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I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes. Ar

by sveme 7y ago

I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes. Are they heading home to family and kids after destroying the remnants of the turkish democracy and tell themselves "twas a good day"?

philpem 7y ago
More likely "I've been paid, I don't care".
wolfgke 7y ago
In Germany (where I live), the job market for software developers is not that you can arbitrarily choose for whom you want to work; you have to take the job that you can get (and I know quite some people (in Germany) who work in software development who would love to find a better job). So I personally believe that these people simply could not find a better job with less moral dilemmas.
- endymi0n 7y ago
  I‘m sceptical. 20 recruiters on my LinkedIn profile per month would disagree. I‘ve turned in my notice more than once in Germany and literally had a job offer a day later.
  - qznc 7y ago
    It depends on where you live and if you are willing to move. However, FinFisher seems to be located in Munich and it is easy to find a software developer job in Munich.
    - pablooliva 7y ago
      Agreed. Finding work in Munich or Stuttgart is easy as a software dev. I would imagine the case is the same for most major cities in the country.
      - raxxorrax 7y ago
        True, there are some curious hotspots for software engineers. If you are tied down by family or friends, you might have to accept a significantly lower pay depending on location. Even if larger enterprises are present locally, they mostly pay less if the local market doesn't offer more. You can do contract work and travel a lot, but that isn't for everyone. Of course the lower pay is still enough to make a good living, but it certainly isn't anywhere near 6-figure jobs.
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    It depends. If you're a web dev/full stack maybe. If anything else, maybe not.
- fjoetna 7y ago
  >you have to take the job that you can get I live in Germany too, and my experience is quiet contrary to yours. Of course you won't always work for a company that "saves the planet", but surely people care about good morals when looking for a job, and some companies even adjust to that. A lot of my former and current colleagues quit jobs just because the companies they were working for were always prioritizing profit over morals, or they declined well paid jobs because they just didn't like the companies general business strategy. Don't get me wrong though: of course you can't be super picky and always get a dream, green, social improvement focused job. That's not how it works. Still: I would never want to work for a company that provides surveillance services for shady regimes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  It might not be Silicon Valley but the German market for software development services is very much a seller's market, too. In general, software developers have no problem at all with finding a job (or clients as a freelancer).
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > In general, software developers have no problem at all with finding a job (or clients as a freelancer). I was looking for a job in software development for a very long time (region: quite everywhere in Germany or Austria). As of today, I "only" found a job in a very different sector (which is not a bad job, but it hardly has anything to do with software development). And yes, I know quite some people in Germany who also had lots of difficulties finding a job in software development.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Maybe it depends on the type of software development that you want to do? What area is your expertise in?
      - wolfgke 7y ago
        I think I know quite a lot about C and C++ (which means Modern C++ (currently C++17)), but have also worked in a lot of other programming languages (including Python, Java, JavaScript, Erlang (additionally, some further ones for university courses)). Additionally to computer science, I studied mathematics, where I also have a doctorate. I wrote my doctoral thesis about some very tricky questions about geometric structures behind optimization algorithms for discrete optimization problems. In all of these areas (mathematics, computer science, doctorate in mathematics), I either graduated with best possible or second best possible mark. I also claim to know more about IT security than my CV suggests (I got one job interview for a job in this sector, and afterwards the interviewer told me that I have far too much knowledge in this area to be suitable for the available jobs; "you belong into academia"). The same holds, I believe, for embedded programming, where I also think to know quite a lot. Why am I so sure about it? Because as a hobby, I worked on reverse-engineering the firmware of some quite non-trivial embedded device. I also think that I have an immense knowledge of arcane details of the instruction encodings of various CPU architectures, but this is merely a hobby of mine and useless for the job market. -- There exist lots of people who seriously could not understand how I could not find a job as a programmer. For example quite some doctoral classmates (who could find a job in software development) called me a "wandering encyclopedia of the history of computer science". -- As I said: I found a job in a sector that is very different from software development. Just don't tell me that it is easy to find a job in software development; it isn't, even if you are willing to relocate anywhere in Germany or Austria. And I know quite some people who have the same experience.
- sudoaza 7y ago
  What?? There's lots of job for developers in Berlin, I've been interviewing these last few months and got offers from at least 15 companies
- sveme 7y ago
