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> Uber has a team dedicated to collecting trade secrets from competing companies. Allegedly, the people involved use disappearing-message apps, anonymous server

• ben_jones 9y ago
  When I hear stories like this I think of the developers who likely thought of and implemented the systems behind these criminal acts and I'm once more reminded that software developers, in aggregate, are on a similar level to '90s finance "tricksters" etc. We'll do whatever if the money is there.
  • tehlike 9y ago
    It all comes to personal ethics.
    • rdiddly 9y ago
      Let's not ignore the group dynamic though either. People's moral convictions can be somewhat flexible when it comes to fitting in and blending in with a group, including a company. Yes it's true that if your personal ethics are strong enough, you'll resist or exit a group whose ethics conflict with your own. It's also true that if the company has good ethics, you won't have to. Meanwhile the weak-minded as Obi Wan might call them, will go with the flow and behave however the group behaves. If the group is impeccably ethical, they'll act accordingly. And if the group is predatory, they'll act accordingly. In short, both individual and group ethics have to fail to get an Uber situation. And in business the group ethics and the tone are set from the top down - Travis. This is why people go on about the importance of company culture.
      • tehlike 9y ago
        This is very true. Thanks for this comment, group dynamics might in fact be more important than personal ethics.
      • pdkl95 9y ago
        > both individual and group ethics have to fail However, they don't have to fail at the same time or in a single step. This type of problem can creep in slowly over years as the "normalization of deviance"[1]. Richard Cook presented[2] a very useful model for how this type of problem creeps into complex system. The pressure from economic and workload concerns never goes away, so unless there is a proactive, explicit counter force, way to push back against that force, the system will inevitably be pushed toward failure. Therefor it's important to stop problems early when they are small. The magnitude of the counter force increases rapidly as behavior becomes increasingly deviant. [1] http://www.rapp.org/archives/2015/12/normalization-of-deviance/ http://www.rapp.org/archives/2015/12/normalization-of-devian... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
• pimmen 9y ago
  If you implement any of this shit as an engineer and you try to Nuremberg your way out of responsibility, you should be ashamed of yourself.
  • tajen 9y ago
    Hi, what is that debate about Nuremberg? Did it allow to escape responsibility ? Genuinely interested.
    • MBCook 9y ago
      Nurenberg is where they held the trials for Nazis after World War II. Many of them claimed that they were only following orders, which quickly became known as the “Nuremberg defense”. I honestly don’t know to what degree it worked. It’s obviously quite clear that it’s seen as a cowards way out; that people should have done the right thing in spite of orders.
      • watwut 9y ago
        It did not worked. And big names were not just following orders anyway. But it was not just covardly way out. The prewar German culture really thought that way. It was heavily militarized state and following orders was valued. In that culture, if you followed orders you should be fine and not following then was something very bad.
        • pimmen 9y ago
          Yes, the reason the Allies had jointly agreed not to allow that defense was because they knew the Germans would use it like they did after WWI in Leipzig. But, the Allies also had to reconcile this with the Yamashita standard; that commanders have to take responsibility for what their subordinates are doing even if they haven't explicitly ordered it to convict other war criminals, most famously Tomoyuki Yamashita for the crimes his soldiers committed in the Philippines. Which leads to this back and forth tennis game at every ethical discussion of who's really responsible; the boss or the peon? IMHO, convict them both.
• enraged_camel 9y ago
  Like I said in another (heavily downvoted) post, it’s time for the corporate death penalty.