1999
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
(stackdiary.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Your notion is just wrong. First of all engineers can't push back on something like this. They can try to push back on stuff that might be wrong for the product, that is not performant or potentially break stuff, but not on something that can make the company so much money. If this is the roadmap, they must align, they are being paid (tons of money) to implement the company's vision.
Second of all, you are looking at this as a consumer perspective. They are part of the company and most likely heavily invested in it. And if such thing will increase the company's revenue, it will icrease theirs too. They won't feel bad trust me, they know where they are and what they're doing.
That's where the ethics part comes into play. They're not being ethical.