  I live in the city of FinFisher (Munich), there's a LinkedIn or Xing recruiter call coming through thrice a week. Your statement might be true in Eisenhüttenstadt, but definitely not in the city where they are located.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    I hardly ever get messages from recruiters on Xing (let's say: once every two months).
- rurban 7y ago
  It might be a moral dilemma, but mostly it's basic risk mitigation, when you have to work for a company or agency doing illegal or unconstitutional things. In many cases the company will throw you under the bus.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  The market is hot if you are a webdev in Berlin but elsewhere in Germany programming is no more in demand than any other technicians job. This may be hard to believe for the SV bubble crowd but this is how it is.
  - pluma 7y ago
    Hamburg? Cologne? Munich? If nothing else works, pivot to JavaScript.
- lnsru 7y ago
  I share your opinion, job market in Germany is a tragedy today. I fully understand people writing shady software for VW group at Bosch, they have no alternatives. Kids want nice vacation, payments for the bank must be done every month. Though I am not software developer, but I get also some recruiter offers every week. I was interested in changing jobs and starting talking to these recruiters. Max offers were at €60k what is a bad joke for Munich. Many offers that start negotiations as employment end as contract for 6 months. Before writing here, that changing jobs in Germany is easy, talk to these “recruiters”. Get other work contract with negotiated salary ~€100k for Munich every week. I doubt this will happen soon again.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    So, whether they'd work on making surveillance for totalitarian states was based on whether they'd make $60/k year or $100/k, and afford stuff "nice vacation" for the kids? Doesn't sound like a principled stance. Basically it rounds down to: they would consider a more ethical job, but it's their last priority, well behind a good salary and nice benefits... (It's understandable of course, just not principled)
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Isn't that fairly rational? The difference between $100k a year and $60k a year is enormous.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        In the sense of self-benefit, yes, it's rational. >The difference between $100k a year and $60k a year is enormous. Principles shouldn't depend on that though. Else "Yeah, I'd help kill kids and kittens for $1m" would also be an acceptable answer. $1m is also enormous compared to $100k. Decent people have made much bigger sacrifices that living with $60K a year for doing the right thing...
        ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Principles don't depend on that, but house prices do and if you know the house market in Germany then you'd get it.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Let me get this straight, the choice is between: a) Take the one job you've been offered right now, in your location, doing evil things b) You and your extended family starve and die Sorry, I'm just not buying it. What actually happens is that people decide that it's convenient to ignore the moral issues for a bit more comfort; basically, they "don't care". There does exist some vanishingly small fraction of people on the boundary of homelessness for which they literally have to do everything to survive. I don't believe that this is a large group in Germany and I doubt anyone intelligent and healthy enough to be a professional software developer is in that group. If you want to maximize earnings, go for it. You're only lying to yourself if you pretend it's the only option, though.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    I think you're making this a little more black and white than it really is. How about a) Take the one job you've been offered right now, in your location, doing evil things b) fail to cover your mortgage payment this month and your house is foreclosed on. That choice is a lot more likely than just "you die". And the choice between bending your morals and losing your house is still a hard one. _(I don't know how mortgages and foreclosures and the like work in Germany, I'm just giving an example that I'm familiar with)_
    - esotericn 7y ago
      So don't take out a mortgage that you can't afford to pay off. It has the potential to make you a slave, as you illustrate in your example. These things don't just happen. If you stand up for what you believe in then perhaps you get fewer toys. It is how it is. I'd rather be poor and stand up for what I believe in than rich and a dickhead. YMMV. The fact that someone has sunk costs does not give them a pass.
      - RHSeeger 7y ago
        > So don't take out a mortgage that you can't afford to pay off. Are you implying that you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you can't pay off without a job? That makes no sense at all. I'll admit you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you will default on if you're out of work for 1 month, but plenty of people wind up out of work for longer periods of time.
- Bouncingsoul1 7y ago
  I live also in Germany and I experience the opposite. SW Developera may choose and SW Companies have hire whom they can get. Well things may be different here in Southern Bavaria, as they always are ;)
- maaanu 7y ago
  Sorry, I don't think that is true at all. For one developer there are 5 Job offers. I know multiple people who wrote 14 applications and got 14 offers. Others did not even bother to write any because they got so much offers from headhunters.
oh_sigh 7y ago
Well, the company claims that the allegations are false and they aren't working with the Turkish government without an export license.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  I wonder how good the market is for malware in countries with stable democracies and a good human rights record compared to those without.
