We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right?
No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of that guy's engineering skills.
What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians, and that the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital. We need to give up the fantasy that we can change things with individual action, and start looking towards collective, society-level solutions to the problems today.
Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time; pricey cogs for sure, and replacing them may take some time, but they are still cogs.
Companies like Amazon were not always in the position you've described. It took decades to get there. And there would have been numerous opportunities along the way where a single engineer could have had a massive impact.
A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company.
Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the ideas and leadership of a few individuals.
Side note: Tim Bray isn't merely one technologist. I suspect his public writings about working at AWS, and his implicit endorsement, have helped AWS to attract some top talent.
Certainly, when I was considering going there, people pointed me to his writings, and overall the writings increased my positive impression of the idea of developing AWS, beyond my already positive impression from using it.
This also suggests one way in which we each could, perhaps should, make an individual difference: when we're working at an organization, we're implicitly endorsing and representing it to other prospective hires. We should hope that our presence there would make others want to work there more.
That's pretty much what Gandhi felt too, before he got kicked off the train.
For those interested his story is a pretty interesting example of a weird bumbling nerd who annoyed most people, transitioning into a sort GodFather of Collective Action. How he built such a large network of backers is as interesting as the tools he used and what results he produced.
> What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians
I couldn't agree more. It's quite tiresome to constantly hear about techbros somewhere "solving problems", "changing the world", achieving "disruption" yadda yadda yadda. You're building apps and websites, that's just about it. It just sounds unprofessional to describe yourself any differently. What's wrong with just being properly on-task as a well-oiled cog in some huge collective machinery?
There’s a tendency to take something like this as lecture on humility or delusion, but it’s also a bit of a warning.
How do con artists work? They let you think you have the upper hand while you are being taken to the cleaners. If you think of it this way it’s not just the sort of hubris that gets one into “trouble”, it’s the sort that gets one exploited.
This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers.
Maybe if we call it a "guild" (like the screen actors guild) it'll be more palatable to software developers who fancy themselves beyond the need for something as blue-collar as a union.
What is an ocean, but a sea of drops? It starts with employees speaking up individually. Raise your voice and be heard. Upper management won't learn moral lessons on their own; they need to hear employees nagging them to be better people.
When the vast majority of ultra-successful companies engage in undesirable practices, we must accept that those practices experience evolutionary positive selection. They are advantageous in the current environment. This is a structural problem, rather than a problem with any specific company.
More distressingly, this means that any work at a funky, independent, ethical company is merely laying the foundation for future unethicality, like Y2K Google.
The industry is known for contempt of the law, tax evasion, and oppression of the poor and minorities because this is what our society is known for.
Fantasies of personal power abound as we engage in cultural wars with our fellow citizens on personally important, but nationally and structurally irrelevant topics. We feel strongly about gender/animal/gun/vaccination/religious rights and engage in passionate debates and demonstrations as wealth, power, and freedom is gradually and inexorably stolen from all of us.
"the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital" ... so they can direct collective actions (eg. a free enterprise).
So why would your top-down collective action be any different?
I think there is one morally solid reason to stay at bad acting employer: if you are actively driving change of the behavior you consider bad. I pick this quote from Brays post:
> I escalated through the proper channels and by the book.
He only left after he felt he had exhausted his options of influence (This being my interpretation).
Leaving just as a knee jerk reaction without making effort to change would be bad, to me personally almost worse than remaining. Of course quitting can be in many cases feel easier/more attractive than trying to navigate through the office politics. But if you manage to flip even small corner of Google or whatever to not do evil (as they used to say) that probably has more influence to the wider society than you quitting.
Counterpoint being that you need to recognize if you are making that change or not, and if you are not able to do so then quitting might be the right choice
Counterpoint is that if your boss is for example narcissist, you cant change the course from down. You can only more or less implicate yourself. The toxic and manipulative technique will rub on you too and will normalize what is going on.
