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> Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be I've quit jobs in the past because

> Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be I've quit jobs in the past because of ethical concerns about the way in which those above me have been acting. In one case this involved bribery of senior government officials to push through a project that put at risk the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people. If you go along with shit like that, you're an accomplice and share partial responsibility. As professionals we have a responsibility to stand up for what is right. It's not good enough to fall back to the lazy excuse of "just doing my job".

pixl97 6y ago
And I mean, that is good of you to have a moral backbone, unfortunately there are many people behind you that will do the same job in software and they can be located anywhere in the world.
- walrus01 6y ago
  In the current state of things, that is factually true. However the same argument could be applied to labor abuses in the textile/garment and shoe manufacturing industry. Most people who follow news are probably aware that about 20 years ago Nike, Adidas and other brands went through a period of terrible public relations disasters, after the working conditions in some of their shoe factories in developing nations were exposed by journalists. The argument that could have been made at that time would also have been "well but if we don't employ these people, somebody else will just do the same thing with equally terrible labor/human rights violations somewhere else in the world, with even cheaper factories". The situation today is not great, but it is significantly improved from how it was twenty years ago. There are third party neutral inspection/oversight agencies. Companies in the garment industry are forced to make public commitments to labor rights and reasonable working conditions, and to allow external auditing. They can't just hand wave away the problem and say "but if we don't do it , someone else will.."
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    The more abstract the problem the less people care. Police suffocating someone to death > 1,000,000 people being subtly spied on. "I got nothing to hide" after all.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      The farther away and more abstract the problem, it's absolutely more difficult to get people to care. Trying to get Americans to care about what's going on with prison camps in Xinjiang province right now is difficult, if not impossible, outside of the subset of people who deeply care about the issues involved.
      - tekknik 6y ago
        In this specific example say we do care, then what? What will it change? (Not theoretical change, actual change)
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      > "I got nothing to hide" after all But that's a thoroughly discredited argument. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923548
      - quickthrower2 6y ago
        Sorry that’s a /s
        MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        Ah, got it :-P
  - pixl97 6y ago
    And again, the analogs in software are much more, messy. A shoe is a physical artifact. It must be made somewhere out of something. Software is much more flexible. If I tell you to build an 'ethical' piece of software with an extensible API, it will only take a tiny amount of work to make it do something unethical. And much like the shoe companies abusing labour's, that had nothing to do with the engineers that made a a product line, but the management that is driven to ever lower costs.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > good of you to have a moral backbone I don't want other people making decisions on morality for me. There are people who don't believe that software developers should develop software for the U.S. government because they don't like the way immigration law is being enforced. I'll make my own decisions about what is and isn't "moral", thanks.
  - enumjorge 6y ago
    Where did this come from? The parent comment simply commended the grandparent comment for not bribing a government official to push a project with poor privacy for users. I don’t see why anyone would see that as a challenge to their moral code.
op03 6y ago
Also once you learn how to ignore the ethical stuff it tends to repeat. Just like bad coding habits. There is no point wasting energy and time around such people if they don't share the same values. It's not complicated (requires some networking) to find in any org, the characters who will "do whatever it takes". Then getting them kicked out, opposing them, sidelining them, subverting them, avoiding them are all choices every Engineer has.

pixl97 6y ago

And I mean, that is good of you to have a moral backbone, unfortunately there are many people behind you that will do the same job in software and they can be located anywhere in the world.

walrus01 6y ago
In the current state of things, that is factually true. However the same argument could be applied to labor abuses in the textile/garment and shoe manufacturing industry. Most people who follow news are probably aware that about 20 years ago Nike, Adidas and other brands went through a period of terrible public relations disasters, after the working conditions in some of their shoe factories in developing nations were exposed by journalists. The argument that could have been made at that time would also have been "well but if we don't employ these people, somebody else will just do the same thing with equally terrible labor/human rights violations somewhere else in the world, with even cheaper factories". The situation today is not great, but it is significantly improved from how it was twenty years ago. There are third party neutral inspection/oversight agencies. Companies in the garment industry are forced to make public commitments to labor rights and reasonable working conditions, and to allow external auditing. They can't just hand wave away the problem and say "but if we don't do it , someone else will.."
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  The more abstract the problem the less people care. Police suffocating someone to death > 1,000,000 people being subtly spied on. "I got nothing to hide" after all.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    The farther away and more abstract the problem, it's absolutely more difficult to get people to care. Trying to get Americans to care about what's going on with prison camps in Xinjiang province right now is difficult, if not impossible, outside of the subset of people who deeply care about the issues involved.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      In this specific example say we do care, then what? What will it change? (Not theoretical change, actual change)
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > "I got nothing to hide" after all But that's a thoroughly discredited argument. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923548
    - quickthrower2 6y ago
      Sorry that’s a /s
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        Ah, got it :-P
- pixl97 6y ago
  And again, the analogs in software are much more, messy. A shoe is a physical artifact. It must be made somewhere out of something. Software is much more flexible. If I tell you to build an 'ethical' piece of software with an extensible API, it will only take a tiny amount of work to make it do something unethical. And much like the shoe companies abusing labour's, that had nothing to do with the engineers that made a a product line, but the management that is driven to ever lower costs.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> good of you to have a moral backbone I don't want other people making decisions on morality for me. There are people who don't believe that software developers should develop software for the U.S. government because they don't like the way immigration law is being enforced. I'll make my own decisions about what is and isn't "moral", thanks.
- enumjorge 6y ago
  Where did this come from? The parent comment simply commended the grandparent comment for not bribing a government official to push a project with poor privacy for users. I don’t see why anyone would see that as a challenge to their moral code.

op03 6y ago

Also once you learn how to ignore the ethical stuff it tends to repeat. Just like bad coding habits. There is no point wasting energy and time around such people if they don't share the same values. It's not complicated (requires some networking) to find in any org, the characters who will "do whatever it takes". Then getting them kicked out, opposing them, sidelining them, subverting them, avoiding them are all choices every Engineer has.