6 ms·

The Tech Pledge

46 points by sama 9y ago

nostrademons 9y ago
Many of these pledges require potentially expensive legal defense against the U.S. government. Will YCombinator commit to providing funding for the legal work committed to here? For their own portfolio companies only, or for any early-stage startup that finds themselves in the position of "sell out our users, or go bankrupt"?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andreyf 9y ago
A tech pledge to support user privacy which ignores the risk and market dynamics of security breaches? The mind boggles... How about dedicating resources to making sure everyone upgrades their devices, patches security vulns on internet-facing servers, uses password managers, etc? How about at the very least asking "if we suffered a breach, how would we know?". Because ethics aside, there seems little incentive for startups to worry about it.
abstractbeliefs 9y ago
While I like the idea of a tech pledge to identify what Right is, and then do the Right Thing, I can't help but feel that this particular implementation is extremely narrow in how it was designed and how it ended up scoped out. It seems very specifically about managing how the US govt. has interacted with specific companies holding user data, and also the current trends expressed by Trump regarding immigration. These are both important issues, but it's hardly what I'd consider The Tech Pledge, being so narrow. I'd love to see a version that talks about, say, security practices, and endeavoring to put consumer privacy above business needs.
- hkon 9y ago
  catered to the current winds of buzz
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Yeah, this has been specifically tailored so that people at companies like Facebook and Google can sign it. Things like... not being able to ad-target depressed youth (ex. Facebook in Australia), not paying to fabricate "independent" academic studies that claim you aren't violating antitrust law (Google's Joshua Wright), or operating software explicitly designed to help your service avoid government regulators from being able to find it (ex. Uber's Greyball), or other similarly immoral actions of Silicon Valley today clearly aren't covered here. This appears solely based on how tech companies should deal with the government, not themselves.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Employees at Google outnumber those of any other company on the NeverAgain.tech pledge. I don't know what Google's management can sign, but Google's rank and file broadly opposes turning over big data to the DOJ, or assisting in mass deportation. Obviously, the YC pledge is weak sauce compared to what NeverAgain says: no matter what legal process is involved, NeverAgain signatories pledge to leave a job that involves helping mass deportation. I think we shouldn't care about what Google's management thinks, but rather focus our attention on getting some pledges written that the rank and file can sign on to. If even 1/5th of the engineers at a company publicly pledge to something, their employers can't ignore it.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      I'm not seeing how your comment addresses my point. The neveragain.tech pledge does have a very vague term about "misuse of data that's illegal or unethical", but the majority of that pledge also refers very specifically to government overreach. It was in response to questions about if any of the companies would help Trump create a database of Muslims, and cites a variety of examples that all are about government abuses and overreaches that involved technology to implement. While agree with the statement others have made that neveragain.tech has a stronger pledge, I still don't feel it has much to do with extremely unethical practices in the companies themselves so much as insisting those companies don't help the government with it's unethical practices. If an employer is reading these pledges and taking note, they're going to see that they should resist government actions to use their data, not that they should make any consideration how they use that data themselves.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
The principle of least privilege seems very applicable to keeping user data secure from the government. You cannot hand over data that you do not have. If your business model requires collecting data that would not be conscionable to hand over to the government upon demand, you should seriously reconsider your business model. I'd strongly prefer something based off that rather than the actual pledge. It's fairly easy to lose a legal defense, go back on your pledge to produce a legal defense, or change owners to one not bound by the pledge. It's much more difficult to retroactively collect data.