The culture and actions are set from top. If it is possible to change things, then great go for it. But make sure you are not staying for illusion of "navigating office politics" that amounts to being naive enabler moving himself more and more in the direction of the employer, convincing himself that more and more is actually fine.
> But if you manage to flip even small corner of Google or whatever to not do evil (as they used to say) that probably has more influence to the wider society than you quitting.
That is unlikely. For the record, I do not think that being employed in Google is inherently wrong. But you are not doing the world some kind service for working there. Just like working in startup does not mean you are changing the world.
That's a reasonable point of view, but I think your obligation extends primarily to saving your own soul, as it were. It's not your responsibility to make others do the right thing. If you think the organization is engaged in an enterprise that is fundamentally wrong, helping them to further their aims in a slightly less bad way doesn't change the moral calculus.
I agree with this, but also think that working for an employer that is "making a negative impact on the world" might _sometimes_ be the right choice. Specifically, it could be justified for two reasons:
First: you might have more impact on the organization from the inside than from the outside (this is most relevant to people joining at a high/senior level). For example, Google seems to be making privacy far, far worse. Yet there are some people on the inside fighting to limit the privacy violations, which leads to decisions like banning GPS tracking in their contact tracing app[0]. Would the world be better or worse off if the only people working at Google were people who don't care at all about user privacy? I'm honestly not sure, but I can at least see an argument that it might be even worse off.
Second: you might get something from the organization that lets you do good that outweighs any harm you contribute to (this is more relevant to junior employees). Many employers provide something (training, future job opportunities, or a high enough income to open your own small business/non-profit). A thoughtful employee can go into a "negative impact" employer with eyes wide open and a plan to get something, and get out.
However, in either case, self awareness and a definite exit plan are _key_. As Drew writes, once you are working at a "negative impact" employer,
> Doublethink quickly steps in to protect your ego from the cognitive dissonance, and you take another little step towards becoming the person you once swore never to be.
The way to avoid that sort of conative dissonance is 1) know that you'll experience it and be on guard against it, and 2) know all along that you're there temporarily and should never get too comfortable. Even then, you should be realistic about how long you can maintain your personal values in face of a very different culture. For a junior employee, I'd say two, maybe three years should be the absolute limit before you get out.
I agree that we have a moral line we can decide to cross at work or not. We can step in and say "this isn't right". We all have our own limits. If a company passes our line, we can decide to stay and be a dissenting voice in a sea of "yes men" or we can move on.
The one thing that bugs me about a post like this is where does our complicity end? Did Drew also change all his investments to divest from Amazon or Facebook or other company that is making the world worse? Nestle is one of the most evil companies in the world. Are we all boycotting all their products and not investing in their companies? We can all do more to make the world a better place but each individual has to decide their own thresholds. It is impossible for each of us to stand against all the evils in the world. Most of us have been very happy with 30% returns in our retirement even though we secretly know it is driven by the same companies we claim must be stopped.
Most people just want to provide for their family and live their life. Not everyone can (or wants to) be a social justice warrior. It is a very complicated issue and I think we paint it too black and white at times.
About double think, what is the difference between cognitive dissonance and your mind actually changing about a certain company or role because you now are more informed about it and choose to see it in a better light? People swear to never do things all the time until they do them. Does that mean they're evil people? Or does that mean their views have changed? And if their views have changed, who are we to tell them what's wrong and right?
> which leads to decisions like banning GPS tracking in their contact tracing app[
Ot, but I'm not sure I get this: google maps tracks most people all the time. Are they suddenly concerned about the privacy implications when it's about a temporary, non commercial product meant to manage a pandemic and handled by democratically elected governments instead of a multinational corporation?
Tech has a tendency to view the world in isolation.
You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries.
What does that leave us with ?
Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by them. Just because we establish a few degrees of separation from the problem, doesn't mean we stop being complicit in it.
Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop.
Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).
It seems that the political left (which usually drives these movements) would rather put the onus on the companies to change while taking millions in lobbying money, than hold them accountable for their actions.
