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I don't know, we hold other engineers responsible for the consequences of their work, personally I think the industry would be better off if we had more account

I don't know, we hold other engineers responsible for the consequences of their work, personally I think the industry would be better off if we had more accountability for programmers.

renewiltord 4y ago
Software engineers are some of the highest quality engineers there are. Objectively by a simple metric: lives ended through incompetence. Software engineers lead. No other engineering discipline comes close.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
But we don't hold the gun-industry accountable for mass-shootings. Maybe we should. But situation is a little bit similar here. The engineer created the gun. He didn't use the software to shoot people. Or maybe he did. The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary? Or think about people who build bridges. They just follow the orders they get from higher ups. Bridge collapses. The higher-ups should be held accountable not the workers. The question I think is did the engineer here just follow orders? Perhaps he understood very little about finance, only about programming.
- pavlov 4y ago
  > "The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary?" I would guess the compensation structure at FTX included a lot of their own crypto tokens, since the company can mint those at no cost. And Alameda was a big holder of those FTT/Serum tokens. So you're a software engineer who owns theoretically millions of dollars worth of FTT tokens, and then the boss comes to you and asks to make an exception for Alameda... Since you work at FTX, you're probably aware that Alameda holds and trades a lot of FTT. If you do the code change to make Alameda look better and maintain the value of your own crypto portfolio, there's no question that you're a part of the fraud.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  A `DELETE FROM` function can be used for good or bad. A gun can be used for good or bad (see the war in Ukraine, it can be used to murder or protect your family from murderers). A code change excluding a known, named entity from safety checks is more like rigging a bridge to explode when your enemy crosses the bridge. Zero ambiguity.
- zopa 4y ago
  > The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary? That’s not the question — as in, it won’t be an element of any of the crimes he’s eventually charged with. The question is whether he was knowingly or recklessly involved in a scheme to defraud people. And just generally, legal reasoning does frequently use analogies but they need to be tighter than the ones you’re using. This case isn’t much like building a faulty bridge.
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    I would think that in most crimes the motivation of the accused is a factor. Think about hate-crimes. They are not hate-crimes unless the person did them out of hate for the PURPOSE of hurting members of some minority. Murder-in-first-degree means you didn't just recklessly cause the death of somebody, it means you did it intentionally, on purpose. See Mens Rea, "Criminal Intent" https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea Was this engineer knowingly and intentionally helping to commit the crime? We don't know because we haven't seen many details or testimonies in this case. He must be assumed innocent until proven guilty. And proving him guilty must include proving he had criminal intent, Mens Rea. The court of public opinion as in Hacker News is of course a different matter.
- ciropantera 4y ago
  A gun has many purposes, some legitimate (law enforcement, "defense" etc), others less so. A code change that allows the company to do illegal things has no legitimate purpose. I think what's up to debate is to what extent the developers were lied to regarding the purpose of the code. Maybe they were told it was for testing purposes only, or the higher ups managed to convince them that it's ok despite them questioning it. I suppose those things will come up during investigation and will certainly affect their sentences, but I don't think they will be off the hook that easily.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  The gun manufacturers have a special law passed at the federal level to prevent civil liability (PLCAA). That is being chipped away at but it’s currently a special privilege they hold enacted by the legislature of the US.
- beAbU 4y ago
  If a bridge collapses it's the /engineer/ that's held accountable. Engineers sign off on things. They are accoutable to the product that they build and those that use their product. This guy calls himself a software engineer, so he should accept all the responsibility and accountability that goes with that title. Your gun analogy is not fair and it does not translate well to the actual situation at hand. A gun engineer is not responsible for all the deaths the weapon causes. But said engineer will be very much accountable if the weapon blows up in the wielder's hands during normal use (even though practically this might not be the case due to liability disclaimers and all that). We have case studies where deaths were caused by shit software, where the engineer of that wrote the software is clearly the accountable one.
tomnipotent 4y ago
> we had more accountability for programmers You could make this argument for literally every profession.