- lazaroclapp 9y ago
  > If your business model requires collecting data that would not be conscionable to hand over to the government upon demand, you should seriously reconsider your business model. This is not reasonable in many cases, though. It is surprisingly hard to build many useful services on top of strong zero-knowledge crypto and have them operate in the real world where things like users forgetting their credentials are common occurrences that consumers expect you to be able to recover from. It is also actually impossible to do so when part of the service happens in the physical world (e-commerce, car dispatching apps, etc). In practice, until we solve a few long standing security and HCI problems, I can't envision a world where a large set of private parties doesn't know more about me, collectively, than what I would be comfortable with a hostile enforcement agency knowing and correlating in a single place. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a lot of value in being mindful of which data we are collecting, why and if we can get away with building our software so that we do not need that data. I also think keeping infinite records just because "big data will make them useful in time" ignores the 'toxicity' of huge troves of private data laying around. But even in a world where every company takes extraordinary data handling measures, even against market incentives, I still would want the companies to be very careful about sharing the data they did absolutely need to collect...
CM30 9y ago
It's a nice idea, and if people actually agreed to it, things could actually change for the better in the tech industry. However here's the issue: Only a small percentage of people in the tech world care about this stuff. It sucks I know. But it's true. The vast majority of people out there simply want a paycheck and don't really care how they get it. As a result this means that anyone who does agree to the pledge will most likely be sacked in favour of the person who doesn't. And there are millions of people in tech who will throw everything and everyone under the bus as long as management says so and the money ends up on the table. So how do you solve this? Well, good question. In a lot of fields, they solve it by either requiring accreditation or a union membership or god knows what else, which causes those who go against what's seen as 'ethical' in their field to have a very hard time finding new jobs afterwards. That's not really a likely thing for the tech world, and I don't think most people would want it to be. But as a result, it means pledges like this are pretty much useless at the moment.
mjg59 9y ago
Why is this so much weaker than http://neveragain.tech/ http://neveragain.tech/ ?
- williamsmj 9y ago
  Given neveragain exists and has thousands of signatures (many from employees at YC companies) and prominent media coverage, it's impossible not to conclude that the the glib vagueness of "The" tech pledge is deliberate.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    It's really weird, isn't it? NeverAgain is a pledge based on data collection and mass deportation. "The Tech Pledge" is essentially a pledge to provide large-scale data to the government, so long as the "correct" process is followed, and to defend the rights of immigrants who happen to work for tech companies. The connection between the two pledges is pretty unmistakable, so much so that you can read comments on this thread about how random the two issues in The Tech Pledge sound. Super weird.
- sremani 9y ago
  One is a Political statement and other is a Political submarine.
tptacek 9y ago
A reminder: It's nice if your company commits to something. But what's vital is that you commit to things, and that you organize around those commitments. As a profession, we have to stop looking to management and owners to own the ethics and conditions of our work. Things like this are fine, but don't lose sight of where the real power is. It's the strongest market for tech talent I've seen in my entire career. Your company cannot survive without people like you. Don't ask them to do things. Organize with your peers and demand. You'll win, a lot of the time, and your wins will be durable. This pledge is pretty clearly a response to NeverAgain.tech (look at the issues it cares about). NeverAgain.tech is about what members of our profession commit to doing; that pledge doesn't give a damn what companies say, because if employers contravene the pledge, the signatories have pledged to leave as soon as possible. That's meaningful. This is window dressing.
- angersock 9y ago