I recognize that the systemic favoring of republicans in the electoral system, might force the left to keep appearances, lest be viewed as hostile to businesses and lose the vital 5% of the swing electorate. But, that still means, that the problem is lack of electoral reform and not 'Amazon being a greedy company'.
> Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop.
> Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).
Those aren't mutually exclusive, IMHO. Instead or in-addition to patching the "exploits," the law could be changed to make it clear that companies have obligations besides solely delivering "value" to their shareholders (IIRC that understanding of companies is actually pretty recent). Obviously it'd take more work to figure out how to do that than an internet comment warrants, but I'm not convinced it's impossible.
That was sort of the entire point of the writing. Because tech folks are in a privileged class, they have the ability to move jobs based on morals. And therefore they should. Not doing that, when you are making as much as you are as a programmer at BIGCORP means you are complicit in the bad behavior.
That was the entire point. He addressed your concern in the first two paragraphs.
I don't think that anyone with a developer salary and the ability to find another job with exactly the same salary or better within a month you can honestly say they have $$$ issues.
> Apple builds walled gardens and makes targeted attacks on open standards,
This is where the article lost me. There is a saying called "keeping your powder dry". If you express outrage at everything, soon your outrage has no meaning. Whatever your position on open source, I think you would admit that this behavior is in a whole other category than having poor worker safety, retaliating against whistleblowers, or conducting mass surveillance.
I do think that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in our protest is that they devolve into a diffuse rage against the machine where we protest a dozen different behaviors. One of the reasons the NRA is so effective is that they focus on one thing: gun rights. If you really want to influence politics, you need to be laser focused on an issue. See also prohibition.
The answer to employer abuse is not isolated people refusing to work at big tech companies. You have very little power alone and while refusing to work for a company you find objectionable may ease your conscience, it does little to affect change (unless you’re in a position with a lot of power like Tim). The solution is organization —- forming a union, or banding together behind a political organization or political campaign to affect change. Both of these run very counter to many tech workers’ individualist mindsets but ate much more effective than individual refusal.
Politicians, and by extension, the people that voted for them, have been creating this environment for decades. Only mega corporations can survive. The reasons are many, and they include low tariffs, high domestic regulation (ever try to start a business and deal with tax law, incorporating, etc), exploitative visa programs, binding arbitration employment agreements, free unlimited capital to the banking class (Discount Window access, NIRP and ZIRP, outright monetizing private debt by the central banks), most importantly, patents and copyrights enforced by the state.
I mean, the list is endless. Every facet of our society is built to protect the largest businesses, creating an environment that smaller, ethical companies simply can't compete in.
Every election cycle it's the same thing. They divide people across their little pet issues, keep the two party system in place through ballot access, overturning ranked choice, while waging wars in foreign lands and extracting all the wealth they can.
Stop voting for the same stuff. Get over yourself and your fickle positions. Vote for real change.
The industrial revolution was a period of unprecedented growth for our country and the world as a whole. It ushered in a new era, built immense fortunes, and led to the creation of critical infrastructure that we still use hundreds of years later. But with the great achievements came the unparalleled exploitation of the poor, minorities and even children, resulting in some of the most progressive labor laws ever developed. History rightly criticizes the robber barons and clearly illuminates the miseries they inflicted upon mankind for their wealth.
Software engineers are going to be faced with the same moral reckoning that the industrialists of the past faced, it’s inevitable. So it’s worth wondering if this time we will take some moral leadership and actually build a world that benefits humanity, or merely profit from it.
Nobody makes enough money to pay multiple-six-figures developer salaries without people being exploited somewhere, and any $bigcorp is generally incapable of acting in a way that doesn't maximize shareholder value (except as needed to comply with laws). If you want to quit $bigcorp in protest, $bigcorp2 across the street has its own ethical problems.
There is a lot of important software work to be done for the world that doesn't enable mass surveillance, doesn't exploit addictive behavior, and doesn't degrade worker protections or evade taxes. It also doesn't pay multiple-six-figures. You'll just have to live like all of your non-tech friends.
