Ultimately, the company you are employed by is employing you to improve their bottom-line, as all of FAANG are for-profit companies. If your branch suddenly starts eating away profits (research proving something your company does is bad for example) or being too costly without improving the profits, there is a real risk they'll cut your branch/team. Is that not a fear for you? I'd like to understand the reasoning how it doesn't concern you.
Would I be disappointed if my project got cancelled? Yes. I think it would be a missed opportunity for my employer to make a meaningful change in an important space.
Am I fearful of it being cancelled? Absolutely not. I'll just find a new gig and move on with my life.
Last time my (much more commercially-focussed) project got canned, I had four very exciting offers lined up within a few weeks. All of those internal and within my very tight geographic constraints (couple of cities in Europe). I didn't even bother interviewing with other companies as I felt no need.
In the end, the cancellation turned out to be a great thing for me personally as it forced me to move. In the process of that move I found the current -- much more fulfilling -- gig.
Much as I love it, at the end of the day it's just a job. There are plenty of other opportunities out there if I ever need to find a new one.
This is off-topic a bit but something on my mind lately is this: there are known mechanisms for making a corporation accountable to something other than management profit, so why don't places use them? B incorporation, employee cooperative profit sharing arrangements, and so forth.
Maybe I'm overly cynical at this point in my life, or maybe it's just because I'm just unfamiliar with this stuff, but it seems like if places really wanted to prioritize something other than raw profit they'd do so. All this other stuff seems like rationalizations to me sometimes.
I don't want to come across the wrong way; I think there's a lot of good that can come from focusing on the bottom line. I just sometimes feel like greater diversity of organizational mechanisms would make the world a better place.
Profit just means your produce more things of value than you consume. It is the first part of true sustainability. If it hurts the bigger org it might be cut but if itβs sustainable it wont need the support of the bigger org.
