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They disagree with the direction the company is going so they ... quit? They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across

by snarfy 8y ago

They disagree with the direction the company is going so they ... quit? They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? I don't blame the engineers one bit. I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it.

nothrabannosir 8y ago
> I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it. There are no poor engineers at Google. That is, ironically, the point people are making: if you make that much money doing something so (arguably) distasteful, you deserve scorn. It's in the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" family.
- close04 8y ago
  There’s a difference between coming up with the requirement and the “order”, and implementing it because that’s your job. And don’t say they should quit. This isn’t the solution. At some point they will find an engineer to do it anyway. The solution should be applied at the source.
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    There is a wikipedia page devoted to the argument that they were only doing their job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
    - darkcha0s 8y ago
      Are you really comparing a software developer completing tickets based on requirements to Nazis being told to kill? The fact that you need to draw that comparison tells me you are going overboard.
      - braythwayt 8y ago
        No, I’m not comparing engineers at Google to prison camp guards. I’m comparing the argument that the Google engineer is just following orders to the argument that camp guards were just following orders. I’m not the one who brought up the exact same defense. But if that defence is brought up, Perhaps the person emplying that argument should be asked if they meant to make the comparison indirectly by using the same argument.
        close04 8y ago
        Your argument is wrong in every regard that matters and this is in no way comparable to the military. The contract you sign when you get the job tells you to follow those instructions. And you have laws that say that you can be a whistleblower if they are illegal. Well this may be immoral or unethical but it doesn't strike me as illegal. So your only option is to refuse the implementation and quit your job. Is the problem solved? No. Then that wasn't a solution and the responsibility wasn't on the engineer's shoulders. When you have a leaking pipe staining the wall don't blame and just repair the wall. Fix the pipe. You're letting some irrational anger/hate cloud your judgement and it shows. You came up with a comparison with Nazis (!!!) and nothing anywhere close to reasonable opinion on who's really to blame and what the solution is. You're the guy who hates the person in the call center for following those questionable and possibly abusive scripts. Obviously it's on them.
      - llukas 8y ago
        Killing people on mass scale needs logistics. Software developer completing tickets fits in perfectly. Example: Somebody did optimize train timetable so deaths camps have uninterrupted flow of victims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann
        close04 8y ago
        That may be but the comparison is obviously a shock and awe type exaggeration. By virtue of Nazis being people that also did normal things you could bring it up in any discussion. But would you? Would you tell someone encouraging "the troops" that they're no different from Nazi supporters? It's the exaggeration that's the problem here. The same kind of exaggeration you hear when certain politicians scream "you are protecting terrorists and pedophiles!" to argue against encryption.
  - zentiggr 8y ago
    > At some point they will find an engineer to do it anyway. And at some point when <future Google mostly comprised of scum> is thoroughly obviously malicious, we can expect/hope/encourage them to lose customers until they collapse. The rats will move on as well, but at least the more virtuous employees can be elsewhere before the end implosion.
    - close04 8y ago
      That's just addressing the issue in a really tangential way. You want to fix it, go for the people who come up with the idea. Even a company that employs almost exclusively ethical engineers will still have a few willing to compromise. Go for the head and the body will follow. Change starts at the top.
- brainwad 8y ago
  Most people working at Google don't work on these things. They work on products that genuinely help users. Should they quit just because someone else at the company is doing stupid things? Wouldn't that just leave the idiots in control of the massive resources of the company, unrestrained by internal pressure from good employees?
braythwayt 8y ago
Yes. That’s how values work. You VALUE them, meaning—objectively—you are willing to make some sacrifice for them. Same goes for working for a predatory financial institution, a manufacturer who makes dangerous products, or for that matter, a company with a toxic culture. How is this different from working for a tobacco company? Decades ago we had the same conversation about people who ”were just following orders.” If you aren’t able to change your organization, change organizations. If not, fine, but you cannot escape having proven that you don’t actually value consumer privacy or what-have-you more than your hot supper. You just consider it a nice ideal to bandy about in conversation. Summary: Those who are complicit certainly deserve their share of the blame. At the very least, you can say of them, “they value money more than privacy.” If you don’t think so, maybe YOU don’t value these things that much, which is why you won't hold anyone else accountable for them.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  One more thing (apologies): If you take the engineer off the hook because “they can’t change things,” you know what inevitably happens? You discover that the product and eng managers can’t change things either. In theory, maybe, but in practice they are given accountability for revenue and growth targets, so what choice do they have? Let’s move up the ladder. Can we blame the directors and ELT. No, the markets hold them accountable for growth, and every company plays dirty, so what choice do THEY have? Pretty soon everyone is shrugging, and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable because no one person can make change without sacrifice, and sometimes not even then, it would take mass walkouts or protests , and each person is but a drop in the bucket. This mechanism of not holding people accountable because they don’t have sufficient authority or power to make unilateral change is how all systemic injustices persist. Racism, sexism, class distinctions, corruption in government, predatory corporations, all of them. They persist because individuals say, “What can I do? Nothing, so I might as well go along with it.” And if everyone accepts this... The next thing you know, they’re writing software to assist opressive regimes oppress their citizens.
  - pliny 8y ago
    Agree in spirit, but in the case of Google/Alphabet there is somewhere for the buck to stop: AFAIK Larry + Sergei (+ maybe Eric?) control more than half of the equity in terms of voting power, so if they want too promote their principles at the expense of revenue growth they can do that regardless of the feelings of other shareholders. This is more speculative, but I think public markets don't really react adversely to visionary CEOs / founders putting principles over growth, so it's not like they would make all their paid-in-equity engineers take a pay cut for their principles either.
eloisant 8y ago
Come on, Google offices are only in tech hubs where these engineers can easily find a decent job. Not necessarily as highly paid as Google (applying to other tech giants is always a lottery) but they can still make a very good living in the same city.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
> They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Why do they have to uproot their family? Why can't they just work from home? I don't understand why we still insist on making people physically show up for jobs that can be done from home in someone's PJ's.
andrepd 8y ago
If you're not willing to do that then it means you don't care. That's what values and principles are: you have to make sacrifices, it's not enough to say you have them. I'm not necessarily making any judgement here, I'm not saying "those assholes, why don't they quit?". I'm just saying that you cannot be unwilling to make a sacrifice for your "values" and then claim you have "values". Pick one.
- Skrillex 8y ago
  Sure you can. If Value A (some given ethic or aesthetic) is sufficiently less valued than Value Set B (family, personal happiness, financial security, career success), then most likely the hypothetical holder of these values will make no attempt to protect Value A when Value Set B would be negatively affected as a direct result.
thinkpad20 8y ago
> They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Not all job changes are so drastic. Refusing to implement this behavior might be as simple as just requesting to switch teams within Google. If one chooses to leave, finding another high paying job in the same area is not typically a great challenge for a Google engineer. No uprooting necessary...
reaperducer 8y ago
They disagree with the direction the company is going so they ... quit? They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Google isn't the only tech company in Silicon Valley.
perfunctory 8y ago
> I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it. I frankly can't disagree more with this statement. That's how you get VW's defeat devices etc. Engineering ethics matter. And engineers are not "poor". Maybe not everyone realises it but we, engineers, have substantial powers. We need to exercise them.

