7 ms·

Why do people work on such projects? I mean specifically the engineers. You're still paid the same engineer salary, except now you expose yourself to criminal p

Why do people work on such projects? I mean specifically the engineers. You're still paid the same engineer salary, except now you expose yourself to criminal prosecution. The corpo is at least getting some extra returns for the risk, you as an engineer are not. So dumb.

kotaKat 2y ago
It takes the correct morally bankrupt person to be willing to take the job.
- dl9999 2y ago
  Or a person with a sick kid, or who is about to be evicted, or who made some bad financial decisions or for some other reason is about to run out of food money. In those situations it's very easy to rationalize that the good outweighs the bad. I've only been in a similar situation once. I could barely sleep at night for a week before I finally told them that I couldn't do it. In my situation I would have taken a financial hit if they decided to let me go, but my wife works and I have savings and there was no immediate threat, and it still was a difficult decision.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
    Why would you diminish all those silent heroes who do decline the morally bankrupt job despite not making rent , or having to carry bad financial decisions? The truth is that in the US we do have some very expensive social safety nets, and it always comes back to the morals of the individual. You can rationalize just about anything against all kinds situations, but in the end we are talking about someone morally corrupt, or morally steadfast. Dont justify the injustifiable. Instead Judge character in the hard times and use that opportunity elevate the heroes that do the right thing im the face of adversity.
    - dl9999 2y ago
      I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just not willing to condemn people without taking into account extenuating circumstances. People regularly justify things that are not justified. When there's a lot of pressure, rationalizing is very easy. It's not even easy to realize that something is being rationalized. I'm not justifying the unjustifiable. I'm saying that a person doesn't have be morally "bankrupt" to do something bad. Condemning people as morally bankrupt without taking into account extenuating circumstances is certainly not justified.
      - dangcock 2y ago
        [dead]
reaperman 2y ago
Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka, whose government collapsed 2 years ago and left the country in political disarray. Some people have better choices than others. Like I wouldn't work on this project, but I have US citizenship. In college I slept over at some of my Indian friends' apartments and often they had like 8-12 guys sleeping in one bedroom, it was just a bunch of mattresses all laid together with no specific sleeping arrangement. Generally they made a giant pot of stew/daal/whatever once a week and ate the same thing for every meal all week, some even long after graduating with PhD's and getting low-tier visa-mill jobs. This was not a T10 school, our international students rarely came from wealthy families. One of my Saudi classmates came from a poor family in a remote village near the Iraq border and brushed his teeth with a twig from the Salvadora persica tree. I couldn't really blame them if they didn't have another good option readily available.
- roenxi 2y ago
  I can't resist annotating the Sri Lanka comment, it was responsible for some of the most absurd headlines I've ever read; completely beyond parody. Typical example: - Fertiliser ban decimates Sri Lankan crops as government popularity ebbs > https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...
- ignoramous 2y ago
  > Why do people work on such projects? >> Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka... I mean that's there too, but in this case, the guy who ran this spyware op was a former IDF turned chief of Facebook in Israel, later promoted to CISO for all of Meta.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    Yes, I generally blame management. But sometimes I blame the engineers when its obvious they had other good options.
    - 2y ago
echoangle 2y ago
You really think the engineers working on this will be personally liable for this? That would honestly surprise me, the worst i can imagine is punishment for the company as an entity.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Yes, we do. Just look at how the engineers get thrown under the bus in a high profile case like the VW car-emissions scandal. Example: engineers blamed is the title in [1]. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/vw-scandal-top-u-s-exec-offers-sincere-apology-cheating-n440971 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/vw-scandal-top-u-s-ex...
  - echoangle 2y ago
    Saying stuff like that in a hearing to deflect blame doesn’t surprise me, but were any individual engineers punished for this?
Intermernet 2y ago
I was talking about this with friends the other night. If you've been in the industry long enough, you've probably been party to creating something horrible. It takes a while for the reality of horribleness to crack the glamour of creation and monetary reward, but once it does, everyone I personally know has quit and lived with the regret. I know people who have worked for adtech, gambling and HFT industries who now try to convince younger devs to avoid them. I personally worked briefly for a private prison corp, and I feel dirty and remorseful that I had anything to do with that industry.
- throwaway55717 2y ago
  Due to an incarcerated family member, I had to deal with privately run prison telecom software, which was as awful and exploitative as you would expect, I could see where someone might feel guilty for working in this area. Evil business model. But one of the worst things about the software was all the bugs. Silent failures so we couldn't tell what was happening, if it was a software problem or if our loved one was being prevented from communicating with us. The messaging and video call system failed us at some crucial moments and created a lot of emotional stress. In fact I think this is part of the awful business model -- cut costs even if it hurts people. Bad software can really make the lives of incarcerated people much worse. So if you were able to do a decent job on that software, whether it was prison telecom or internal tools for a prison contractor, you may have still had a more positive impact than you think, despite the broader business model being totally evil.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    The software on those "Temu" quality Android tablets they sell in prison is the worst I've ever encountered. And I've never seen an update of any note in the years they have been running them. If there is even a dev anywhere that could fix a bug and deploy it... Anyone know the best way to pull an image off a locked-down Android tablet? I have a prison tablet here and I want to see what is inside the APKs.
    - fragmede 2y ago
kevin_nisbet 2y ago
Trying to bring an open mind, I could see a number of plausible scenarios where an engineer could do this, with various degrees of legitimacy. It's certainly a complicated subject, but I think in general companies are really good, especially big ones, at getting people to work on things they might not be comfortable with otherwise. This thread has been talking the extremes like immigration status, but there are all kinds of subtle pressures as well. Some people might not believe they have the political capital to outright refuse a project (especially a pet project of the CEO) vs choose to accept and try to nudge the project onto more solid footing. And I suspect many engineers are terrified of being labelled as not a team player, which aids in the creation of group think, but makes it very difficult to foster a healthy culture of discussion that would bring forward the serious concerns of this work. And there is almost always some room of uncertainty as the last convincer... is it unethical to work on the project if the consumer is fully informed and offers consent to the invasion of privacy? If there is an extreme where it's justifiable, for any reasonable engineer to accept the project, then it get's really muddy on where exactly the line is, and when it should be drawn. I also suspect many of us envision ourselves having much more fortitude than we really do as well, imagining the heroic efforts we'd put in to changing a companies mind from a bad idea... where the more likely outcome for most of us is to fall silently into the background.
qingcharles 2y ago
When I was in the music biz I pushed back hard against DRM. I lost, but being on the inside I could swing the needle to the least restrictive DRM as possible (e.g. it let you burn a CD for instance). Most of the other devs I worked with would have simply taken the ultra-restrictive spec, coded it and gone home happy each night. (I did code some shitty ActiveX object for Sony to put on one of their unrippable CDs though... it let you download a DRM-hobbled version of the song) I can count on one hand though the number of devs I've worked with that saw coding as anything more than a 9-5 grind and would have spoken up if asked to do something shady.

