[Valord]

Programmers don't fully control what they work on when employed by an entity seeking profits.

Programmers _do_ have control in the world of open source. Unfortunately efforts are spread out thinly[0] enough to prevent many ideas from reaching the tipping point to being better than a profit driven entity's solution.

Imagine what would be possible in OSS if all work in a similar domain was concentrated.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42821332

[ryandrake]

> Programmers don't fully control what they work on when employed by an entity seeking profits.

But they do tend to control what entity they are employed by, and sometimes what team within that entity they work for. Let's not defend programmers as helpless cogs who are forced by their evil managers to program bad things. We all have agency, even during bad hiring times and bear markets.

If my boss asked me to build the Torment Nexus, I'd resist up to and including quitting. A disappointingly high number of us wouldn't even put up a fight.

[tivert]

> If my boss asked me to build the Torment Nexus, I'd resist up to and including quitting. A disappointingly high number of us wouldn't even put up a fight.

A big reason for that is most people don't have the "fuck you money" to be that selective. Sure, there are some programmers that are indifferent or amoral, but there are a lot more who just don't realistically have the luxury of quitting for reasons like that (e.g. they have a family, if they quit over X they may not be able to get a good enough job to maintain their lifestyle, if they don't maintain their lifestyle maybe their wife will leave them, etc).

Add to that, the Torment Nexus is clearly bad, but a lot of bad things aren't quit so obvious, or can be defended tempting but specious arguments (e.g. Facebook's "but we're just bringing the world closer together").

[datavirtue]

Not unless I'm vested.