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One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. While employees ma

One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. While employees may have doubt, they can justify their actions by thinking they are doing "their" part correctly. Which, I can relate to. If I am not doing pseudoscience and am working on tech / systems that are good in my domain, why would I bother about the whole picture? Morally, yes. But if you have loans to pay and a family to take care of, and are getting your salary on time, everything else is the management's fault. I can get a job in a similar field somewhere else. And, IMHO, it is the management's fault out and out. The reason they get to take the big cheques is because they bear the responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the average lower level worker to worry about it.

hayst4ck 6y ago
Kinda makes you wonder what unspeakable things Apple is doing with their culture of team isolation.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Possibly nefarious stuff, but indications seem like it's mostly just a lot of internal competition, people unwittingly building doomed prototypes and such, like the famed "Acorn OS" that was a candidate to be iPhone OS but based on the iPod firmware rather than OS X.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  To be fair, Apple does not have the need to run after external investors. To some extent, companies like Theranos succumb to the greed and vanity of its founders. Sure, the idea is revolutionary, but when the time comes where you realize you have a lemon, it ought to be shut down, or pivoted.
phs318u 6y ago
> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. Which is what Madoff did, I believe.
gadf 6y ago
> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. The following is probably just an already completely debunked conspiracy theory with zero basis in fact but what you describe is precisely how special compartmentalized intelligence works. Maybe many of the corporate and government organizations in security and intelligence operate in this siloed way, possibly at the risk of a lack of oversight and accountability which helps any abuses go unaddressed. Official secrecy oaths and classification perhaps compounds this vulnerability to misuse. And except for the public heads very occasionally rolling, it's likely nobody takes responsibility (in a justice sense) when abuses occur. How do you get people to carry our these things? Simple finance, and isolation could be one way as mentioned. Coercive control via blackmail, planting evidence, fake accusations or intimidation could be other effective methods, especially when you need to secure the cooperation of key people outside the organization, and especially when your daily work involves intelligence collection and deception. If it occurs at a deep level under the security and compartmentalization shields, then it's unlikely checks and balances could correct it if this sort of corruption was occurring.
3np 6y ago
Having worked closely but briefly as a technical contractor for a firm that later turned out to be a scam, I figured this is it. A combination of compartmentalization and churn can keep the charade up for quite a while, and if executed well you can have a pretty big operation with only one or two people being in on it. I figured something was off but there's a whole gradial spectrum of Schroedinger's Accomplices where most people can seem to be conners or conned. For this reason, I found the documentaries on NXIVM (Seduced, The Vow) quite interesting - the way the protagonists are framed and how everyone seems to have plausible deniability even with all the video material. I disagree with your moral conclusion - we all have responsibility as individuals with regards to what our work contributes to. This goes for anything from military personnel to software engineers. That you don't have legal risk doesn't mean you don't have ethical responsibility.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Upvoted for your last paragraph, which is more and more important every day. Far too many software developers’ ethical compasses start and end at “well, the boss told me to write that code so that’s that!” We all have the ethical responsibility to understand the ultimate purpose of our labor and ensure it is a good one. “Just following orders” has a bad history.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  > I disagree with your moral conclusion - we all have responsibility as individuals with regards to what our work contributes to. This goes for anything from military personnel to software engineers. That you don't have legal risk doesn't mean you don't have ethical responsibility. Does that really work in the real world? When you don't have workplace rights and concepts like "at will employment", can you really expect the individual to have any sympathy towards the company or society? If you and your job is as expendable as a tissue and you struggle your whole life to get one, be in one and earn the almighty dollar, where the lack of the dollar means your kids go hungry and cold, would you place higher priority on morals for "the greater good"? Those who are made to do un-ethical things in companies are usually picked because they have no other way than to be in the job, or are greedy enough to put their morals behind them. Good luck trying to force morality on either of them.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
"One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. While employees may have doubt, they can justify their actions by thinking they are doing "their" part correctly. Which, I can relate to." When you read about iphone development Apple isn't that different. Only Jobs and a few other people knew the whole picture. The rest worked on their little area while not seeing the whole product.