pimmen 7y ago
I just don't think they care, and they're under the assumption nobody else cares too. I work for a news publisher in Sweden, and when we got acquired by a larger one the CTO of that company held a huge speech about why working for a news companty was so much more rewarding than working for Spotify. You get to make sure democracy functions, keeping the power in check. Sure, we can't pay you as much as Spotify, and it will not look as good on your cv, but at least you can go home and get a good night's rest knowing you did good. After the speech, minutes later, it was announced to us that this would probably be last time we saw him since he was going to start working for an online gambling business. Kind of took the air out of that whole spiel.
- jacobush 7y ago
  That's sort of hilarious! Makes you wonder, who wrote it, did he laugh at you poor sods on the inside for maybe having "morals" and other inferior things ripe for exploiting with "free" people like him. Or whatever else went on inside that head. If anything in particular.
  - pimmen 7y ago
    Yeah, I don't know. I think the dozen or so other people he recruited from us to follow him might know, however.
sgift 7y ago
How do people justify working for any controversial company or authority? If there's one thing humans are good at it's rationalizing bad behavior as good or at least acceptable behavior.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bigiain 7y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  Can we please stop spouting this quote all over the place (especially when it isn't even applicable)? You can believe that the folks working at FinFisher understand very well exactly what they are doing. Their salary, however, has simply caused them to ignore it. Everyone has a price.
  - SI_Rob 7y ago
    I totally agree that this quote is almost too economic for its own good and that as a consequence, overexposure has brought it to the threshold of fatal banality. However, OP didn't misapply it in this case. Rather, it looks like you may be making the very same point with plain language that the quote makes with sarcastic irony.
    - bigiain 7y ago
      The eye-rolling banality is _exactly_ what I was aiming for. "People prioritise greed over ethical behaviour, news at 11..." The fact that people seem bemused by this in 2019, when it was banal and commonplace enough to be "sound bite worthy" back in the the 1940s, is where I was coming from. I have no doubt a scholar of classical language could trump me with an equally appropriate Latin or ancient Greek quote with a similar complaint. People gonna peep. Given a choice between piles of money, and not fucking some other people over, those piles of money win _way_ way too often.
  - dinodub 7y ago
    >be jlgaddis on HN >have pet peeve >tell kids to get off lawn and/or stop using cheeky quote ... >be internet >say "No U!" >then say cheeky quote and step on lawn just because you can Yeah, I think I'll not do what random stranger online tells me to do, simply because I have free will and live in free country To suggest people online don't say something simply because you don't like it... is immature and silly. Welcome to the World. People may do things you might not like, in which case you have to deal with it.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify "stopping terrorism" for when they make a sale to Turkey and "preventing anti-social behavior" for when they make a sale to London or NYC.
coldtea 7y ago
>I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes. Never mind those, they work in Germany, which as a country had its hand in 2 world wars, and directly exterminated 10+ million people, and was the home of Stasi, one of the fiercest surveillance agencies until 1989... That alone, and how totalitarianism can be close at home at any time, should give them pause regarding making surveillance software, never mind what some developing world authoritarian regimes would do with it ...
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Take a look at how many dubious Israeli companies are there in sphere of surveillance, remote hacking and other amoral activities. History seems to be apparently a poor teacher once things happened 2+ generations away
  - luckylion 7y ago
    The StaSi wasn't 2+ generations away though, the SU (and with it the GDR) only collapsed in the late eighties. I do believe that most people aren't appalled by what was done, they are appalled by what was it done for. "To secure the rule of the party" sounds bad. "To end human suffering" sounds much better, and we tend to have a thing for rationalizing why it's righteous (or at least necessary) to do it this time.
mschuster91 7y ago
Unfortunately not all of us programmers share the same foundation of moral principles, and not all of us programmers are anti-authoritarian left-wing anarchists. There are a fair number of "patriots" among us and no matter how much I dislike this kind of person they are the talent pool from which police, army and shady companies such as Finfisher draw their staff. For some, the money is also appealing - the shadier the company the more limited the supply of workers (e.g. many could imagine working for the police, less for the military and only very few for Finfisher etc.), so they put up quite a chunk of money... enough to expand their talent pool, at least.
- luckylion 7y ago
  It's also not that that tech is only used to oppress free speech, hunt down dissidents etc. I was tangentially involved in an investigation targeting a child pornography collector/trader and talked a bit with the lead investigator. Their department used a commercial trojan as well, though I don't know whether it was built by FinFisher. "Hey, want to help us take down people that rape children?" doesn't clash with moral principles for most people, I think.
jplayer01 7y ago
