8 ms·

It's a lovely gesture, and an important sign of solidarity; however, it'a merely that, just a gesture. I hope that SV and the tech industry leverages its wealt

• kevinburke 10y ago
  Over 1000 people, some of them very prominent, have pledged to quit their jobs if they are asked to do unethical things. How is that "merely a gesture"?
  • jerf 10y ago
    Have they destroyed any of this data yet? As much fun as it may be to pretend this is a Trump problem, it's a Silicon Valley problem. It's Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that it's all fun and games until someone you don't like gets the data that they have already painstakingly collected, polished, and devoted billions of dollars to processing and extracting features of interest. The existence of people you don't like and the fact that some of them will be someday be in positions of power isn't news, it's a constant fact of life. I find it a bit disgusting that this is what finally crossed the line when the line should have been considered crossed a long time ago, but I'll take what I can. Now, what has anyone done about the excessive collection of data, beyond virtue signaling that they don't like Trump? We don't need virtue signaling. We need actions. One of the signs that action has actually been taken would be that some of these companies are going to make less money. If that doesn't happen, this is hot air, so much "it's OK when we do it, but not those guys over there, no way! Now don't you feel better that we said that? BTW, here's a popup that offers you the choice of either giving us everything you have on your phone or being unable to use cell phones. (It's choice.)"
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • kevinburke 10y ago
      Sure; I signed the pledge. I've asked about companies' privacy policies, data retention and security policies during the course of interviewing. I've told recruiters the reason I am not interested in a company is because of their approach to privacy. I've discussed the implications of data collection and data management with colleagues at companies that collect lots of it. At the last company I worked at I promoted the use of HTTPS everywhere, when we had more pressing feature work to do. I shamed someone who shared around that a famous customer had signed up, and made it clear internally that we shouldn't be looking at or commenting on that data. I gave company-wide talks on security, phishing, the implications of storing our data in Slack, and realistic and unrealistic security threats. Not the next coming of Claus von Stauffenberg but I don't think everyone needs to be; just conscious of the choices they make and the consequences.
    • tptacek 10y ago
      You find it a bit disgusting that people have pledged to quit their jobs in support of a cause? Are you sure you don't need to recalibrate your definition of "disgusting"?
      • deleted 10y ago
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    • idlewords 10y ago
      You're complaining that "we need actions" in response to tech employees actually taking action. That's weird. I realize you want to see grander, significant results, but what do you think that looks like at the outset? People starting to do something in an industry that has been historically very wary of being "political".
      • zigzigzag 10y ago
        Signing a pledge is not "action". Actually quitting would be action. But there are lots of signatures from people who work at large companies that make even larger databases. Why didn't they quit already? Why didn't they quit years ago? Why are the only issues the pledge talks about things that liberals care about? Why not also pledge to never make a database of gun owners, to make the conservatives feel included? The industry is wary of being "political" for good reasons - engaging in shallow political campaigns and especially being seen to both biased and powerful is a good way to trash the reputation of the field. Software engineering isn't as respected as medicine, but it's at least better respected than journalism and politics. The worst case scenario is that this kind of crap becomes widespread and software ends up being like the social sciences: riddled with political extremism (there are basically no conservative social scientists) ... yet unable to see it because all people with opposing viewpoints were systematically shit on and excluded for decades until the point was reached where there were none left.
        • idlewords 10y ago
          It's dishonest to put "gun owner registry" and "Muslim registry" on the same moral footing, or to assert that conservatives don't care about creating a tracking database based on a religious test. People haven't quit already because there is diversity of opinion about what kind of data collection is inherently bad. There are people from Palantir who signed the pledge. I don't pretend to understand it myself. However, it represents a public commitment, and comes at a personal risk. People are making a very visible public promise at a time when visible people get harassed, and their own management is trying to make nice with the incoming Administration. Respect.
  • imdsm 10y ago
    Perhaps because no matter how prominent you or the company you work for is, there are 1000s of other IT workers who are less scrupulous, less conscious, and more motivated by money than you are. And they would do it. That being said, who is to say that it would be those people who were asked to do it? Most unlikely. It'd be the grey people, those you don't even know about. Those already doing it. And finally, it's already done, isn't it? Facebook, Google, et al. I've worked for small companies before that are able to identify demographics of users right down to their likes, dislikes, and ages, even without submitting that information. You think there isn't already swathes of Island-centric data out there?
    • kevinburke 10y ago
      This is a really fatalistic and deterministic argument. The tragedy of the Holocaust is that so many people went along with it. In many other scenarios around the world people haven't gone along with unethical requests and things stopped far short of there. People have agency. The whole point of the pledge is to make people aware that their colleagues aren't going along, and maybe send a signal to management about what employees will and won't accept. Hopefully others who haven't signed the pledge will have a clearer idea about what their colleagues think is unethical.
    • idlewords 10y ago
      It takes a long time to train up a new employee to effectiveness in a company like Google or Facebook, even if the hiring pool is limitless (which I dispute). Employees acting in concert at those companies are a powerful point of leverage.
  • zodPod 10y ago
    Because there are millions of people in the industry.. Without factoring in any exact data, I'd say it's no less than 20% of those millions voted for Trump and of those I'd be willing to bet a portion would support this initiative. It's "merely a gesture" because it doesn't mean shit and it won't prevent anything. I do agree with the guy above that said that it'll start a conversation but I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't change anything anyway.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      All it takes is a tiny team of people who "need that job".
