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The Programmers' Identity Crisis: how do we use our powers for 'good'?
- surfingdino 2y agoMake a website for a non-profit growing cabbage in some poor country?
- paganel 2y agoTech won't save anyone and won't do any more "good" to this society, quite the contrary. The best that we can do, as programmers, is to do the most boring jobs that bring a decent paycheck home (enough to pay mortgage/rent and to put food on the table) and then to call it a day, whoever still thinks that tech is a "force for good" is still living in the 2000s. Yes, taking boring jobs will also probably mean that 600k yearly comps (at least) are out of the question, but that's part of life and taking decisions. Also, Ellul and uncle Ted were right on all of this, a long (comparatively speaking) time ago.
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoThank you. "I just want to program for money because I have no other marketable skills and I am surprised I get so much money for the easy nonsense I am doing." programmers need more visibility.
- yen223 2y agoNah, I'd rather give more visibility to programmers who are actually doing a social good. Mercenary programmers - which describes most of us - are boring.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoDoesn’t happen. Just sayin’. I’ve been doing that kind of programming for almost 30 years. Done a couple of things that have Made A Difference. There’s basically zero glory in helping people. That’s OK, but you need to be comfortable with it.
- constantcrying 2y ago>Mercenary programmers - which describes most of us - are boring. No, mercenaries like me get to have fun, I don't have to constantly evaluate whether my actions violate a niche doctrinal tenant of some political ideology.
- paganel 2y agoNone of us is "marketable" because we're humans, we're not companies, nor services nor other such thing. Also, good luck switching careers when you're past 35 years of age or even 40. Granted, back in my 20s I did genuinely think that tech was potentially a force for good, hence why I mentioned the 2000s (and, incidentally, why this forum came into existence back then and why a lot of people like me joined it back in the day, we were not on places like this one for the money)
- throwawayffffas 2y ago"Marketable" refers to the labor market. Where humans are offering their services to employers. Some humans are capable of providing highly sought after services, these people are called "marketable" in the context of the labor market.
- ziggyzecat 2y agoone word: fascism. instead of doing the most boring job, you can just get into competition with most of these bacterial infections for companies and take them out, doing things the right way. Proper competition & proper ways of doing things ensure a proper evolution of the species & inspire and stimulate to do other things the right way.
- onion2k 2y agoJust define 'good' as 'not explicitly evil', and you're fine.
- phoronixrly 2y agoThe article seems verbose, my rules are simpler... No adtech, no gambling, no cryptocurrency, no stealing people's content to regurgitate it (LLM/genai), no killing people with my code...
- martijnvds 2y agoI'd add "tracking people's private information just to sell it" to that list.
- mortb 2y agoThis is interesting. How does AI stuff fit in this list? All AI stuff uses data that has been gathered without conscious consent and the resulting models may be used in malicious ways. How should we stand on that?
- 8372049 2y ago> no killing people with my code Talked to some CNE boys about that many years ago. They were remarkably conscious about it. They took specific steps and deliberate care to avoid that some poor sysadmin in their target country would be thrown in jail or worse for their access. Sounded almost like the technical equivalent of WW2 resistance fighters in France, Norway etc., using British uniforms to avoid reprisals against the civpop.
- throwawayffffas 2y agoI am even more terse, no scamming people, no stealing.
- phoronixrly 2y agoI mean... Not doing illegal stuff is kinda by default?
- Delphiza 2y agoI also have the tobacco industry on my list. (they also own the nicotine addiction vaping industry).
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoWell, trade benefits both parties by definition, so I'd wager just doing your work is already pretty good in and of itself. I guess if you discover your work has large, hidden externalities, you are morally obliged to quit, at the very least. But it would be surprising to claim that most programming work is like that.