by snarfy 8y ago

nothrabannosir 8y ago

> I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it. There are no poor engineers at Google. That is, ironically, the point people are making: if you make that much money doing something so (arguably) distasteful, you deserve scorn. It's in the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" family.

close04 8y ago
There’s a difference between coming up with the requirement and the “order”, and implementing it because that’s your job. And don’t say they should quit. This isn’t the solution. At some point they will find an engineer to do it anyway. The solution should be applied at the source.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  There is a wikipedia page devoted to the argument that they were only doing their job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
  - darkcha0s 8y ago
    Are you really comparing a software developer completing tickets based on requirements to Nazis being told to kill? The fact that you need to draw that comparison tells me you are going overboard.
    - braythwayt 8y ago
      No, I’m not comparing engineers at Google to prison camp guards. I’m comparing the argument that the Google engineer is just following orders to the argument that camp guards were just following orders. I’m not the one who brought up the exact same defense. But if that defence is brought up, Perhaps the person emplying that argument should be asked if they meant to make the comparison indirectly by using the same argument.
      - close04 8y ago
        Your argument is wrong in every regard that matters and this is in no way comparable to the military. The contract you sign when you get the job tells you to follow those instructions. And you have laws that say that you can be a whistleblower if they are illegal. Well this may be immoral or unethical but it doesn't strike me as illegal. So your only option is to refuse the implementation and quit your job. Is the problem solved? No. Then that wasn't a solution and the responsibility wasn't on the engineer's shoulders. When you have a leaking pipe staining the wall don't blame and just repair the wall. Fix the pipe. You're letting some irrational anger/hate cloud your judgement and it shows. You came up with a comparison with Nazis (!!!) and nothing anywhere close to reasonable opinion on who's really to blame and what the solution is. You're the guy who hates the person in the call center for following those questionable and possibly abusive scripts. Obviously it's on them.
    - llukas 8y ago
      Killing people on mass scale needs logistics. Software developer completing tickets fits in perfectly. Example: Somebody did optimize train timetable so deaths camps have uninterrupted flow of victims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann
      - close04 8y ago
        That may be but the comparison is obviously a shock and awe type exaggeration. By virtue of Nazis being people that also did normal things you could bring it up in any discussion. But would you? Would you tell someone encouraging "the troops" that they're no different from Nazi supporters? It's the exaggeration that's the problem here. The same kind of exaggeration you hear when certain politicians scream "you are protecting terrorists and pedophiles!" to argue against encryption.
- zentiggr 8y ago
  > At some point they will find an engineer to do it anyway. And at some point when <future Google mostly comprised of scum> is thoroughly obviously malicious, we can expect/hope/encourage them to lose customers until they collapse. The rats will move on as well, but at least the more virtuous employees can be elsewhere before the end implosion.
  - close04 8y ago
    That's just addressing the issue in a really tangential way. You want to fix it, go for the people who come up with the idea. Even a company that employs almost exclusively ethical engineers will still have a few willing to compromise. Go for the head and the body will follow. Change starts at the top.
brainwad 8y ago
Most people working at Google don't work on these things. They work on products that genuinely help users. Should they quit just because someone else at the company is doing stupid things? Wouldn't that just leave the idiots in control of the massive resources of the company, unrestrained by internal pressure from good employees?

