Throwaway because my reddit account has my name in it. Tl;dr at bottom.
I'm a software engineer at a fortune 500, it's a great job, good pay ($200k+), good benefits, and very laid back. I probably do 20 hours of work a week, and watch TV the rest of my shift.
I work within automation, my entire job is to help the rich make money by reducing employees.
Last month my team deployed an internal tool that automated a huge chunk of work for a decent sized department.
This week under the pretense of a possible recession and stock value dropping the entire department apart from a few managers were laid off. A small team was hired in India to do any grunt-work that might be needed.
As part of the process, I worked alongside these guys for the past few months to better understand the work they did. Most have kids, one even just had a newborn. And now because of my work and to make the balance sheets look nicer for the shareholders they've all lost their jobs. And this isn't the first time it's happened, I've been doing this for years and it always ends the same way – I just never cared before now.
My company has been making insane profits and boosts about how much money they'll be raking in. I just feel like a tool used to hurt the working-class to placate major shareholders.
I'm not exactly sure what to do, I could resign and look for something that aligns more with where my values are now, but I'd probably be replaced by someone else and my pay would signifincalty drop.
I've thought about using my skills to help, instead of hurt the working class. I've helped friends shave off hours of work-load by giving them tips to automate things – I'd much rather help than hurt workers – but that's probably not a practical way for me to make money.
Honestly not sure what the point of this post is, just wanted to vent somewhere and maybe get some advice.
Tl;dr: software engineer specializing in automation, my company laid off an entire department claiming it was because of recession worries but in reality it's because I developed a tool that did 90%+ of their work, they hired a few guys in India to fill in the gaps. Feeling like I'm part of the problem, not sure what to do.