This is only tangential, but I'm a bit disappointed that there's no Glassdoor page for FinFisher. Would've been interesting to see some insight into the company from that direction. Like, is it a decent place to work? Decent benefits? Pay? Anything? I actually can't find any open positions being advertised anywhere either, so I wonder where they're hiring.
notlukesky 7y ago
Is Germany an authoritarian regime when it tries to silence journalists and charge them with treason when they expose mass surveillance covering communications, Facebook and Twitter chats etc...?? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/treason_case_against_german_digi_journos_officially_dropped/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/treason_case_agains...
- sveme 7y ago
  I don't understand your point. What's your argument?
  - ameister14 7y ago
    I think the point is that it isn't just Middle Eastern regimes - perhaps they should feel uncomfortable working with the German government, as well
- Faark 7y ago
  Kind of funny how your link demonstrates a reasonably functioning justice system while you try using it to paint Germany as authoritarian regime. The case was dropped and the prosecutor forced to retired. Sure, would have been better to never have happened, but I don't see any system ever not having some shitty humans.
  - rasz 7y ago
    https://www.dw.com/en/german-spy-chief-passed-info-to-afd-report/a-45472180 https://www.dw.com/en/german-spy-chief-passed-info-to-afd-re...
    - Faark 7y ago
      What point are you trying to make? Its about someone else forced into retirement after doing something unacceptable. I have a hard time considering it an authoritarian regime as long as those "bad apples" have to feel the consequences. Even if there are way more of them than I'd like. In case people here didn't notice... germany, like other countries as well, has recently experienced a surge in alt-right populism. The AfD does get unpleasantly many votes, especially in some regions, but so far it seems to get handled reasonably well by the other parties. I personally are more worried about politics in the US reaching some breaking point.
m-p-3 7y ago
You'd be surprised how many people out there can live without strong principles and will not lose sleep over that kind of stuff.
throAwei99 7y ago
throw away just post once account. Former developer working on FinFisher. Note, I am only talking about my motivations and experiences. This was about 10 years ago and I left after about 18 months. Today it is likely a completely different place (e.g. only a few names in the suit sound familiar). Why did I start there? I already knew a lot of the current employees from previous work and remembered them as competent no nonsense senior developers. The job was pitched to me as working on software used by law enforcement against organized crime, terrorism and child abuser rings. Additionally the VC founded Startup I was currently working for imploded, I was fed up with the BS prevalent in the German VC founded Startup World, and my particular skill set was basically unemployable during that time for most other employers in Munich (mostly Scala and Objective-C). Gamma didn‘t hire people outside of their current employees network. Why did I stay there? The work environment was as close to zero bullshit as you can probably get to. During my time there were zero pointless meetings, the total meeting time during the 18 months I stayed there was less than 3h (I actually measured them once I realized how few and short our meetings were), no internal politics I could perceive. Feedback of developers was taken seriously, you had decent offices, good equipment and could focus on getting your work done in a way that since then no other employer came close to providing. Other (not all) colleagues actually started out on the „hactivist“ , were - as far as I could See - highly competent software developers specializing in IT security without a formal CS or related degree, that probably also made it difficult for them to find other work suitable at that time. Pay was good, not exceptional. Why did I leave? I handed in my resignation shortly after Gamma appeared in the news the first time and it became apparent that sales was focusing more on governments that I personally do not consider as a „Rechtsstaat“ and less on fighting organized crime or child abusers. Of course I could have known earlier/looked harder in the first place (I do not remember potential customers being keep a secret by sales) and to be honest this might be just the reason I tell myself, because after about 9 months or so I started to become excruciatingly bored by my day to day work... so this might have been the true reason and the news reports just the straw the broke the camels back. But I guess I‘ll never know. Again it is roundabout 10 years since I worked there and this is just an account of my Personal experience, not „the truth about Gamma“
jammygit 7y ago
Google tried to do worse with dragonfly and employees stood up. That made me feel nice
pmarreck 7y ago
Here's the conundrum that players like FinFischer probably encounter: Not too many years ago, Turkey was a lot less demonized/shady. Imagine you establish a working relationship with them to help them combat "criminals", all is well for a time. Then, over the last few years, the outside perspective of Turkey is that it is an oppressive regime fighting people who are actually (considered by us) "freedom fighters". But the business relationships are still in place, and Turkey still believes it is fighting "criminals". My point is that the definition of who is in fact "criminal" starts to get really blurry depending on who you are asking and what side they are on, and may vary over time. China's angry because to them, the protesters in Hong Kong are "destabilizing terrorists" and aiding them is "a hostile act towards China". It's all relative, unfortunately.