I don't know, we hold other engineers responsible for the consequences of their work, personally I think the industry would be better off if we had more accountability for programmers.

renewiltord 4y ago

Software engineers are some of the highest quality engineers there are. Objectively by a simple metric: lives ended through incompetence. Software engineers lead. No other engineering discipline comes close.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

But we don't hold the gun-industry accountable for mass-shootings. Maybe we should. But situation is a little bit similar here. The engineer created the gun. He didn't use the software to shoot people. Or maybe he did. The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary? Or think about people who build bridges. They just follow the orders they get from higher ups. Bridge collapses. The higher-ups should be held accountable not the workers. The question I think is did the engineer here just follow orders? Perhaps he understood very little about finance, only about programming.

pavlov 4y ago
> "The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary?" I would guess the compensation structure at FTX included a lot of their own crypto tokens, since the company can mint those at no cost. And Alameda was a big holder of those FTT/Serum tokens. So you're a software engineer who owns theoretically millions of dollars worth of FTT tokens, and then the boss comes to you and asks to make an exception for Alameda... Since you work at FTX, you're probably aware that Alameda holds and trades a lot of FTT. If you do the code change to make Alameda look better and maintain the value of your own crypto portfolio, there's no question that you're a part of the fraud.
jnsaff2 4y ago
A `DELETE FROM` function can be used for good or bad. A gun can be used for good or bad (see the war in Ukraine, it can be used to murder or protect your family from murderers). A code change excluding a known, named entity from safety checks is more like rigging a bridge to explode when your enemy crosses the bridge. Zero ambiguity.
zopa 4y ago
> The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary? That’s not the question — as in, it won’t be an element of any of the crimes he’s eventually charged with. The question is whether he was knowingly or recklessly involved in a scheme to defraud people. And just generally, legal reasoning does frequently use analogies but they need to be tighter than the ones you’re using. This case isn’t much like building a faulty bridge.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  I would think that in most crimes the motivation of the accused is a factor. Think about hate-crimes. They are not hate-crimes unless the person did them out of hate for the PURPOSE of hurting members of some minority. Murder-in-first-degree means you didn't just recklessly cause the death of somebody, it means you did it intentionally, on purpose. See Mens Rea, "Criminal Intent" https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea Was this engineer knowingly and intentionally helping to commit the crime? We don't know because we haven't seen many details or testimonies in this case. He must be assumed innocent until proven guilty. And proving him guilty must include proving he had criminal intent, Mens Rea. The court of public opinion as in Hacker News is of course a different matter.
ciropantera 4y ago
A gun has many purposes, some legitimate (law enforcement, "defense" etc), others less so. A code change that allows the company to do illegal things has no legitimate purpose. I think what's up to debate is to what extent the developers were lied to regarding the purpose of the code. Maybe they were told it was for testing purposes only, or the higher ups managed to convince them that it's ok despite them questioning it. I suppose those things will come up during investigation and will certainly affect their sentences, but I don't think they will be off the hook that easily.
kasey_junk 4y ago
The gun manufacturers have a special law passed at the federal level to prevent civil liability (PLCAA). That is being chipped away at but it’s currently a special privilege they hold enacted by the legislature of the US.
beAbU 4y ago
If a bridge collapses it's the /engineer/ that's held accountable. Engineers sign off on things. They are accoutable to the product that they build and those that use their product. This guy calls himself a software engineer, so he should accept all the responsibility and accountability that goes with that title. Your gun analogy is not fair and it does not translate well to the actual situation at hand. A gun engineer is not responsible for all the deaths the weapon causes. But said engineer will be very much accountable if the weapon blows up in the wielder's hands during normal use (even though practically this might not be the case due to liability disclaimers and all that). We have case studies where deaths were caused by shit software, where the engineer of that wrote the software is clearly the accountable one.

tomnipotent 4y ago

> we had more accountability for programmers You could make this argument for literally every profession.