  Note in particular the utter lack of anything that actually benefits us, the developers: * No protections on moonlighting * No mention of fair equity for work by early engineers * No condemnation of clawbacks of equity * No whistleblower protection * No comments on diversity or discrimination * No comments on harassment * No comments on reasonable workloads/workweeks * No comments on allowing remote work or helping remote workers Make no mistake folks: this "pledge" does basically nothing to help you. Look out for your own interests. Further, it doesn't even have the balls to stand up and say "We won't do evil things like give away user data to government agencies" and instead goes for the much easier "well if the paperwork is okay we'll sell out the users i guess". This isn't worth the bytes it spent getting to you.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but when even me and 'angersock agree on something, shit's hinky.
    - angersock 9y ago
      Quite right, sir. Quite right.
steven777400 9y ago
Pledge 1 and 2 seem strangely distinct. It's odd to request someone to commit to both. Pledge #1 seems like basic ethics of technical practice, but pledge #2 is a specific position on a specific current political issue.
- tptacek 9y ago
  It's a reaction to the NeverAgain.tech pledge, which is employee-centered, not company-centered.
pjmorris 9y ago
My software engineering professor had us read the ACM [0] and IEEE [1] ethics codes. I vastly prefer the IEEE code (they both read like they were written by committees, but IEEE seems like it was addressed to a professional engineer, and ACM seems like it was written to a corporate drone.) Either one of the codes is significantly more thorough than the pledge, which seems focused on a few current issues, making it eventually irrelevant independent of whether its goals are achieved. [0] http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-code/ http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-co... [1] http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html
codingdave 9y ago
"The Tech Pledge" is way too generic of a name for what this is. Be specific enough that it piques people's interest. Otherwise it is just poor branding. (And branding does matter on grass roots efforts, not just corporate efforts.)
sethbannon 9y ago
I'd suggest a transparency section. Without companies committing to this it'll be easy for them to sign on publicly but privately act differently. Something at the end like: "Transparency: On an ongoing basis, we will offer our employees and our users reports on how we're fulfilling the above commitments."
zeveb 9y ago
Placing 'We will provide support to efforts to keep the United States DACA policy in place' under the heading 'Supporting Legal Immigration' is misleading: DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, i.e. it is a policy of tolerance for illegal aliens, not legal immigrants. Otherwise it seems a reasonably unobjectionable document.
CPLX 9y ago
I think this is amazing, and the premise of it, which is to recognize the unprecedented power that is pooling in the tech sector and the responsibilities that come with it, is highly laudable. With that said, the fact that there's no reference to the greatest problem facing our society, income inequality, is highly noticeable. A pledge by tech companies to respect the rights of workers would actually be something notable and daring.
rhapsodic 9y ago
I don't know why this pledge has to take a position on immigration policy. A flood of low-skilled, poorly educated immigrants definitely helps the rich who don't mow their own lawns or make their own beds, and corporations who benefit from the wage-suppressing effects of a huge surplus low-skilled and poorly educated workers. But it hurts American citizens who are themselves low-skilled and poorly educated. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but I happen to think that US immigration policy should be crafted solely on what is in the US's best interests. Allowing highly-skilled and highly educated people in helps the country, but I don't really see how allowing a flood of low-skilled immigrants in helps the country in the larger picture. I understand how it does from the Adam Smith/Milton Friedman perspective, but I don't think that benefit justifies the harm done to the most vulnerable workers (or would-be workers) who are citizens and taxpayers and in many cases veterans of our military.
- tchaffee 9y ago
  While I am pro immigration and pro freedom of movement in general (so I mostly disagree with your stance in general), I can't deny that the current immigration rules have been mostly to the benefit of making tech company owners richer by hiring highly skilled people at indentured servitude wages. Truly free markets would allow immigrants to change employer at will. Suffice it to say that this issue is controversial enough that it doesn't belong in a simple code of ethics. We agree on that.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
