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at a certain point you have to take responsibility for your actions and the impact it has on the world. Sure, if you don't do it somebody else will. But what ma

by fzil 5y ago

at a certain point you have to take responsibility for your actions and the impact it has on the world. Sure, if you don't do it somebody else will. But what matters is that you weren't the one who did it and dirtied your hands. Yes, the CEO/management are responsible for the overall direction and tactics used by the business but the engineers are also complicit since without them the plan isn't executed.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
1. I can't imagine a scenario where someone asks me to implement the message in question and I reply "I won't do it and if you insist I quit." 2. I believe the components on the screen ("You will still be charged" and the actual message) have been designed independently. Of course in the end there was someone somewhere who decided to combine them in the logic of the app. Normally I'd tend to believe it was a mistake, but after several reports and their lax attitude to them it's clear it works as intended, at least for now.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  > 1. I can't imagine a scenario where someone asks me to implement the message in question and I reply "I won't do it and if you insist I quit." I guess this is your choice but I find it unethical. If you're a good engineer at Uber chances are 100% you can get a job at any other high-paying organization, so why choose to participate in this scheme?
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    My point is, neither of the 3 separate messages on the screen is morally wrong on its own. It is only when you combine them it becomes obvious is totally wrong. As for the core of your point, frankly, half of the Silicon Valley would be jobless. Not just Uber programmers who already proved who they are by developing Greyball. The whole business of Facebook and Google is centered around tracking people. Amazon will happily accept fake reviews and products as long as customers pay they're happy. Netflix officially says they're competing with the time their customers use for sleeping. Apple will do everything to make their products environment unfriendly, unupgradeable, with ton of additional accessories produced only to increase their profit. So really, I understand your idealism, but the ship has already sailed and you can call yourself lucky if you can work on a product and for a company that are 100% ethical.
    - fzil 5y ago
      All the examples that you gave are strictly in the morally grey area. Where they end up on the spectrum is up to you as a person and what values you consider more important than others. However, in this case, things are quite black and white. Someone pays money for food, they don't get any and then you keep the money anyway. Calling it anything other than theft is being delusional. If they did partial refunds or they only gave uber eats credit instead of money then this case would be in the same bucket as the ones you mentioned in your comment.
- KMnO4 5y ago
  I work on an app for my company where requirements start as “we wish to show a message to the customer if their order is abandoned”. So I build out the feature and the requirements change to “we want that message to be customizable from the dashboard”. Now I have built a feature that could theoretically be built to function as in the screenshot, since I’m not longer in control of the text that is showed. Thankfully my company isn’t scum of the earth, but it’s easy to see how multiple people assumed the features were being used for good intention, and a non-engineer used it to make a few extra bucks.
pydry 5y ago
Why blame the greedy managers and owners at the top your overpriced pizza when you can blame the guy with a mortgage who did as he was told? Besides they're as likely to tell the developers to code it up so they could do this in theory and then turn it on themselves.
- fzil 5y ago
  > Why blame the greedy managers and owners at the top your overpriced pizza when you can blame the guy with a mortgage who did as he was told? Nobody's absolving the managers or owners from their part in this issue. The point is that the guy with the mortgage decided that an extra room in his house or a bigger backyard is worth stealing from others. This isn't some ethically grey area, its outright theft that the engineer enabled. > Besides they're as likely to tell the developers to code it up so they could do this in theory and then turn it on themselves. I've never worked at Uber or any other big corp so I can't speak to how they do things there. This seems quite probable, but still doesn't completely absolve the engineer from responsibility. All it does is reduce their share of blame.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >Nobody's absolving the managers Whether consciously or not, scapegoating their minions does exactly that. This is a pervasive feature of American culture where the most guilty parties with the most power who have the least defensible motives use FUD to spread the blame around and it actually works. People buy this shit and even internalize it - something this thread is a living testament to. This is the same shit that happened when the CEO of Boeing tried to blame the dead pilots and subsequently tried to throw his engineers under the bus and each time where there was even a shade of doubt a ready cohort of people stood ready to defend the self serving FUD he pumped out. >I've never worked at Uber or any other big corp so I can't speak to how they do things there. Only at small companies have I ever been asked to build $evilfeature. At big companies I get asked to build $featurethatcouldbeabused. The bigger the impact and the more morally wrong it is the more feature indirection there will be. Either way it's good to know that when somebody with the power to deprive me of my sole income asks me to build a kitchen knife they intend to stab someone with there's a willing crowd on hacker news ready to claim that they dont get to hog all of the blame because I technically could have refused to make that kitchen knife and joined the unemployment queue.