Things aren't so black and white. By some people's standards, Amazon has been exploiting warehouse workers for quite a while now (unpaid bathroom breaks and so on). By others', Amazon warehouses provide jobs to poor communities.
Facebook may be bad for privacy, but communities of all sorts get together and old friends reconnect on their platforms. Instagram brings beauty to lots of people. Remember how things were before that? I do. It was much worse. Is it worth the price? That's for everyone to decide for themselves (and for lawmakers to enforce).
But saying that all bigcorps are evil and nobody should work for them is a VERY simplistic view of the world.
Thanks for writing this out, there's no disputing the truth in your words. Individual courage can also be found from others, like in the case of Tim's sendoff, no doubt he inspired others to stand up for what they believe in.
Debt and healthcare are used to ensure that you don't have the freedom to walk away from immorality.
If you're in debt for your (or your kids' and/or partner's) house or education, or depend upon your employer for healthcare, you are not free to walk away. You might be able to switch jobs for something less objectionable, but so long as "not doing the immoral thing" means "my kid might not get treated for their cancer" just walking away is an option for a vanishingly small number of people.
Author here. I did not say "just walk away". This is what I said:
>A good software engineer with only a couple of years of experience under their belt can expect to have an offer within 1 or 2 months of starting their search.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Distribute your attention and effort as a function of how effective your effort can be. How meaningful is my indirect effect? That's often a function of how many nodes are between you and the thing on the big whopping graph of interconnectedness, but not every time.
Figuring out your allocations is a lifelong optimization process. Sometimes it is extremely obvious, usually it's not.
I've been trying desperately to avoid working for big corporations because they are against my personal beliefs. So far I have mostly succeeded. I only worked for corporations for 1 year out of 12 in total in my career. It's been really tough to avoid and getting tougher.
I think if I'm faced with the prospect of not being able to retire, I will have to join one. I will have to knowingly participate in making the world a worse place but at least I will have tried.
This really got me thinking... of course, what Amazon is doing is bad, I don't want to deny that - OTOH, for a tech company, they are an easy target - for example, Google doesn't have as many low-paid workers, so we don't know if they would treat them more fairly. How about the contractors hired by Facebook to weed out the worst posts by extremists, terrorists and other lunatics so our sensitive eyeballs aren't confronted with them? Is that better because they aren't directly employed by Facebook? Maybe Amazon should divest its warehouses so they're not so much in the public eye anymore? If you start to think about these things, where do you stop? Tax evasion? I guess every tech company is guilty of that, because shareholders expect them to find and exploit every possible loophole. In the end, probably the only companies you can morally work for are non-profits like Mozilla et al. - which is probably easier to do after raking in half a million per year for some years at a less morally sound company...
> Doublethink quickly steps in to protect your ego from the cognitive dissonance, and you take another little step towards becoming the person you once swore never to be.
Engineers in Canada are awarded an iron ring on graduation. It is worn on the writing hand's pinkey and meant to remind the engineer of their ethical obligations any time they sign a document.
I rarely wear mine because of exactly these kinds of mental gymnastics you describe. One never thinks they are being unethical because one changes their definition of ethical over time.
Instead of the ring, I kept the small slip of paper they give you at graduation. The symbol of the ring changes, but the words on that page never do. Here are a couple example sections: "my care I will not deny towards the honour, use, stability, and perfection of any works to which I may be called to set my hand." And "in the hour of my temptations, weakness, and weariness, the memory of this, my obligation".
[+] [-] spaced-out|5 years ago|reply
No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of that guy's engineering skills.
What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians, and that the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital. We need to give up the fantasy that we can change things with individual action, and start looking towards collective, society-level solutions to the problems today.
[+] [-] random9763|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|5 years ago|reply
— Charles de Gaulle.
[+] [-] RookyNumbas|5 years ago|reply
A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company.
Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the ideas and leadership of a few individuals.
