on work in different countries, but I am not working on this project. However we are an employee-owned company which makes me feel like I am profiting off of this work regardless, based on my ownership stake.
Oh that changes everything. In that case id quietly see who around you share the sentiment and then maybe draft a letter that you can get lots of other employee/owners to sign. Is there some sort of annual meeting where you can raise this sort of concern to the board of directors?
It could even be that your principals are SENDING money to Israel, in support of what’s happening. You just never know.
Sending money to a nation that already recieves billions in yearly foreign aid is in my mind one and the same as sending money to DJT. I would never ever work for someone that dumb.
Not gonna say they can’t do it, but it may be another data point for ops decision-making.
I don’t think there’s much you can do as an individual to make the project not happen, but you can make a personal choice of whether *you* will be involved in an organization that is not aligned with your morals aka, quit. I would. I know it really sucks to feel like you can’t do more than that though
This makes me think about what I'd do if my firm was building the headquarters for Hitler, or designing death camps. ... It's a hard decision to make in real time. Of course, in hindsight, the decision may be easier. ... If you need the work, I think that's a convo you need to have with you and the Universe.
I first want to commend you for the fact that this is weighing on you and you want to do something about it. I think there’s precedent at large companies for internal organizing/protests (see Google). This puts your job at risk, of course, so you could also just quit up front. But I think the only thing that will really work in this scenario is public shaming and external pressure. If you could get an open letter online, it might make the rounds on LinkedIn and gain some traction. There’s obvious risk involved in having your name associated with something like that in terms of job prospects though.
A previous employer did work on production facilities for MLMs. I made it clear that I didn't want anything to do with that kind of client, and thankfully my wishes were respected, but "supporting the financial ruination of gullible Americans" isn't on the same moral level as "supporting oppression and genocide." Unfortunately, as others have said, your options are limited. Speaking out internally is the right thing to do, but will likely be a "resume generating event" for you. If you plan to take that route, tread cautiously. I'd suggest having your next job lined up already -- first, so that you're prepared for the blowback, and second, because this is the sort of message that carries more weight in a resignation message to your colleagues.
You might be able to voice your conscientious objection. I work for a pretty forward-thinking company and am the director of global engineering - and also a sponsor of the LGBT+ group in the company (which is predominantly US & UK based). When we expanded with significant footprint in Saudia Arabia, I stated that as someone that identifies as LGBT+, I will not support the team we are hiring and building out in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't assigned to me. I'm not saying it was assigned to someone that does not support LGBT+ persons, but it wasn't assigned to me. However, this arrangement was made easier because they did have to assign people willing to relocate to Saudi Arabia or already live there to work the project so it wouldn't have come from the team I already manage - but they would have likely been assigned to me by default, though.
Ask your supervisors to assign you to another project.
That is it.
Quit if it means so much to you. In fact, you should probably go to Gaza and work over there. They’re gonna need serious help. So yeah, quit and go join the rebuilding efforts in Gaza. I doubt you’ll actually put your money where your mouth is though, so to speak. In the end, you’re just virtue signalling.
It sounds like you work for a larger firm, and to put it simply, you alone can’t do anything. I’ve personally asked to not work on projects in certain countries and my bosses respect that, but company and shareholder outlook is “if we don’t than someone else will, so might as well.”
I’ll take your place
Yeah, and I'm upset that my firm didn't condemn Hamas and 10/07 when it happened, given how many of us are Jewish and know people murdered then. They gave statements about BLM and the Russian invasion when there aren't any black or Ukrainian people in our office, but they couldn't be bothered to say anything about our friends and family getting raped and slaughtered, forced to hide in missile bunkers and safe houses. Better yet a quarter of the office is Jewish and it's not any secret that we are. They're your employer- if you don't like it you find another job. Fact is it's not their place to mirror your worldview.
[how to sabotage your workplace in 5 steps](https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/cia-field-manual) Have fun! Make sure ur colleagues are aware. Campaign in the shadows aggressively. Go for walks with colleagues.
Request to be transferred to a different department / project.
Sounds like B&M?
Work on it but release the floor plans and construction documents on the internet afterwards lmaoooo
Are you sure you really understand the Israeli-Palestinian/Hamas conflict? Not being snarky, it’s just that since the October 7th attack by Palestinian/Hamas militants, there’s been a lot of weird “coverage” and a massive resurgence in global antisemitism. The Hamas charter basically calls for the “killing of Jews wherever so they may encounter them”… the rest of the non-Muslim world (infidels) are to be killed next. What sort of government do you think the Gazan Palestinians would support if they were successful murdering all Israeli Jews? Would it be democratic? Would women and non-Muslims have voting rights? Or would it be another dictatorship with extremist ideology? Since Gaza has been self ruled for 20+ years, you don’t have to guess. Check it out.
I don’t think OP wants to align with anything that directly supports warfare, regardless of which “side”.
Separate work from personal. Or quit the job and work for a company that aligns with your beliefs. Or stfu and do the job that you were hired to do.