by fzil 5y ago

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

1. I can't imagine a scenario where someone asks me to implement the message in question and I reply "I won't do it and if you insist I quit." 2. I believe the components on the screen ("You will still be charged" and the actual message) have been designed independently. Of course in the end there was someone somewhere who decided to combine them in the logic of the app. Normally I'd tend to believe it was a mistake, but after several reports and their lax attitude to them it's clear it works as intended, at least for now.

notreallyserio 5y ago
> 1. I can't imagine a scenario where someone asks me to implement the message in question and I reply "I won't do it and if you insist I quit." I guess this is your choice but I find it unethical. If you're a good engineer at Uber chances are 100% you can get a job at any other high-paying organization, so why choose to participate in this scheme?
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  My point is, neither of the 3 separate messages on the screen is morally wrong on its own. It is only when you combine them it becomes obvious is totally wrong. As for the core of your point, frankly, half of the Silicon Valley would be jobless. Not just Uber programmers who already proved who they are by developing Greyball. The whole business of Facebook and Google is centered around tracking people. Amazon will happily accept fake reviews and products as long as customers pay they're happy. Netflix officially says they're competing with the time their customers use for sleeping. Apple will do everything to make their products environment unfriendly, unupgradeable, with ton of additional accessories produced only to increase their profit. So really, I understand your idealism, but the ship has already sailed and you can call yourself lucky if you can work on a product and for a company that are 100% ethical.
  - fzil 5y ago
    All the examples that you gave are strictly in the morally grey area. Where they end up on the spectrum is up to you as a person and what values you consider more important than others. However, in this case, things are quite black and white. Someone pays money for food, they don't get any and then you keep the money anyway. Calling it anything other than theft is being delusional. If they did partial refunds or they only gave uber eats credit instead of money then this case would be in the same bucket as the ones you mentioned in your comment.
KMnO4 5y ago
I work on an app for my company where requirements start as “we wish to show a message to the customer if their order is abandoned”. So I build out the feature and the requirements change to “we want that message to be customizable from the dashboard”. Now I have built a feature that could theoretically be built to function as in the screenshot, since I’m not longer in control of the text that is showed. Thankfully my company isn’t scum of the earth, but it’s easy to see how multiple people assumed the features were being used for good intention, and a non-engineer used it to make a few extra bucks.

pydry 5y ago

Why blame the greedy managers and owners at the top your overpriced pizza when you can blame the guy with a mortgage who did as he was told? Besides they're as likely to tell the developers to code it up so they could do this in theory and then turn it on themselves.

fzil 5y ago
> Why blame the greedy managers and owners at the top your overpriced pizza when you can blame the guy with a mortgage who did as he was told? Nobody's absolving the managers or owners from their part in this issue. The point is that the guy with the mortgage decided that an extra room in his house or a bigger backyard is worth stealing from others. This isn't some ethically grey area, its outright theft that the engineer enabled. > Besides they're as likely to tell the developers to code it up so they could do this in theory and then turn it on themselves. I've never worked at Uber or any other big corp so I can't speak to how they do things there. This seems quite probable, but still doesn't completely absolve the engineer from responsibility. All it does is reduce their share of blame.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Nobody's absolving the managers Whether consciously or not, scapegoating their minions does exactly that. This is a pervasive feature of American culture where the most guilty parties with the most power who have the least defensible motives use FUD to spread the blame around and it actually works. People buy this shit and even internalize it - something this thread is a living testament to. This is the same shit that happened when the CEO of Boeing tried to blame the dead pilots and subsequently tried to throw his engineers under the bus and each time where there was even a shade of doubt a ready cohort of people stood ready to defend the self serving FUD he pumped out. >I've never worked at Uber or any other big corp so I can't speak to how they do things there. Only at small companies have I ever been asked to build $evilfeature. At big companies I get asked to build $featurethatcouldbeabused. The bigger the impact and the more morally wrong it is the more feature indirection there will be. Either way it's good to know that when somebody with the power to deprive me of my sole income asks me to build a kitchen knife they intend to stab someone with there's a willing crowd on hacker news ready to claim that they dont get to hog all of the blame because I technically could have refused to make that kitchen knife and joined the unemployment queue.