[+] [-] neilv|5 years ago|reply
Certainly, when I was considering going there, people pointed me to his writings, and overall the writings increased my positive impression of the idea of developing AWS, beyond my already positive impression from using it.
This also suggests one way in which we each could, perhaps should, make an individual difference: when we're working at an organization, we're implicitly endorsing and representing it to other prospective hires. We should hope that our presence there would make others want to work there more.
[+] [-] op03|5 years ago|reply
For those interested his story is a pretty interesting example of a weird bumbling nerd who annoyed most people, transitioning into a sort GodFather of Collective Action. How he built such a large network of backers is as interesting as the tools he used and what results he produced.
[+] [-] tarkin2|5 years ago|reply
Techies, and everyone else, included.
Edit, re the enlightening discussion below:
You are complicit in your employer’s behaviour, more-so if you are reasonably able to find another job, but decide against it.
[+] [-] zozbot234|5 years ago|reply
I couldn't agree more. It's quite tiresome to constantly hear about techbros somewhere "solving problems", "changing the world", achieving "disruption" yadda yadda yadda. You're building apps and websites, that's just about it. It just sounds unprofessional to describe yourself any differently. What's wrong with just being properly on-task as a well-oiled cog in some huge collective machinery?
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
How do con artists work? They let you think you have the upper hand while you are being taken to the cleaners. If you think of it this way it’s not just the sort of hubris that gets one into “trouble”, it’s the sort that gets one exploited.
[+] [-] ori_b|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|5 years ago|reply
Maybe if we call it a "guild" (like the screen actors guild) it'll be more palatable to software developers who fancy themselves beyond the need for something as blue-collar as a union.
[+] [-] lidHanteyk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abandonliberty|5 years ago|reply
More distressingly, this means that any work at a funky, independent, ethical company is merely laying the foundation for future unethicality, like Y2K Google.
The industry is known for contempt of the law, tax evasion, and oppression of the poor and minorities because this is what our society is known for.
Fantasies of personal power abound as we engage in cultural wars with our fellow citizens on personally important, but nationally and structurally irrelevant topics. We feel strongly about gender/animal/gun/vaccination/religious rights and engage in passionate debates and demonstrations as wealth, power, and freedom is gradually and inexorably stolen from all of us.
[+] [-] jp555|5 years ago|reply
So why would your top-down collective action be any different?
[+] [-] zokier|5 years ago|reply
> I escalated through the proper channels and by the book.
He only left after he felt he had exhausted his options of influence (This being my interpretation).
Leaving just as a knee jerk reaction without making effort to change would be bad, to me personally almost worse than remaining. Of course quitting can be in many cases feel easier/more attractive than trying to navigate through the office politics. But if you manage to flip even small corner of Google or whatever to not do evil (as they used to say) that probably has more influence to the wider society than you quitting.
Counterpoint being that you need to recognize if you are making that change or not, and if you are not able to do so then quitting might be the right choice
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
The culture and actions are set from top. If it is possible to change things, then great go for it. But make sure you are not staying for illusion of "navigating office politics" that amounts to being naive enabler moving himself more and more in the direction of the employer, convincing himself that more and more is actually fine.
> But if you manage to flip even small corner of Google or whatever to not do evil (as they used to say) that probably has more influence to the wider society than you quitting.
That is unlikely. For the record, I do not think that being employed in Google is inherently wrong. But you are not doing the world some kind service for working there. Just like working in startup does not mean you are changing the world.
[+] [-] empath75|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codesections|5 years ago|reply
First: you might have more impact on the organization from the inside than from the outside (this is most relevant to people joining at a high/senior level). For example, Google seems to be making privacy far, far worse. Yet there are some people on the inside fighting to limit the privacy violations, which leads to decisions like banning GPS tracking in their contact tracing app[0]. Would the world be better or worse off if the only people working at Google were people who don't care at all about user privacy? I'm honestly not sure, but I can at least see an argument that it might be even worse off.