- safety1st 2y agoI feel like the article falls apart because it keeps referencing this central argument that the defense industry is an unmitigated evil, and it's just a given truth that the author doesn't need to defend. I don't like weapons spending and I'm a pacifist at heart, but realistically having no defense industry is impossible. There's some amount of money which needs to go into researching the weaponization of space, because other hostile nations are spending on it. Do I wish this weren't true? Of course. Do I pretend it's not true and there really are no gray areas in the world because I'm naive, or because my priors being accurate is irrelevant to the virtue signaling I'm trying to do? No I don't but it looks like this author does. I'm sick of these proclamations on the Internet that are the total opposite of realism and really just amount to virtue signaling into the vacuum by their author. It's no surprise that this lady works for Mozilla which has been grazing on Google money for years to watch Firefox decay, I guess. Anyone at Mozilla seems to be light years away from the reality based world the rest of us are in these days.
- Guthur 2y agoI don't think that's how the article read at all. It barely mention defence after the first couple of paragraphs.
- jajko 2y agoWell you must read a different article, since whenever it mentions defense, its pretty damning from some made up virtual higher ground. Have to agree with the others, that person lives in naive fairy tale world, she should probably travel hard ie backpacking in 3rd world countries to understand it better. I come from Europe, actually eastern part of it, having Ukraine as a neighbor. My country, my parents and grandparents, just like literally everybody else, were enslaved by soviets cough cough russians for over 40 years. Their military bases everywhere, people being regularly shot/electrocuted/torn apart by dogs on the border with Austria/Germany for the horrible crime wanting to escape that communist paradise. Non-conforming were put into gulags, uranium mines etc to die slowly. Those more visible were squished by regime ie by forced manual working (if you didn't have a job thats a straight ticket to long jail), and so were their whole families including children. What russia is currently doing is an outright attack on whole western world and they don't even hide it, just listen to them, and only its lack of real military capabilities prevent them to steamroll across whole Europe. Thats a naivety thats outright dangerous these days, and caused more stupid European leaders like Merkel to basically give up on army, so current Wehrmacht is a proper joke, ie current Polish armed forces would steam-roll them in a weekend. Why Polish? Well they have a wonderful history of persecution and murder from both russians and germans. Some nations learn from history and watch whats happening around them, some don't...
- culebron21 2y agoOne guy from a city hall in Latin America, told me: "if you want to change things, go _into_ authorities" [e.g. get elected, or become a public official] He insisted there's almost no chance to change cities for better if you are just an architect in a bureau, or do some tech tool for city planning. Inside "the power", there's little you can change, but any change lasts. I'd also say, the ending part about reinventing the bus, is a very common thing, not only among the tech crowd. Every educated person has recipies that they suggest to copy&paste from abroad, think of how they'd solve a problem, etc. Often times the solution already exists, it's the matter of execution (e.g. buses need dedicated lanes, and lanes need enforcement, with fines for parking or driving by them). Often times, the educated folks propose fighting for things that are happening already by themselves. E.g. in post-Soviet countries, you can hear people argue for suburbia like in America, express grief & sorrow for living in apartment buildings, suggest subsidies BUT the fact is cities are already rapidly sprawling in suburbia themselves! Another, opposite trend, is to suggest to evacuate people from depopulating villages. People get so emotional about it. "Villages are money black hole!" "Budget leeches!" Yet, the migration is happening at rapid pace itself already! (Fun fact: these guys call themselves "liberals", and are pro-western.) Some people can be both proponents of American suburbia, and evacuation of villages.
- taurath 2y agoIt’s one of the most common tropes throughout Latin America (and the US, and the world) that getting and holding onto power often requires significant betrayal of the principles on which change is originally sought.
- culebron21 2y agoIf you have some particular examples to tell, I'd be happy to read them.
- taurath 2y agoOrtega for one. Maduro in Venezuela. The world is littered with both corrupted reformers and problems of succession when power is concentrated
- mfer 2y agoWhat makes something good or evil? Who decides that? Why then? Who or what is good and evil is assumed and it’s not things that are universally agreed to. Even in the “west” which is less than 1/4 the global population. This is where I find the article lacking. How do we know what is good to spot what to invest in?
- langsoul-com 2y agoInteresting how much tech scene has a hero complex. Always believing we can change the world so easy. Why do other professions not have the same hero complex?