braythwayt 8y ago

Yes. That’s how values work. You VALUE them, meaning—objectively—you are willing to make some sacrifice for them. Same goes for working for a predatory financial institution, a manufacturer who makes dangerous products, or for that matter, a company with a toxic culture. How is this different from working for a tobacco company? Decades ago we had the same conversation about people who ”were just following orders.” If you aren’t able to change your organization, change organizations. If not, fine, but you cannot escape having proven that you don’t actually value consumer privacy or what-have-you more than your hot supper. You just consider it a nice ideal to bandy about in conversation. Summary: Those who are complicit certainly deserve their share of the blame. At the very least, you can say of them, “they value money more than privacy.” If you don’t think so, maybe YOU don’t value these things that much, which is why you won't hold anyone else accountable for them.

braythwayt 8y ago
One more thing (apologies): If you take the engineer off the hook because “they can’t change things,” you know what inevitably happens? You discover that the product and eng managers can’t change things either. In theory, maybe, but in practice they are given accountability for revenue and growth targets, so what choice do they have? Let’s move up the ladder. Can we blame the directors and ELT. No, the markets hold them accountable for growth, and every company plays dirty, so what choice do THEY have? Pretty soon everyone is shrugging, and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable because no one person can make change without sacrifice, and sometimes not even then, it would take mass walkouts or protests , and each person is but a drop in the bucket. This mechanism of not holding people accountable because they don’t have sufficient authority or power to make unilateral change is how all systemic injustices persist. Racism, sexism, class distinctions, corruption in government, predatory corporations, all of them. They persist because individuals say, “What can I do? Nothing, so I might as well go along with it.” And if everyone accepts this... The next thing you know, they’re writing software to assist opressive regimes oppress their citizens.
- pliny 8y ago
  Agree in spirit, but in the case of Google/Alphabet there is somewhere for the buck to stop: AFAIK Larry + Sergei (+ maybe Eric?) control more than half of the equity in terms of voting power, so if they want too promote their principles at the expense of revenue growth they can do that regardless of the feelings of other shareholders. This is more speculative, but I think public markets don't really react adversely to visionary CEOs / founders putting principles over growth, so it's not like they would make all their paid-in-equity engineers take a pay cut for their principles either.

eloisant 8y ago

Come on, Google offices are only in tech hubs where these engineers can easily find a decent job. Not necessarily as highly paid as Google (applying to other tech giants is always a lottery) but they can still make a very good living in the same city.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

> They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Why do they have to uproot their family? Why can't they just work from home? I don't understand why we still insist on making people physically show up for jobs that can be done from home in someone's PJ's.

andrepd 8y ago

If you're not willing to do that then it means you don't care. That's what values and principles are: you have to make sacrifices, it's not enough to say you have them. I'm not necessarily making any judgement here, I'm not saying "those assholes, why don't they quit?". I'm just saying that you cannot be unwilling to make a sacrifice for your "values" and then claim you have "values". Pick one.

Skrillex 8y ago
Sure you can. If Value A (some given ethic or aesthetic) is sufficiently less valued than Value Set B (family, personal happiness, financial security, career success), then most likely the hypothetical holder of these values will make no attempt to protect Value A when Value Set B would be negatively affected as a direct result.

thinkpad20 8y ago

> They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Not all job changes are so drastic. Refusing to implement this behavior might be as simple as just requesting to switch teams within Google. If one chooses to leave, finding another high paying job in the same area is not typically a great challenge for a Google engineer. No uprooting necessary...

reaperducer 8y ago

They disagree with the direction the company is going so they ... quit? They apply at some other company comparable to Google, uproot their family, move across country, and get a job somewhere else? Google isn't the only tech company in Silicon Valley.

perfunctory 8y ago

> I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it. I frankly can't disagree more with this statement. That's how you get VW's defeat devices etc. Engineering ethics matter. And engineers are not "poor". Maybe not everyone realises it but we, engineers, have substantial powers. We need to exercise them.