by sveme 7y ago

philpem 7y ago

More likely "I've been paid, I don't care".

wolfgke 7y ago

In Germany (where I live), the job market for software developers is not that you can arbitrarily choose for whom you want to work; you have to take the job that you can get (and I know quite some people (in Germany) who work in software development who would love to find a better job). So I personally believe that these people simply could not find a better job with less moral dilemmas.

endymi0n 7y ago
I‘m sceptical. 20 recruiters on my LinkedIn profile per month would disagree. I‘ve turned in my notice more than once in Germany and literally had a job offer a day later.
- qznc 7y ago
  It depends on where you live and if you are willing to move. However, FinFisher seems to be located in Munich and it is easy to find a software developer job in Munich.
  - pablooliva 7y ago
    Agreed. Finding work in Munich or Stuttgart is easy as a software dev. I would imagine the case is the same for most major cities in the country.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      True, there are some curious hotspots for software engineers. If you are tied down by family or friends, you might have to accept a significantly lower pay depending on location. Even if larger enterprises are present locally, they mostly pay less if the local market doesn't offer more. You can do contract work and travel a lot, but that isn't for everyone. Of course the lower pay is still enough to make a good living, but it certainly isn't anywhere near 6-figure jobs.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  It depends. If you're a web dev/full stack maybe. If anything else, maybe not.
fjoetna 7y ago
>you have to take the job that you can get I live in Germany too, and my experience is quiet contrary to yours. Of course you won't always work for a company that "saves the planet", but surely people care about good morals when looking for a job, and some companies even adjust to that. A lot of my former and current colleagues quit jobs just because the companies they were working for were always prioritizing profit over morals, or they declined well paid jobs because they just didn't like the companies general business strategy. Don't get me wrong though: of course you can't be super picky and always get a dream, green, social improvement focused job. That's not how it works. Still: I would never want to work for a company that provides surveillance services for shady regimes.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BjoernKW 7y ago
It might not be Silicon Valley but the German market for software development services is very much a seller's market, too. In general, software developers have no problem at all with finding a job (or clients as a freelancer).
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > In general, software developers have no problem at all with finding a job (or clients as a freelancer). I was looking for a job in software development for a very long time (region: quite everywhere in Germany or Austria). As of today, I "only" found a job in a very different sector (which is not a bad job, but it hardly has anything to do with software development). And yes, I know quite some people in Germany who also had lots of difficulties finding a job in software development.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Maybe it depends on the type of software development that you want to do? What area is your expertise in?
    - wolfgke 7y ago
      I think I know quite a lot about C and C++ (which means Modern C++ (currently C++17)), but have also worked in a lot of other programming languages (including Python, Java, JavaScript, Erlang (additionally, some further ones for university courses)). Additionally to computer science, I studied mathematics, where I also have a doctorate. I wrote my doctoral thesis about some very tricky questions about geometric structures behind optimization algorithms for discrete optimization problems. In all of these areas (mathematics, computer science, doctorate in mathematics), I either graduated with best possible or second best possible mark. I also claim to know more about IT security than my CV suggests (I got one job interview for a job in this sector, and afterwards the interviewer told me that I have far too much knowledge in this area to be suitable for the available jobs; "you belong into academia"). The same holds, I believe, for embedded programming, where I also think to know quite a lot. Why am I so sure about it? Because as a hobby, I worked on reverse-engineering the firmware of some quite non-trivial embedded device. I also think that I have an immense knowledge of arcane details of the instruction encodings of various CPU architectures, but this is merely a hobby of mine and useless for the job market. -- There exist lots of people who seriously could not understand how I could not find a job as a programmer. For example quite some doctoral classmates (who could find a job in software development) called me a "wandering encyclopedia of the history of computer science". -- As I said: I found a job in a sector that is very different from software development. Just don't tell me that it is easy to find a job in software development; it isn't, even if you are willing to relocate anywhere in Germany or Austria. And I know quite some people who have the same experience.
sudoaza 7y ago
What?? There's lots of job for developers in Berlin, I've been interviewing these last few months and got offers from at least 15 companies