- hatenberg 2y agoDoctors sure do. But then again, saving life’s vs “connecting the world”
- mortb 2y agoTeachers sare another example. I think many of us actually want to work for a bigger cause. Its just that the system is so to say rigged so that your attention flows in the direction of making money instead of trying to save the world. What doctor or teacher does teh best job? The one who only looks at the paycheck or someone who feels responsible?
- imjonse 2y agoIt is one of the few professions where at least in theory you can create something that gets used by millions, with relatively few resources required. Few other professions are like this (being a celebrity, politician, power broker) and those require a lot more luck/work to get there.
- constantcrying 2y agoIt isn't "the tech scene". It is particularly programmers who suffer from that complex. To be honest it is very peculiar and not something you find even in closely related areas, such as engineering.
- pdar4123 2y agoThis is a long winded “permission slip” to avoid any personal responsibility for our actions. The fact is whether it’s eating beef or writing code for Raytheon you actually do have free will. The HN and tech crowd is also far more educated and empowered (individually and collectively) than the author would have us believe.
- constantcrying 2y ago"Why it is okay to enjoy every single benefit capitalism brings, although I am opposing capitalism", is one of the oldest tropes of anti-capitalist literature. It would be so easy to admit that you are doing it because your own personal satisfaction outweighs some ultimately vague political position, but of course admitting that to yourself can be hard.
- taurath 2y agoIt’s to say we stress so much about avoiding actions to try to push for a society what we actually want, we don’t actually end up making any nudges towards that society. HN is much more happy with the status quo because they on measure earn enough money to be comfortable at a much higher rate than the rest of society.
- constantcrying 2y agoYes, the eternal struggle of the hypocrite who needs to reconcile his own bizarre world view with the fact that most of his time is spent perpetuating the power of the people who he claims to be his opponents. I can confess to you why I work as an engineer, because I love doing it. That is absolutely all there is to it, it's not for the money or some political program I need to reconcile with my daily activity.
- Quothling 2y agoI don't think it's particularly hypocritical. I even think you can do both, and, I think it's fine to do so if you need to reconcile what it is you work on with your personal morals. I spent a decade in public digitalisation in Denmark and I did a lot of good for the welfare of our country through that work. That was part of why I did it for a much lower pay than what I now earn in the private sector. Right now I work in what is essentially an investment bank. We use investor money to build or renovate solar plants for a nice profit. Both of these areas would likely be seen as "evil" by some people. But to me, they align with my personal morals. In the public service I tried to make sure as much of the budget went to people who actually provide welfare. In the investment bank I'm not motivated by making the rich, even richer. It is a place I get to work on green energy, however, and that's something I care about. I guess I could do that in other places, but as much as green NGO's have a good impact on our business, by things like opening financial incentives when companies like Meta "buy climate indulgence" it's not necessarily building the stuff. We've build over 600 solar plants around the globe, however, and that wouldn't have happened without the investor money. Is that hypocritical? Maybe it is to you, but it sure isn't to me. It's just how the world works. I think I would take a similar stance on defense tech. On one hand I think it's sort of natural to feel bad about building something which might kill people. On the other hand the world has always sort of functioned on a "might makes right" principle, no matter how much we don't like to admit it. If whatever culture you're part of doesn't maintain it's "might" then it will likely be subdued by those who do. Is that great? No, and maybe it would be better to work on something that related to changing the status quo, but it would also be sort of naive to turn the blind eye to how the world is going to be for the foreseeable future. So I can certainly see how people can reconcile working in the defense industry with their personal morals without being hypocritical.
- hatenberg 2y agoWe are about to lose that power, like Gunpowder it will be democratized. Our special power was the full access to general purpose compute, which made us powerful gatekeepers to it. We dole it out in small, purpose bound chunks via interfaces. And within a year from now, real time, purpose bound, personalized (“remember, bad eyesight”) and situational interfaces can be synthesized directly. Not reliably it first but Claude is getting pretty damn good. We won’t be extinct, but our main source of monopoly power is going to erode, massively.
