> - what should you do if your government demands you secretly backdoor a specific user? They've got a warrant or a court order? OK. > - what if your easiest

> - what should you do if your government demands you secretly backdoor a specific user? They've got a warrant or a court order? OK. > - what if your easiest recruiting channels yield a higher proportion of white males than other, costlier recruiting channels do? If you're a good person, you try to correct for that. If you're a money-grubbing sociopath, you try to correct for that. This may sound unusual, but think about it from the sociopath's point of view: If other companies are neglecting some potential candidates, you can hire those people for less pay. Recruiting is cheap compared to salaries, so it's worth the upfront cost. In the long run, even if everyone is a money-grubbing sociopath, all demographics end up being paid the same. > - if your startup is struggling to even survive, should you invest time in infrastructure that protects users' privacy from your employees? Probably not. A dead company can't defend users' privacy very well. Also, assets (such as user data) tend to get sold off when a company shuts down. Best is the enemy of good, and all that. > - how do you find nonprofits and companies that are aligned with your values and need your help? Givewell.[1] These are not hard questions to answer. More importantly: Your hypothetical course, even if taken by every software engineer, would not have prevented the Volkswagen emissions cheating. That was obviously wrong, but the people involved didn't care. 1. http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/