sveme 7y ago
I live in the city of FinFisher (Munich), there's a LinkedIn or Xing recruiter call coming through thrice a week. Your statement might be true in Eisenhüttenstadt, but definitely not in the city where they are located.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  I hardly ever get messages from recruiters on Xing (let's say: once every two months).
rurban 7y ago
It might be a moral dilemma, but mostly it's basic risk mitigation, when you have to work for a company or agency doing illegal or unconstitutional things. In many cases the company will throw you under the bus.
goatinaboat 7y ago
The market is hot if you are a webdev in Berlin but elsewhere in Germany programming is no more in demand than any other technicians job. This may be hard to believe for the SV bubble crowd but this is how it is.
- pluma 7y ago
  Hamburg? Cologne? Munich? If nothing else works, pivot to JavaScript.
lnsru 7y ago
I share your opinion, job market in Germany is a tragedy today. I fully understand people writing shady software for VW group at Bosch, they have no alternatives. Kids want nice vacation, payments for the bank must be done every month. Though I am not software developer, but I get also some recruiter offers every week. I was interested in changing jobs and starting talking to these recruiters. Max offers were at €60k what is a bad joke for Munich. Many offers that start negotiations as employment end as contract for 6 months. Before writing here, that changing jobs in Germany is easy, talk to these “recruiters”. Get other work contract with negotiated salary ~€100k for Munich every week. I doubt this will happen soon again.
- coldtea 7y ago
  So, whether they'd work on making surveillance for totalitarian states was based on whether they'd make $60/k year or $100/k, and afford stuff "nice vacation" for the kids? Doesn't sound like a principled stance. Basically it rounds down to: they would consider a more ethical job, but it's their last priority, well behind a good salary and nice benefits... (It's understandable of course, just not principled)
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Isn't that fairly rational? The difference between $100k a year and $60k a year is enormous.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      In the sense of self-benefit, yes, it's rational. >The difference between $100k a year and $60k a year is enormous. Principles shouldn't depend on that though. Else "Yeah, I'd help kill kids and kittens for $1m" would also be an acceptable answer. $1m is also enormous compared to $100k. Decent people have made much bigger sacrifices that living with $60K a year for doing the right thing...
      - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Principles don't depend on that, but house prices do and if you know the house market in Germany then you'd get it.
esotericn 7y ago
Let me get this straight, the choice is between: a) Take the one job you've been offered right now, in your location, doing evil things b) You and your extended family starve and die Sorry, I'm just not buying it. What actually happens is that people decide that it's convenient to ignore the moral issues for a bit more comfort; basically, they "don't care". There does exist some vanishingly small fraction of people on the boundary of homelessness for which they literally have to do everything to survive. I don't believe that this is a large group in Germany and I doubt anyone intelligent and healthy enough to be a professional software developer is in that group. If you want to maximize earnings, go for it. You're only lying to yourself if you pretend it's the only option, though.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  I think you're making this a little more black and white than it really is. How about a) Take the one job you've been offered right now, in your location, doing evil things b) fail to cover your mortgage payment this month and your house is foreclosed on. That choice is a lot more likely than just "you die". And the choice between bending your morals and losing your house is still a hard one. _(I don't know how mortgages and foreclosures and the like work in Germany, I'm just giving an example that I'm familiar with)_
  - esotericn 7y ago
    So don't take out a mortgage that you can't afford to pay off. It has the potential to make you a slave, as you illustrate in your example. These things don't just happen. If you stand up for what you believe in then perhaps you get fewer toys. It is how it is. I'd rather be poor and stand up for what I believe in than rich and a dickhead. YMMV. The fact that someone has sunk costs does not give them a pass.
    - RHSeeger 7y ago
      > So don't take out a mortgage that you can't afford to pay off. Are you implying that you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you can't pay off without a job? That makes no sense at all. I'll admit you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you will default on if you're out of work for 1 month, but plenty of people wind up out of work for longer periods of time.
Bouncingsoul1 7y ago
I live also in Germany and I experience the opposite. SW Developera may choose and SW Companies have hire whom they can get. Well things may be different here in Southern Bavaria, as they always are ;)
maaanu 7y ago
Sorry, I don't think that is true at all. For one developer there are 5 Job offers. I know multiple people who wrote 14 applications and got 14 offers. Others did not even bother to write any because they got so much offers from headhunters.