hayst4ck 6y ago

Kinda makes you wonder what unspeakable things Apple is doing with their culture of team isolation.

mikepurvis 6y ago
Possibly nefarious stuff, but indications seem like it's mostly just a lot of internal competition, people unwittingly building doomed prototypes and such, like the famed "Acorn OS" that was a candidate to be iPhone OS but based on the iPod firmware rather than OS X.
kumarvvr 6y ago
To be fair, Apple does not have the need to run after external investors. To some extent, companies like Theranos succumb to the greed and vanity of its founders. Sure, the idea is revolutionary, but when the time comes where you realize you have a lemon, it ought to be shut down, or pivoted.

phs318u 6y ago

> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. Which is what Madoff did, I believe.

gadf 6y ago

> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. The following is probably just an already completely debunked conspiracy theory with zero basis in fact but what you describe is precisely how special compartmentalized intelligence works. Maybe many of the corporate and government organizations in security and intelligence operate in this siloed way, possibly at the risk of a lack of oversight and accountability which helps any abuses go unaddressed. Official secrecy oaths and classification perhaps compounds this vulnerability to misuse. And except for the public heads very occasionally rolling, it's likely nobody takes responsibility (in a justice sense) when abuses occur. How do you get people to carry our these things? Simple finance, and isolation could be one way as mentioned. Coercive control via blackmail, planting evidence, fake accusations or intimidation could be other effective methods, especially when you need to secure the cooperation of key people outside the organization, and especially when your daily work involves intelligence collection and deception. If it occurs at a deep level under the security and compartmentalization shields, then it's unlikely checks and balances could correct it if this sort of corruption was occurring.

3np 6y ago

Having worked closely but briefly as a technical contractor for a firm that later turned out to be a scam, I figured this is it. A combination of compartmentalization and churn can keep the charade up for quite a while, and if executed well you can have a pretty big operation with only one or two people being in on it. I figured something was off but there's a whole gradial spectrum of Schroedinger's Accomplices where most people can seem to be conners or conned. For this reason, I found the documentaries on NXIVM (Seduced, The Vow) quite interesting - the way the protagonists are framed and how everyone seems to have plausible deniability even with all the video material. I disagree with your moral conclusion - we all have responsibility as individuals with regards to what our work contributes to. This goes for anything from military personnel to software engineers. That you don't have legal risk doesn't mean you don't have ethical responsibility.

ryandrake 6y ago
Upvoted for your last paragraph, which is more and more important every day. Far too many software developers’ ethical compasses start and end at “well, the boss told me to write that code so that’s that!” We all have the ethical responsibility to understand the ultimate purpose of our labor and ensure it is a good one. “Just following orders” has a bad history.
kumarvvr 6y ago
> I disagree with your moral conclusion - we all have responsibility as individuals with regards to what our work contributes to. This goes for anything from military personnel to software engineers. That you don't have legal risk doesn't mean you don't have ethical responsibility. Does that really work in the real world? When you don't have workplace rights and concepts like "at will employment", can you really expect the individual to have any sympathy towards the company or society? If you and your job is as expendable as a tissue and you struggle your whole life to get one, be in one and earn the almighty dollar, where the lack of the dollar means your kids go hungry and cold, would you place higher priority on morals for "the greater good"? Those who are made to do un-ethical things in companies are usually picked because they have no other way than to be in the job, or are greedy enough to put their morals behind them. Good luck trying to force morality on either of them.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

"One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view. While employees may have doubt, they can justify their actions by thinking they are doing "their" part correctly. Which, I can relate to." When you read about iphone development Apple isn't that different. Only Jobs and a few other people knew the whole picture. The rest worked on their little area while not seeing the whole product.