      • tptacek 10y ago
        No, you're misunderstanding the concept of the pledge. Most of the people who signed the pledge at (for instance) Google[1] are never going to be anywhere near the actual creation of misuse of databases for deportation or religious discrimination. The pledge isn't about denying labor for the actual project. What it's about is radically altering the cost to companies of having anyone comply. It doesn't matter than you can find 5 random people who need some extra cash to do the scut work of actually abusing the database. When it gets out --- and it will get out --- the company loses team members. If enough people sign this, the market pressure they're exerting becomes significant, and must influence decision making. [1]: by the way, more people from Google signed the pledge than from any other company, and hey Facebook there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't be able to lap them.
        • ryandrake 10y ago
          OK, so what you're saying is it boils down to math: N = Number of employees signing the pledge, Q is probability that an employee will quit their otherwise fantastic $300K/yr^ job because someone ELSE at the company is working on MuslimDB, C = average cost to replace and retrain an engineer, P = expected profit from project. If NQC < P, do the project. Makes sense. I suppose whether it has an effect, then, depends on how many people sign it AND are actually willing to go through with it. ^(the salary commonly quoted on HN about how much the usual Googler makes)
  • imdsm 10y ago
    Perhaps because no matter how prominent you or the company you work for is, there are 1000s of other IT workers who are less scrupulous, less conscious, and more motivated by money than you are. And they would do it. That being said, who is to say that it would be those people who were asked to do it? Most unlikely. It'd be the grey people, those you don't even know about. Those already doing it. And finally, it's already done, isn't it? Facebook, Google, et al. I've worked for small companies before that are able to identify demographics of users right down to their likes, dislikes, and ages, even without submitting that information. You think there isn't already swathes of Island-centric data out there?
  • zigzigzag 10y ago
    Because they won't do it. This pledge is so full of get-out clauses it makes Swiss Cheese look robust. Many of the signers already work for companies that build large databases that could be used in bad ways by governments. This is the Silicon Valley equivalent of saying "I'll move to Canada".
    • tptacek 10y ago
      Then hold them to it when something happens. Personally, I think the people who have publicly signed this, putting them a Google search away from any future employer learning about this, probably thought about it more carefully than you did. In talking to people about this pledge --- particularly people resistant to the pledge (I have conservative friends), the most notable thing I've learned is that people do this all the time. Almost everyone I've talked to knows someone who quit a job over principle, or did so themselves. It's time for us to stop acting like this is such a weird thing to say or do, and recognize the market power we can so easily put behind basic principles we all share. Please don't tell me that thousands of people who have --- I am not being hyperbolic --- changed jobs over the quality of the free catered lunch wouldn't do so to avoid being affiliated with mass deportation or a Muslim registry. You will need a better argument than this to dismiss the effort.
      • ryandrake 10y ago
        Don't get me wrong, I find the pledge to be a noble gesture, and it's good to see individual tech employees finally publicly take a stance on ethical issues. But have ethical issues ever hurt a company's candidate flow? I can't think of a single company so tainted by some ethical thing that they can't find engineers willing to hold their nose and work for them. Have you ever been asked on an interview how you handled being assigned to write code that you had serious ethical concerns about, or whether there was any kind of projects you'd object to being assigned to? I haven't. Maybe those questions come AFTER the whiteboard hazing if there's time... I've in the past objected to an ethically questionable assignment, and the company dealt with by moving me to a different part of the code base and hiring a contractor who had no problem with doing the deed. Had I quit over it they would likely have shrugged and hired someone else.
• danso 10y ago
  Gestures aren't nothing, they start a conversation, spark a reframing of priorities, and signal to others that it's OK to concur -- or, as you say, a sign of solidarity. We focus on decision makers because that's the easiest point of observation. That we are much more limited in observing the chain of gestures and other non-decisive actions that influence decisions doesn't mean that gestures are nothing. More importantly, gestures are a way to be engaged and increase engagement, as you gradually position yourself to be in the right place at the right time to make impact. If everyone waited until they were established/rich enough before they acted at all on their convictions...well, there's a reason why "The establishment" is used as a perjorative. And as an obvious example, our president-elect made many gestures that he'll be unlikely to fulfill. But that was signal enough to get him to be where he is.
• yclept 10y ago
  I solemnly pledge to do nothing 8)
  • tptacek 10y ago
    That's OK. We'll defend your right to do nothing with our own livelihoods. That's how things are supposed to work.
• tptacek 10y ago
  I object to the idea that this is a gesture. These are people pledging their reputations to quit their jobs if their employers don't prevent the data they collect from being abused. It's not just possible but likely that people will quit jobs in the next couple years because of this. The objection that the pledge doesn't solve the problem is easy to make because it's true: the pledge alone won't solve anything. But make no mistake: this isn't a petition. Whether 10 people or 1,000,000 people sign a petition, the effort fails if the target ignores it. But a single person can sign a pledge and, in honoring their commitment, do something significant in support of their cause. It's not up to the employers; it's about the workers. I think this kind of bottom-up effort is both promising and overdue. More people should consider signing. What's the threshold we'd need to reach in our profession for a pledge like this to meaningfully impact decisionmaking? I think it's much less than 51%.
• mundo 10y ago
  If you read any of the pieces discussing the late Thomas Schelling's contribution to game theory, you know that making a pledge to do X if Y occurs is a perfectly sound strategy to discourage Y from happening.
• idlewords 10y ago
  A public commitment is not a gesture, but an act. It may be small for your tastes, but it's something. I certainly hope people fight aggressively in court. But waiting for that encourages a passive, helpless attitude at a time when we can be doing a lot. And it places too much faith in the legal system and rule of law. Right now the most effective way to make political change happen in our industry is by applying collective pressure from within. Tech employees are expensive and difficult to replace.
• kevinr 10y ago
  Respectfully, I'm interviewing for jobs right now. I did NOT just sign that pledge as a gesture.