lacampbell 9y ago
How about a pledge to keep politics out of the work place? I am very tired of people dropping subtle and not so subtle hints about the strong political views they have in professional environments.
- drewrv 9y ago
  How would one keep politics out of the workplace? Silence itself is a political position.
  - lacampbell 9y ago
    It's a social skill to learn when it's appropriate to talk about politics, and when it isn't. Many people lack this skill. Of course, we all know that it's safe for some political persuasions to speak out, but not others. I suppose the people advocating for this are - literally - Politically Correct.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      What's ironic is that the "safe" politics of the Bay Area are deeply offensive in workplaces only 50 miles inland (and vice versa). I agree, politics at the workplace is inappropriate, except concerning issues of importance to that company or industry, e.g. Exxon being critical of drilling restrictions or Google evincing opinions about the continued legality of enumerating people's home wifi access points.
    - rhapsodic 9y ago
      And all the self-righteous, virtue-signalling talk about "diversity" does not extend to diversity of opinion. The same people who talk about the intrinsic value of every individual want to read out of polite society anyone who does not occupy the same spot on the political spectrum they do.
  - flukus 9y ago
    Silence is a political position as much as atheism is a religion and not collecting stamps is a hobby.
vinceguidry 9y ago
I did not know that this was a YC initiative until I read about it in the comments. Initiatives like this need all the help they can get in order to stand out above the noise. Everybody's got a manifesto. Only this one has YC backing. Consider making this a first-class effort.
- forgotmysn 9y ago
  considering how weak the pledge is, I think it would be more effective to concentrate efforts on growing neveragain.tech
mjg59 9y ago
> We will only provide individual user data to governments under correct legal process. If the law changes such that companies can be compelled to hand over information that would be unethical to hand over, the pledge should require that companies stop collecting that information and delete what they already have. If there are countries that have existing laws that would permit them to insist on handing over information that would be unethical to provide, the pledge should require that companies cease doing business in those countries. Right now this is simply a pledge not to engage in reprehensible behaviour. We shouldn't be providing rewards or encouragement not to act in reprehensible ways. We should be encouraging people to do better than the socially acceptable bare minimum. A pledge should be a promise to go above and beyond, and this is nothing of the sort.
colinsidoti 9y ago
Does this pledge deliberately avoid internal matters like employee wages/benefits, HR dealings, etc?
- jeffreybuchanan 9y ago
  Or what about the benefits and wages of subcontracted service workers? These are the poverty wage workers on many of these company work sites. Not sure it falls in line with anyone's values to have the world's richest companies be relying on poverty wage workers to feed, clean, secure and drive their employees every day. Similarly, the way in which "Legal Immigration" is highlighted seems to ignore the number of lower wage, undocumented workers within the service sector that is a part of the operations of these tech companies. Why not support all immigrants in their operations who are facing persecution?
lucasmullens 9y ago
> We will provide support to efforts "Provide support", and not just "support"? So a startup that isn't actively involved in efforts around keeping the DACA policy would be breaking this pledge? This seems to only make sense for giant companies.
EdSharkey 9y ago
Exactly, DACA's just a policy made with a pen and a phone - it's a legal phantasm that can easily be dispelled! Pass an actual labor law or gtfo on this indentured servitude you execs are so addicted to. Pay equivalent wages and allow imported labor to change employers or GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE! (Sorry to cuss, but I've got real hatred for the self-serving progressive leaders who profit so much from cheap imported labor.)
tzs 9y ago
> We'd like to invite comments on this for a two week period, starting today, May 2nd. I'm guessing that this is just a temporary page that will be replaced once you have developed the final version of the the pledge. If that is NOT the case, then may I suggest that "May 2nd" be changed to "May 2nd, 2017"?