oh_sigh 7y ago

Well, the company claims that the allegations are false and they aren't working with the Turkish government without an export license.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
I wonder how good the market is for malware in countries with stable democracies and a good human rights record compared to those without.

pimmen 7y ago

I just don't think they care, and they're under the assumption nobody else cares too. I work for a news publisher in Sweden, and when we got acquired by a larger one the CTO of that company held a huge speech about why working for a news companty was so much more rewarding than working for Spotify. You get to make sure democracy functions, keeping the power in check. Sure, we can't pay you as much as Spotify, and it will not look as good on your cv, but at least you can go home and get a good night's rest knowing you did good. After the speech, minutes later, it was announced to us that this would probably be last time we saw him since he was going to start working for an online gambling business. Kind of took the air out of that whole spiel.

jacobush 7y ago
That's sort of hilarious! Makes you wonder, who wrote it, did he laugh at you poor sods on the inside for maybe having "morals" and other inferior things ripe for exploiting with "free" people like him. Or whatever else went on inside that head. If anything in particular.
- pimmen 7y ago
  Yeah, I don't know. I think the dozen or so other people he recruited from us to follow him might know, however.

sgift 7y ago

How do people justify working for any controversial company or authority? If there's one thing humans are good at it's rationalizing bad behavior as good or at least acceptable behavior.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bigiain 7y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

jlgaddis 7y ago
Can we please stop spouting this quote all over the place (especially when it isn't even applicable)? You can believe that the folks working at FinFisher understand very well exactly what they are doing. Their salary, however, has simply caused them to ignore it. Everyone has a price.
- SI_Rob 7y ago
  I totally agree that this quote is almost too economic for its own good and that as a consequence, overexposure has brought it to the threshold of fatal banality. However, OP didn't misapply it in this case. Rather, it looks like you may be making the very same point with plain language that the quote makes with sarcastic irony.
  - bigiain 7y ago
    The eye-rolling banality is _exactly_ what I was aiming for. "People prioritise greed over ethical behaviour, news at 11..." The fact that people seem bemused by this in 2019, when it was banal and commonplace enough to be "sound bite worthy" back in the the 1940s, is where I was coming from. I have no doubt a scholar of classical language could trump me with an equally appropriate Latin or ancient Greek quote with a similar complaint. People gonna peep. Given a choice between piles of money, and not fucking some other people over, those piles of money win _way_ way too often.
- dinodub 7y ago
  >be jlgaddis on HN >have pet peeve >tell kids to get off lawn and/or stop using cheeky quote ... >be internet >say "No U!" >then say cheeky quote and step on lawn just because you can Yeah, I think I'll not do what random stranger online tells me to do, simply because I have free will and live in free country To suggest people online don't say something simply because you don't like it... is immature and silly. Welcome to the World. People may do things you might not like, in which case you have to deal with it.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify "stopping terrorism" for when they make a sale to Turkey and "preventing anti-social behavior" for when they make a sale to London or NYC.

coldtea 7y ago

>I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes. Never mind those, they work in Germany, which as a country had its hand in 2 world wars, and directly exterminated 10+ million people, and was the home of Stasi, one of the fiercest surveillance agencies until 1989... That alone, and how totalitarianism can be close at home at any time, should give them pause regarding making surveillance software, never mind what some developing world authoritarian regimes would do with it ...

saiya-jin 7y ago
Take a look at how many dubious Israeli companies are there in sphere of surveillance, remote hacking and other amoral activities. History seems to be apparently a poor teacher once things happened 2+ generations away
- luckylion 7y ago
  The StaSi wasn't 2+ generations away though, the SU (and with it the GDR) only collapsed in the late eighties. I do believe that most people aren't appalled by what was done, they are appalled by what was it done for. "To secure the rule of the party" sounds bad. "To end human suffering" sounds much better, and we tend to have a thing for rationalizing why it's righteous (or at least necessary) to do it this time.

mschuster91 7y ago

Unfortunately not all of us programmers share the same foundation of moral principles, and not all of us programmers are anti-authoritarian left-wing anarchists. There are a fair number of "patriots" among us and no matter how much I dislike this kind of person they are the talent pool from which police, army and shady companies such as Finfisher draw their staff. For some, the money is also appealing - the shadier the company the more limited the supply of workers (e.g. many could imagine working for the police, less for the military and only very few for Finfisher etc.), so they put up quite a chunk of money... enough to expand their talent pool, at least.

luckylion 7y ago
It's also not that that tech is only used to oppress free speech, hunt down dissidents etc. I was tangentially involved in an investigation targeting a child pornography collector/trader and talked a bit with the lead investigator. Their department used a commercial trojan as well, though I don't know whether it was built by FinFisher. "Hey, want to help us take down people that rape children?" doesn't clash with moral principles for most people, I think.

jplayer01 7y ago

This is only tangential, but I'm a bit disappointed that there's no Glassdoor page for FinFisher. Would've been interesting to see some insight into the company from that direction. Like, is it a decent place to work? Decent benefits? Pay? Anything? I actually can't find any open positions being advertised anywhere either, so I wonder where they're hiring.

