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Please do not judge people with such easy contempt. Quite likely the people who have quit are upper middle class folks who have a huge safety net that allows t

Please do not judge people with such easy contempt. Quite likely the people who have quit are upper middle class folks who have a huge safety net that allows them to throw tantrums with little repercussion. They also likely dont have to support a family and I don't mean 1or 2 kids. TLDR; being ethical is great if you can afford it.

wpietri 4y ago
I agree that ethics are a luxury good, but for developers they're a pretty easily affordable one. As I said, people can have good reasons for working for bad people. But many don't. Back when email spam was relatively new, sometimes I would track down a spammer, call them up, and ask them what they were doing. Some were apologetic! They didn't know why it was bad, or had gotten talked into something by a sleazy sales guy. But I still remember one conversation with a guy who clearly felt bad about it but wasn't going to stop because he had a family to feed. What I hope he eventually figured out is that everybody has a family to feed, but that doesn't justify harming other people and their families. I get that in the short term people end up stuck in things where the didn't realize what was going on. for example, that's how I ended up working in financial trading for a while. But I got out. It may take them a while, but others can too. And for those that can't figure it out or don't care? I don't want to work with them until they do. They get to make their choices, but I get to make mine.
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  > As I said, people can have good reasons for working for bad people. But many don't. Fair enough. But who is the bad person in this instance? What is the bad thing they did in contrast to really bad people like kingpins and human traffickers? Is it worth jeopardising finacial stability and a career over it. It seems to me we need a universal scale of morality - since people have to justify why they are continuing to work for a paycheck.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    There's always something worse, so that's not a reasonable way to decide whether something is sufficiently moral. Hit men can say, "Sure, I kill people for a living, but it's not like I eat them or have sex with their corpses after. Those are the real bad people; I'm just a professional doing a job like any other Joe." You can try constructing a universal moral scale if you want. For me it's sufficient to see if the people I might hire are good matches for the work and the team.
roguecoder 4y ago
There are a million other careers out there. I absolutely judge people who prioritize their personal greed and luxury over ethics, as should we all.

wpietri 4y ago

I agree that ethics are a luxury good, but for developers they're a pretty easily affordable one. As I said, people can have good reasons for working for bad people. But many don't. Back when email spam was relatively new, sometimes I would track down a spammer, call them up, and ask them what they were doing. Some were apologetic! They didn't know why it was bad, or had gotten talked into something by a sleazy sales guy. But I still remember one conversation with a guy who clearly felt bad about it but wasn't going to stop because he had a family to feed. What I hope he eventually figured out is that everybody has a family to feed, but that doesn't justify harming other people and their families. I get that in the short term people end up stuck in things where the didn't realize what was going on. for example, that's how I ended up working in financial trading for a while. But I got out. It may take them a while, but others can too. And for those that can't figure it out or don't care? I don't want to work with them until they do. They get to make their choices, but I get to make mine.

vagrantJin 4y ago
> As I said, people can have good reasons for working for bad people. But many don't. Fair enough. But who is the bad person in this instance? What is the bad thing they did in contrast to really bad people like kingpins and human traffickers? Is it worth jeopardising finacial stability and a career over it. It seems to me we need a universal scale of morality - since people have to justify why they are continuing to work for a paycheck.
- wpietri 4y ago
  There's always something worse, so that's not a reasonable way to decide whether something is sufficiently moral. Hit men can say, "Sure, I kill people for a living, but it's not like I eat them or have sex with their corpses after. Those are the real bad people; I'm just a professional doing a job like any other Joe." You can try constructing a universal moral scale if you want. For me it's sufficient to see if the people I might hire are good matches for the work and the team.

roguecoder 4y ago

There are a million other careers out there. I absolutely judge people who prioritize their personal greed and luxury over ethics, as should we all.