46 points by sama 9y ago

Many of these pledges require potentially expensive legal defense against the U.S. government. Will YCombinator commit to providing funding for the legal work committed to here? For their own portfolio companies only, or for any early-stage startup that finds themselves in the position of "sell out our users, or go bankrupt"?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

andreyf 9y ago

A tech pledge to support user privacy which ignores the risk and market dynamics of security breaches? The mind boggles... How about dedicating resources to making sure everyone upgrades their devices, patches security vulns on internet-facing servers, uses password managers, etc? How about at the very least asking "if we suffered a breach, how would we know?". Because ethics aside, there seems little incentive for startups to worry about it.

abstractbeliefs 9y ago

While I like the idea of a tech pledge to identify what Right is, and then do the Right Thing, I can't help but feel that this particular implementation is extremely narrow in how it was designed and how it ended up scoped out. It seems very specifically about managing how the US govt. has interacted with specific companies holding user data, and also the current trends expressed by Trump regarding immigration. These are both important issues, but it's hardly what I'd consider The Tech Pledge, being so narrow. I'd love to see a version that talks about, say, security practices, and endeavoring to put consumer privacy above business needs.

hkon 9y ago
catered to the current winds of buzz
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Yeah, this has been specifically tailored so that people at companies like Facebook and Google can sign it. Things like... not being able to ad-target depressed youth (ex. Facebook in Australia), not paying to fabricate "independent" academic studies that claim you aren't violating antitrust law (Google's Joshua Wright), or operating software explicitly designed to help your service avoid government regulators from being able to find it (ex. Uber's Greyball), or other similarly immoral actions of Silicon Valley today clearly aren't covered here. This appears solely based on how tech companies should deal with the government, not themselves.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Employees at Google outnumber those of any other company on the NeverAgain.tech pledge. I don't know what Google's management can sign, but Google's rank and file broadly opposes turning over big data to the DOJ, or assisting in mass deportation. Obviously, the YC pledge is weak sauce compared to what NeverAgain says: no matter what legal process is involved, NeverAgain signatories pledge to leave a job that involves helping mass deportation. I think we shouldn't care about what Google's management thinks, but rather focus our attention on getting some pledges written that the rank and file can sign on to. If even 1/5th of the engineers at a company publicly pledge to something, their employers can't ignore it.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I'm not seeing how your comment addresses my point. The neveragain.tech pledge does have a very vague term about "misuse of data that's illegal or unethical", but the majority of that pledge also refers very specifically to government overreach. It was in response to questions about if any of the companies would help Trump create a database of Muslims, and cites a variety of examples that all are about government abuses and overreaches that involved technology to implement. While agree with the statement others have made that neveragain.tech has a stronger pledge, I still don't feel it has much to do with extremely unethical practices in the companies themselves so much as insisting those companies don't help the government with it's unethical practices. If an employer is reading these pledges and taking note, they're going to see that they should resist government actions to use their data, not that they should make any consideration how they use that data themselves.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

The principle of least privilege seems very applicable to keeping user data secure from the government. You cannot hand over data that you do not have. If your business model requires collecting data that would not be conscionable to hand over to the government upon demand, you should seriously reconsider your business model. I'd strongly prefer something based off that rather than the actual pledge. It's fairly easy to lose a legal defense, go back on your pledge to produce a legal defense, or change owners to one not bound by the pledge. It's much more difficult to retroactively collect data.

lazaroclapp 9y ago
> If your business model requires collecting data that would not be conscionable to hand over to the government upon demand, you should seriously reconsider your business model. This is not reasonable in many cases, though. It is surprisingly hard to build many useful services on top of strong zero-knowledge crypto and have them operate in the real world where things like users forgetting their credentials are common occurrences that consumers expect you to be able to recover from. It is also actually impossible to do so when part of the service happens in the physical world (e-commerce, car dispatching apps, etc). In practice, until we solve a few long standing security and HCI problems, I can't envision a world where a large set of private parties doesn't know more about me, collectively, than what I would be comfortable with a hostile enforcement agency knowing and correlating in a single place. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a lot of value in being mindful of which data we are collecting, why and if we can get away with building our software so that we do not need that data. I also think keeping infinite records just because "big data will make them useful in time" ignores the 'toxicity' of huge troves of private data laying around. But even in a world where every company takes extraordinary data handling measures, even against market incentives, I still would want the companies to be very careful about sharing the data they did absolutely need to collect...

CM30 9y ago

It's a nice idea, and if people actually agreed to it, things could actually change for the better in the tech industry. However here's the issue: Only a small percentage of people in the tech world care about this stuff. It sucks I know. But it's true. The vast majority of people out there simply want a paycheck and don't really care how they get it. As a result this means that anyone who does agree to the pledge will most likely be sacked in favour of the person who doesn't. And there are millions of people in tech who will throw everything and everyone under the bus as long as management says so and the money ends up on the table. So how do you solve this? Well, good question. In a lot of fields, they solve it by either requiring accreditation or a union membership or god knows what else, which causes those who go against what's seen as 'ethical' in their field to have a very hard time finding new jobs afterwards. That's not really a likely thing for the tech world, and I don't think most people would want it to be. But as a result, it means pledges like this are pretty much useless at the moment.

mjg59 9y ago

Why is this so much weaker than http://neveragain.tech/ http://neveragain.tech/ ?

williamsmj 9y ago
Given neveragain exists and has thousands of signatures (many from employees at YC companies) and prominent media coverage, it's impossible not to conclude that the the glib vagueness of "The" tech pledge is deliberate.
- tptacek 9y ago
  It's really weird, isn't it? NeverAgain is a pledge based on data collection and mass deportation. "The Tech Pledge" is essentially a pledge to provide large-scale data to the government, so long as the "correct" process is followed, and to defend the rights of immigrants who happen to work for tech companies. The connection between the two pledges is pretty unmistakable, so much so that you can read comments on this thread about how random the two issues in The Tech Pledge sound. Super weird.
sremani 9y ago
One is a Political statement and other is a Political submarine.