notlukesky 7y ago

Is Germany an authoritarian regime when it tries to silence journalists and charge them with treason when they expose mass surveillance covering communications, Facebook and Twitter chats etc...?? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/treason_case_against_german_digi_journos_officially_dropped/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/treason_case_agains...

sveme 7y ago
I don't understand your point. What's your argument?
- ameister14 7y ago
  I think the point is that it isn't just Middle Eastern regimes - perhaps they should feel uncomfortable working with the German government, as well
Faark 7y ago
Kind of funny how your link demonstrates a reasonably functioning justice system while you try using it to paint Germany as authoritarian regime. The case was dropped and the prosecutor forced to retired. Sure, would have been better to never have happened, but I don't see any system ever not having some shitty humans.
- rasz 7y ago
  https://www.dw.com/en/german-spy-chief-passed-info-to-afd-report/a-45472180 https://www.dw.com/en/german-spy-chief-passed-info-to-afd-re...
  - Faark 7y ago
    What point are you trying to make? Its about someone else forced into retirement after doing something unacceptable. I have a hard time considering it an authoritarian regime as long as those "bad apples" have to feel the consequences. Even if there are way more of them than I'd like. In case people here didn't notice... germany, like other countries as well, has recently experienced a surge in alt-right populism. The AfD does get unpleasantly many votes, especially in some regions, but so far it seems to get handled reasonably well by the other parties. I personally are more worried about politics in the US reaching some breaking point.

m-p-3 7y ago

You'd be surprised how many people out there can live without strong principles and will not lose sleep over that kind of stuff.

throAwei99 7y ago

throw away just post once account. Former developer working on FinFisher. Note, I am only talking about my motivations and experiences. This was about 10 years ago and I left after about 18 months. Today it is likely a completely different place (e.g. only a few names in the suit sound familiar). Why did I start there? I already knew a lot of the current employees from previous work and remembered them as competent no nonsense senior developers. The job was pitched to me as working on software used by law enforcement against organized crime, terrorism and child abuser rings. Additionally the VC founded Startup I was currently working for imploded, I was fed up with the BS prevalent in the German VC founded Startup World, and my particular skill set was basically unemployable during that time for most other employers in Munich (mostly Scala and Objective-C). Gamma didn‘t hire people outside of their current employees network. Why did I stay there? The work environment was as close to zero bullshit as you can probably get to. During my time there were zero pointless meetings, the total meeting time during the 18 months I stayed there was less than 3h (I actually measured them once I realized how few and short our meetings were), no internal politics I could perceive. Feedback of developers was taken seriously, you had decent offices, good equipment and could focus on getting your work done in a way that since then no other employer came close to providing. Other (not all) colleagues actually started out on the „hactivist“ , were - as far as I could See - highly competent software developers specializing in IT security without a formal CS or related degree, that probably also made it difficult for them to find other work suitable at that time. Pay was good, not exceptional. Why did I leave? I handed in my resignation shortly after Gamma appeared in the news the first time and it became apparent that sales was focusing more on governments that I personally do not consider as a „Rechtsstaat“ and less on fighting organized crime or child abusers. Of course I could have known earlier/looked harder in the first place (I do not remember potential customers being keep a secret by sales) and to be honest this might be just the reason I tell myself, because after about 9 months or so I started to become excruciatingly bored by my day to day work... so this might have been the true reason and the news reports just the straw the broke the camels back. But I guess I‘ll never know. Again it is roundabout 10 years since I worked there and this is just an account of my Personal experience, not „the truth about Gamma“

jammygit 7y ago

Google tried to do worse with dragonfly and employees stood up. That made me feel nice

pmarreck 7y ago

Here's the conundrum that players like FinFischer probably encounter: Not too many years ago, Turkey was a lot less demonized/shady. Imagine you establish a working relationship with them to help them combat "criminals", all is well for a time. Then, over the last few years, the outside perspective of Turkey is that it is an oppressive regime fighting people who are actually (considered by us) "freedom fighters". But the business relationships are still in place, and Turkey still believes it is fighting "criminals". My point is that the definition of who is in fact "criminal" starts to get really blurry depending on who you are asking and what side they are on, and may vary over time. China's angry because to them, the protesters in Hong Kong are "destabilizing terrorists" and aiding them is "a hostile act towards China". It's all relative, unfortunately.