Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
An engineer who later learned the VC behind his former startup had been convicted of fraud prompts a wider look at how often legitimate-seeming tech jobs rest on shaky or exploitative financial structures. Commenters recount experiences with government contract padding, perverse corporate budget incentives, incubators that mainly enrich intermediaries, and startups built more to harvest fees than to succeed. Many conclude that individual workers are rarely culpable for unseen fraud, but grapple with the ethics of staying in roles that appear wasteful, misaligned with users’ interests, or designed primarily to move money rather than create lasting value.
Emotional impact & meaning of work
- Many relate to realizing past work was pointless or never shipped; feelings range from anger and grief to relief at avoiding long‑term maintenance.
- Some argue that all software is ephemeral, so focus on skills, relationships, and life outside work.
- Others push back: spending decades on work that’s neither useful nor enjoyable feels like wasting one’s finite time and agency.
Fraud, grants, and budget incentives
- Multiple anecdotes about government and academic projects where hours or costs were padded to “use up the budget.”
- Strong discussion of perverse incentives: underspending leads to future budget cuts, so managers rationally overspend or stretch work, sometimes flirting with illegality.
- Examples include universities “maximizing” grants, SBIR rules leading to duplicated equipment, and public-sector projects where saving money is punished.
Contracting, outsourcing, and finance games
- Recurrent pattern: employees or contractors are “let go” then rehired via big vendors at higher total cost.
- Reasons cited: headcount caps, OPEX vs CAPEX treatment, vendor-consolidation policies, legal limits on contractor tenure, and political optics.
- Many describe large banks, governments, and militaries cycling people between employee and contractor status, often destroying institutional knowledge while increasing spend.
- Cloud services and now AI are seen as another way to bypass procurement friction and budget controls, often leading to silent overspend.
Startups, VCs, and “poker” companies
- Several distinguish between ambitious but doomed startups and outfits structurally designed as fee machines, tax write‑offs, or investor grifts.
- Discussion of VC fee structures that reward raising and deploying capital, plus even more conflicted models where portfolio companies pay “services” back to their investors.
- Some incubators and public innovation programs are portrayed as routing money to large incumbents rather than real startups.
Moral responsibility and whistleblowing
- Sharp debate: some say employees in fraudulent or harmful setups have a duty to expose wrongdoing; others stress legal risk, weak whistleblower protections, and personal survival.
- Common view: you’re not culpable if you didn’t know, but once you suspect fraud you face a hard trade‑off between ethics and self‑preservation.
Broader reflections
- Thread circles back to “bullshit jobs,” the ubiquity of waste, and whether capitalism or human nature is “inherently corrupt.”
- Many conclude: learn what you can, get paid, try not to harm people, and don’t tie your entire identity to any one job.