tptacek 9y ago

A reminder: It's nice if your company commits to something. But what's vital is that you commit to things, and that you organize around those commitments. As a profession, we have to stop looking to management and owners to own the ethics and conditions of our work. Things like this are fine, but don't lose sight of where the real power is. It's the strongest market for tech talent I've seen in my entire career. Your company cannot survive without people like you. Don't ask them to do things. Organize with your peers and demand. You'll win, a lot of the time, and your wins will be durable. This pledge is pretty clearly a response to NeverAgain.tech (look at the issues it cares about). NeverAgain.tech is about what members of our profession commit to doing; that pledge doesn't give a damn what companies say, because if employers contravene the pledge, the signatories have pledged to leave as soon as possible. That's meaningful. This is window dressing.

angersock 9y ago
Note in particular the utter lack of anything that actually benefits us, the developers: * No protections on moonlighting * No mention of fair equity for work by early engineers * No condemnation of clawbacks of equity * No whistleblower protection * No comments on diversity or discrimination * No comments on harassment * No comments on reasonable workloads/workweeks * No comments on allowing remote work or helping remote workers Make no mistake folks: this "pledge" does basically nothing to help you. Look out for your own interests. Further, it doesn't even have the balls to stand up and say "We won't do evil things like give away user data to government agencies" and instead goes for the much easier "well if the paperwork is okay we'll sell out the users i guess". This isn't worth the bytes it spent getting to you.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Not to put too fine a point on it, but when even me and 'angersock agree on something, shit's hinky.
  - angersock 9y ago
    Quite right, sir. Quite right.

steven777400 9y ago

Pledge 1 and 2 seem strangely distinct. It's odd to request someone to commit to both. Pledge #1 seems like basic ethics of technical practice, but pledge #2 is a specific position on a specific current political issue.

tptacek 9y ago
It's a reaction to the NeverAgain.tech pledge, which is employee-centered, not company-centered.

pjmorris 9y ago

My software engineering professor had us read the ACM [0] and IEEE [1] ethics codes. I vastly prefer the IEEE code (they both read like they were written by committees, but IEEE seems like it was addressed to a professional engineer, and ACM seems like it was written to a corporate drone.) Either one of the codes is significantly more thorough than the pledge, which seems focused on a few current issues, making it eventually irrelevant independent of whether its goals are achieved. [0] http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-code/ http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-co... [1] http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

codingdave 9y ago

"The Tech Pledge" is way too generic of a name for what this is. Be specific enough that it piques people's interest. Otherwise it is just poor branding. (And branding does matter on grass roots efforts, not just corporate efforts.)

sethbannon 9y ago

I'd suggest a transparency section. Without companies committing to this it'll be easy for them to sign on publicly but privately act differently. Something at the end like: "Transparency: On an ongoing basis, we will offer our employees and our users reports on how we're fulfilling the above commitments."

zeveb 9y ago

Placing 'We will provide support to efforts to keep the United States DACA policy in place' under the heading 'Supporting Legal Immigration' is misleading: DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, i.e. it is a policy of tolerance for illegal aliens, not legal immigrants. Otherwise it seems a reasonably unobjectionable document.

CPLX 9y ago

I think this is amazing, and the premise of it, which is to recognize the unprecedented power that is pooling in the tech sector and the responsibilities that come with it, is highly laudable. With that said, the fact that there's no reference to the greatest problem facing our society, income inequality, is highly noticeable. A pledge by tech companies to respect the rights of workers would actually be something notable and daring.

rhapsodic 9y ago

I don't know why this pledge has to take a position on immigration policy. A flood of low-skilled, poorly educated immigrants definitely helps the rich who don't mow their own lawns or make their own beds, and corporations who benefit from the wage-suppressing effects of a huge surplus low-skilled and poorly educated workers. But it hurts American citizens who are themselves low-skilled and poorly educated. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but I happen to think that US immigration policy should be crafted solely on what is in the US's best interests. Allowing highly-skilled and highly educated people in helps the country, but I don't really see how allowing a flood of low-skilled immigrants in helps the country in the larger picture. I understand how it does from the Adam Smith/Milton Friedman perspective, but I don't think that benefit justifies the harm done to the most vulnerable workers (or would-be workers) who are citizens and taxpayers and in many cases veterans of our military.

