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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 buil

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.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    How many people do you think would need to sign this for it to have a material impact on recruiting and retention for big companies? Let's not be fuzzy about it. Let's see what the goal needs to be, and then talk about how reachable it is.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      That would require a high degree of speculation, since I can't think of any example in history in any industry where "employees not willing to work for a company" managed to have a material impact on that company. I think this is uncharted territory.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        This is a joke about HN, right? Hey. I'm getting some mileage out of this on Twitter and you're getting a little jumped on, but: if you're not joking, this is good news. It's kind of great news. It means all you have to do is learn a bit about the labor movement to see a whole new dimension of possibilities for intervening against a system we're widely concerned about.
        ryandrake 10y ago
        Fair enough, labor unions. Brain no longer working, thanks for leading me by the nose to it. So we need to get software engineers, who as a group tend to be openly hostile to the idea of unions, to embrace collective bargaining.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Not all unions are about salary and shop rules. Look at the history of Polish Solidarity!
        kevinr 10y ago
        And not all organization is union organization. 5-10% of employees speaking up can have an effect.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  It's impossible to "hold them to it" because it's so easy to get out of. People changing jobs because they want better lunch isn't comparable. That's a choice they make on their time, at their leisure and having weighed up many other competing factors. A pledge like this one in theory demands absolutism. Bad behaviour happens, you quit, regardless of how inconvenient or impractical it is for you at that time. In practice, because the pledge has had absolutely minimal thought put into it, the authors filled it with weasel words to get a big list of signers. If someone was wanting to quit their job for lots of other reasons perhaps they can use this to justify leaving and make themselves out to be super virtuous. But if they didn't actually want to quit their job then they'll just say that they objected internally and were ignored, but that satisfies the pledge. Or that they made some token change that "minimised" the data collected. Ethics is a deep, complex field of study. This is the opposite: a highly partisan and political document that exists only so people who don't like Trump can show that to the world, which I expect they were loudly doing anyway. It will only increase mistrust amongst conservatives, who will ask awkward questions like "Where were these tech guys when people were talking about databases on issues that matter to us, like gun control?". Why weren't they signing pledges in 2013 when Snowden revealed what the Obama administration was doing; why is this only a big deal now someone we like got into power? Pledges like this speak for everyone in tech. They shouldn't do that.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Two responses. First: it does not demand absolutism. The point of the pledge is to exert market pressure on companies that are creating negative externalities. The idea is simply to internalize some of the risk they're creating. That market pressure works just fine whether someone quits the moment they discover malfeasance or whether they take the next job offer they get, 2 months later. From the perspective of engineering management, both outcomes are catastrophic. Second: the pledge doesn't speak for everyone in tech. It speaks for the people who signed the pledge.

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.
- tptacek 10y ago
  How many people do you think would need to sign this for it to have a material impact on recruiting and retention for big companies? Let's not be fuzzy about it. Let's see what the goal needs to be, and then talk about how reachable it is.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    That would require a high degree of speculation, since I can't think of any example in history in any industry where "employees not willing to work for a company" managed to have a material impact on that company. I think this is uncharted territory.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      This is a joke about HN, right? Hey. I'm getting some mileage out of this on Twitter and you're getting a little jumped on, but: if you're not joking, this is good news. It's kind of great news. It means all you have to do is learn a bit about the labor movement to see a whole new dimension of possibilities for intervening against a system we're widely concerned about.
      - ryandrake 10y ago
        Fair enough, labor unions. Brain no longer working, thanks for leading me by the nose to it. So we need to get software engineers, who as a group tend to be openly hostile to the idea of unions, to embrace collective bargaining.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Not all unions are about salary and shop rules. Look at the history of Polish Solidarity!
        kevinr 10y ago
        And not all organization is union organization. 5-10% of employees speaking up can have an effect.
zigzigzag 10y ago
It's impossible to "hold them to it" because it's so easy to get out of. People changing jobs because they want better lunch isn't comparable. That's a choice they make on their time, at their leisure and having weighed up many other competing factors. A pledge like this one in theory demands absolutism. Bad behaviour happens, you quit, regardless of how inconvenient or impractical it is for you at that time. In practice, because the pledge has had absolutely minimal thought put into it, the authors filled it with weasel words to get a big list of signers. If someone was wanting to quit their job for lots of other reasons perhaps they can use this to justify leaving and make themselves out to be super virtuous. But if they didn't actually want to quit their job then they'll just say that they objected internally and were ignored, but that satisfies the pledge. Or that they made some token change that "minimised" the data collected. Ethics is a deep, complex field of study. This is the opposite: a highly partisan and political document that exists only so people who don't like Trump can show that to the world, which I expect they were loudly doing anyway. It will only increase mistrust amongst conservatives, who will ask awkward questions like "Where were these tech guys when people were talking about databases on issues that matter to us, like gun control?". Why weren't they signing pledges in 2013 when Snowden revealed what the Obama administration was doing; why is this only a big deal now someone we like got into power? Pledges like this speak for everyone in tech. They shouldn't do that.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Two responses. First: it does not demand absolutism. The point of the pledge is to exert market pressure on companies that are creating negative externalities. The idea is simply to internalize some of the risk they're creating. That market pressure works just fine whether someone quits the moment they discover malfeasance or whether they take the next job offer they get, 2 months later. From the perspective of engineering management, both outcomes are catastrophic. Second: the pledge doesn't speak for everyone in tech. It speaks for the people who signed the pledge.