Second: you might get something from the organization that lets you do good that outweighs any harm you contribute to (this is more relevant to junior employees). Many employers provide something (training, future job opportunities, or a high enough income to open your own small business/non-profit). A thoughtful employee can go into a "negative impact" employer with eyes wide open and a plan to get something, and get out.
However, in either case, self awareness and a definite exit plan are _key_. As Drew writes, once you are working at a "negative impact" employer,
> Doublethink quickly steps in to protect your ego from the cognitive dissonance, and you take another little step towards becoming the person you once swore never to be.
The way to avoid that sort of conative dissonance is 1) know that you'll experience it and be on guard against it, and 2) know all along that you're there temporarily and should never get too comfortable. Even then, you should be realistic about how long you can maintain your personal values in face of a very different culture. For a junior employee, I'd say two, maybe three years should be the absolute limit before you get out.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-ap...
[+] [-] snarf21|5 years ago|reply
The one thing that bugs me about a post like this is where does our complicity end? Did Drew also change all his investments to divest from Amazon or Facebook or other company that is making the world worse? Nestle is one of the most evil companies in the world. Are we all boycotting all their products and not investing in their companies? We can all do more to make the world a better place but each individual has to decide their own thresholds. It is impossible for each of us to stand against all the evils in the world. Most of us have been very happy with 30% returns in our retirement even though we secretly know it is driven by the same companies we claim must be stopped. Most people just want to provide for their family and live their life. Not everyone can (or wants to) be a social justice warrior. It is a very complicated issue and I think we paint it too black and white at times.
[+] [-] polishdude20|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Udik|5 years ago|reply
Ot, but I'm not sure I get this: google maps tracks most people all the time. Are they suddenly concerned about the privacy implications when it's about a temporary, non commercial product meant to manage a pandemic and handled by democratically elected governments instead of a multinational corporation?
[+] [-] screye|5 years ago|reply
You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries.
What does that leave us with ?
Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by them. Just because we establish a few degrees of separation from the problem, doesn't mean we stop being complicit in it.
Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop.
Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).
It seems that the political left (which usually drives these movements) would rather put the onus on the companies to change while taking millions in lobbying money, than hold them accountable for their actions.
I recognize that the systemic favoring of republicans in the electoral system, might force the left to keep appearances, lest be viewed as hostile to businesses and lose the vital 5% of the swing electorate. But, that still means, that the problem is lack of electoral reform and not 'Amazon being a greedy company'.
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
> Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).
Those aren't mutually exclusive, IMHO. Instead or in-addition to patching the "exploits," the law could be changed to make it clear that companies have obligations besides solely delivering "value" to their shareholders (IIRC that understanding of companies is actually pretty recent). Obviously it'd take more work to figure out how to do that than an internet comment warrants, but I'm not convinced it's impossible.
[+] [-] thayne|5 years ago|reply
Or even illegal, as long as the risk of getting caught and or penalty if caught are sufficiently low compared to the benefit.
[+] [-] NotAnEconomist|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] OneGuy123|5 years ago|reply
Well-off devs like the guy who quit Amazon don't have $$$ issues, so he can afford to do that.
Others don't, and that doesn't make them bad.
That makes them care for their family first.
[+] [-] Loughla|5 years ago|reply
That was the entire point. He addressed your concern in the first two paragraphs.
[+] [-] mapleoin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|5 years ago|reply
This is where the article lost me. There is a saying called "keeping your powder dry". If you express outrage at everything, soon your outrage has no meaning. Whatever your position on open source, I think you would admit that this behavior is in a whole other category than having poor worker safety, retaliating against whistleblowers, or conducting mass surveillance.
I do think that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in our protest is that they devolve into a diffuse rage against the machine where we protest a dozen different behaviors. One of the reasons the NRA is so effective is that they focus on one thing: gun rights. If you really want to influence politics, you need to be laser focused on an issue. See also prohibition.
[+] [-] door99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linuxftw|5 years ago|reply
I mean, the list is endless. Every facet of our society is built to protect the largest businesses, creating an environment that smaller, ethical companies simply can't compete in.