- demondemidi 2y agoProgrammers don’t have powers. C-levels do.
- hackpelican 2y agoI have long since disabused myself of the notion that programming is morally anything more than a job in finance, investment banking, or any other bullshit job. Bullshit jobs, as opposed to real jobs, don’t benefit the community the way a doctor, a teacher, a plumber or a farmer does. Bullshit jobs are there to make the boss man rich by inventing mechanisms by which money is funneled from the general public to a few elite pockets. I think this is also in part why dreaming of buying a farm and living off the grid is common among programmers.
- maigret 2y agoYour comment is a bit of all or nothing and limits thinking. What about architects? They provide joy and housing, but also use natural land and benefit often investors. So, mixed. Car manufacturers? Move people from A to B at big cost for the environment. Police is usually helpful but not always. For all those necessary jobs, the how makes all the difference. Someone coding a website for a non profit is not the same as someone who codes a slotting machine. Also, think about the state of the world if all code stopped working tomorrow. We'd be in a very fragile state, much less able to respond to tragedies and problems. Supply chains and power delivery would probably stop, as critical function like cars ABS.
- hackpelican 2y agoArchitects produce buildings. These buildings are useful and remain useful for decades. We build software that may be useful to the average joe at first, but it's only to acquire users. Then the enshittification cycle begins to extract as much value as possible from said users. It's not the same. We can sit here and provide examples of software that is useful, safety-critical, etc. And you're right, there is a lot of software out there keeping people alive in automobiles, airplanes, medical equipment etc. But this software is not borne of the tech industry culture, but rather one engineering culture or the other. Not the programming that I or most programmers do. Policing is definitely a real job. Though abusers are plentiful, the ones harming society are rightly called abusers. Programmers writing software that harms society are just regular tech industry professionals. Same as banks that invest in companies profiting from apartheid systems or from destroying the environment. I don't think I'm being unfair when I compare the morality of your average tech industry professional with the morality of your average finance bro or investment banker.
- TomK32 2y agoEven in something boring as programming software for the british Post Office, a scandal that is STILL ongoing, you can mess up not just the software but other people's life if you act like a coward who doesn't own up to the software they write or manage. Gareth Jenkins has just been grilled in the Inquiry and in my eyes insane that courts did allow him as expert testimony on the very software he was working on and responsible for. In a case where the subpostmistress Seema Misra was wrongly jailed WHILE pregant! Other's weren't that luck and at least four committed suicide. Adding to the stupidity of the scandal and continuous incompetence, just last month the Post Office accidentally published a document on its corporate website containing the names and addresses of 555 former sub-postmasters. Courts have to level up quite a lot if they want to serve justice in cases where software is involved and those working on software need to be encourage to step back, let someone else assess the quality of the software and figure out bugs before courts can give a verdict.
- high_na_euv 2y agoThe recent trend of manipulating hackers into avoiding defense industry is interesting
- throwawayffffas 2y agoThat trend is not recent, does make love not war ring a bell? There is a clear effort within an ideological extreme in the "west" to push for unilateral disarmament since at least the beginning of the cold war.
- perlgeek 2y agoI had hoped for such much more, given the title. (And yet, fewer words, maybe). Like, how do we find industries where can actually do good? Maybe mention Effective Altruism? I guess I'll have to write my own, eventually...
- constantcrying 2y ago>Maybe mention Effective Altruism? The article was already bad enough, mentioning one of the worst outgrowths of "how we programmers will save the world", couldn't have done it any good.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoMedical software and devices. It’s rigorous, fun, has a lot of specs and making sure that we don’t kill people.
- EPWN3D 2y agoA lot of programmers are annoyingly predisposed to view themselves as wizards wielding power that society cannot possibly comprehend. As a result of this delusion, they invent moral quandaries in which they, the heroes of their own stories, nobly agree to constrain their own limitless powers for the good of humanity. "If I write this command line options parser, what if someone uses it to write a tool that configures a guided missile's running light firmware? How will I live with myself?" Fucking get over yourselves guys. The good/evil stuff is usually handled way higher up in the org chart.