tchaffee 9y ago
While I am pro immigration and pro freedom of movement in general (so I mostly disagree with your stance in general), I can't deny that the current immigration rules have been mostly to the benefit of making tech company owners richer by hiring highly skilled people at indentured servitude wages. Truly free markets would allow immigrants to change employer at will. Suffice it to say that this issue is controversial enough that it doesn't belong in a simple code of ethics. We agree on that.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

lacampbell 9y ago

How about a pledge to keep politics out of the work place? I am very tired of people dropping subtle and not so subtle hints about the strong political views they have in professional environments.

drewrv 9y ago
How would one keep politics out of the workplace? Silence itself is a political position.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  It's a social skill to learn when it's appropriate to talk about politics, and when it isn't. Many people lack this skill. Of course, we all know that it's safe for some political persuasions to speak out, but not others. I suppose the people advocating for this are - literally - Politically Correct.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    What's ironic is that the "safe" politics of the Bay Area are deeply offensive in workplaces only 50 miles inland (and vice versa). I agree, politics at the workplace is inappropriate, except concerning issues of importance to that company or industry, e.g. Exxon being critical of drilling restrictions or Google evincing opinions about the continued legality of enumerating people's home wifi access points.
  - rhapsodic 9y ago
    And all the self-righteous, virtue-signalling talk about "diversity" does not extend to diversity of opinion. The same people who talk about the intrinsic value of every individual want to read out of polite society anyone who does not occupy the same spot on the political spectrum they do.
- flukus 9y ago
  Silence is a political position as much as atheism is a religion and not collecting stamps is a hobby.

vinceguidry 9y ago

I did not know that this was a YC initiative until I read about it in the comments. Initiatives like this need all the help they can get in order to stand out above the noise. Everybody's got a manifesto. Only this one has YC backing. Consider making this a first-class effort.

forgotmysn 9y ago
considering how weak the pledge is, I think it would be more effective to concentrate efforts on growing neveragain.tech

mjg59 9y ago

> We will only provide individual user data to governments under correct legal process. If the law changes such that companies can be compelled to hand over information that would be unethical to hand over, the pledge should require that companies stop collecting that information and delete what they already have. If there are countries that have existing laws that would permit them to insist on handing over information that would be unethical to provide, the pledge should require that companies cease doing business in those countries. Right now this is simply a pledge not to engage in reprehensible behaviour. We shouldn't be providing rewards or encouragement not to act in reprehensible ways. We should be encouraging people to do better than the socially acceptable bare minimum. A pledge should be a promise to go above and beyond, and this is nothing of the sort.

colinsidoti 9y ago

Does this pledge deliberately avoid internal matters like employee wages/benefits, HR dealings, etc?

jeffreybuchanan 9y ago
Or what about the benefits and wages of subcontracted service workers? These are the poverty wage workers on many of these company work sites. Not sure it falls in line with anyone's values to have the world's richest companies be relying on poverty wage workers to feed, clean, secure and drive their employees every day. Similarly, the way in which "Legal Immigration" is highlighted seems to ignore the number of lower wage, undocumented workers within the service sector that is a part of the operations of these tech companies. Why not support all immigrants in their operations who are facing persecution?

lucasmullens 9y ago

> We will provide support to efforts "Provide support", and not just "support"? So a startup that isn't actively involved in efforts around keeping the DACA policy would be breaking this pledge? This seems to only make sense for giant companies.

EdSharkey 9y ago

Exactly, DACA's just a policy made with a pen and a phone - it's a legal phantasm that can easily be dispelled! Pass an actual labor law or gtfo on this indentured servitude you execs are so addicted to. Pay equivalent wages and allow imported labor to change employers or GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE! (Sorry to cuss, but I've got real hatred for the self-serving progressive leaders who profit so much from cheap imported labor.)

tzs 9y ago

> We'd like to invite comments on this for a two week period, starting today, May 2nd. I'm guessing that this is just a temporary page that will be replaced once you have developed the final version of the the pledge. If that is NOT the case, then may I suggest that "May 2nd" be changed to "May 2nd, 2017"?