Every election cycle it's the same thing. They divide people across their little pet issues, keep the two party system in place through ballot access, overturning ranked choice, while waging wars in foreign lands and extracting all the wealth they can.
Stop voting for the same stuff. Get over yourself and your fickle positions. Vote for real change.
[+] [-] rickyplouis|5 years ago|reply
Software engineers are going to be faced with the same moral reckoning that the industrialists of the past faced, it’s inevitable. So it’s worth wondering if this time we will take some moral leadership and actually build a world that benefits humanity, or merely profit from it.
[+] [-] smitty1e|5 years ago|reply
If the law doesn't explicitly outlaw BIGCORP's actions (yet), and we all kinda know that it should, then opposing BIGCORP is the correct thing to do.
If Amazon is acting legally, yet in an ugly way, to suppress workers organizing, it seems hard to complain.
Now, if Amazon workers exercise the right of free association in their spare time to stick it to JeffB, well, it sounds like he's got a problem.
[+] [-] ddevault|5 years ago|reply
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
[+] [-] linuxftw|5 years ago|reply
Similar to how the FAA regulates the airline industry and let Boeing murder two plane loads of people?
[+] [-] rtodea|5 years ago|reply
If we adopt consequentialism, how do we quantify all the good things amongst the bad ones?
Please note that just because the bad ones are most vocal, doesn't mean they will outweigh the good ones.
[+] [-] nogabebop23|5 years ago|reply
It is when you're young and know everything
[+] [-] chrismartin|5 years ago|reply
There is a lot of important software work to be done for the world that doesn't enable mass surveillance, doesn't exploit addictive behavior, and doesn't degrade worker protections or evade taxes. It also doesn't pay multiple-six-figures. You'll just have to live like all of your non-tech friends.
[+] [-] underdeserver|5 years ago|reply
Facebook may be bad for privacy, but communities of all sorts get together and old friends reconnect on their platforms. Instagram brings beauty to lots of people. Remember how things were before that? I do. It was much worse. Is it worth the price? That's for everyone to decide for themselves (and for lawmakers to enforce).
But saying that all bigcorps are evil and nobody should work for them is a VERY simplistic view of the world.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] _curious_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|5 years ago|reply
If you're in debt for your (or your kids' and/or partner's) house or education, or depend upon your employer for healthcare, you are not free to walk away. You might be able to switch jobs for something less objectionable, but so long as "not doing the immoral thing" means "my kid might not get treated for their cancer" just walking away is an option for a vanishingly small number of people.
[+] [-] ddevault|5 years ago|reply
>A good software engineer with only a couple of years of experience under their belt can expect to have an offer within 1 or 2 months of starting their search.
[+] [-] hprotagonist|5 years ago|reply
Distribute your attention and effort as a function of how effective your effort can be. How meaningful is my indirect effect? That's often a function of how many nodes are between you and the thing on the big whopping graph of interconnectedness, but not every time.
Figuring out your allocations is a lifelong optimization process. Sometimes it is extremely obvious, usually it's not.
[+] [-] cryptica|5 years ago|reply
I think if I'm faced with the prospect of not being able to retire, I will have to join one. I will have to knowingly participate in making the world a worse place but at least I will have tried.
[+] [-] rob74|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CurtHagenlocher|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddevault|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adverbly|5 years ago|reply
Engineers in Canada are awarded an iron ring on graduation. It is worn on the writing hand's pinkey and meant to remind the engineer of their ethical obligations any time they sign a document.
I rarely wear mine because of exactly these kinds of mental gymnastics you describe. One never thinks they are being unethical because one changes their definition of ethical over time.
Instead of the ring, I kept the small slip of paper they give you at graduation. The symbol of the ring changes, but the words on that page never do. Here are a couple example sections: "my care I will not deny towards the honour, use, stability, and perfection of any works to which I may be called to set my hand." And "in the hour of my temptations, weakness, and weariness, the memory of this, my obligation".