kotaKat 2y ago

It takes the correct morally bankrupt person to be willing to take the job.

dl9999 2y ago
Or a person with a sick kid, or who is about to be evicted, or who made some bad financial decisions or for some other reason is about to run out of food money. In those situations it's very easy to rationalize that the good outweighs the bad. I've only been in a similar situation once. I could barely sleep at night for a week before I finally told them that I couldn't do it. In my situation I would have taken a financial hit if they decided to let me go, but my wife works and I have savings and there was no immediate threat, and it still was a difficult decision.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
  Why would you diminish all those silent heroes who do decline the morally bankrupt job despite not making rent , or having to carry bad financial decisions? The truth is that in the US we do have some very expensive social safety nets, and it always comes back to the morals of the individual. You can rationalize just about anything against all kinds situations, but in the end we are talking about someone morally corrupt, or morally steadfast. Dont justify the injustifiable. Instead Judge character in the hard times and use that opportunity elevate the heroes that do the right thing im the face of adversity.
  - dl9999 2y ago
    I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just not willing to condemn people without taking into account extenuating circumstances. People regularly justify things that are not justified. When there's a lot of pressure, rationalizing is very easy. It's not even easy to realize that something is being rationalized. I'm not justifying the unjustifiable. I'm saying that a person doesn't have be morally "bankrupt" to do something bad. Condemning people as morally bankrupt without taking into account extenuating circumstances is certainly not justified.
    - dangcock 2y ago
      [dead]

reaperman 2y ago

Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka, whose government collapsed 2 years ago and left the country in political disarray. Some people have better choices than others. Like I wouldn't work on this project, but I have US citizenship. In college I slept over at some of my Indian friends' apartments and often they had like 8-12 guys sleeping in one bedroom, it was just a bunch of mattresses all laid together with no specific sleeping arrangement. Generally they made a giant pot of stew/daal/whatever once a week and ate the same thing for every meal all week, some even long after graduating with PhD's and getting low-tier visa-mill jobs. This was not a T10 school, our international students rarely came from wealthy families. One of my Saudi classmates came from a poor family in a remote village near the Iraq border and brushed his teeth with a twig from the Salvadora persica tree. I couldn't really blame them if they didn't have another good option readily available.

roenxi 2y ago
I can't resist annotating the Sri Lanka comment, it was responsible for some of the most absurd headlines I've ever read; completely beyond parody. Typical example: - Fertiliser ban decimates Sri Lankan crops as government popularity ebbs > https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...
ignoramous 2y ago
> Why do people work on such projects? >> Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka... I mean that's there too, but in this case, the guy who ran this spyware op was a former IDF turned chief of Facebook in Israel, later promoted to CISO for all of Meta.
- reaperman 2y ago
  Yes, I generally blame management. But sometimes I blame the engineers when its obvious they had other good options.
  - 2y ago

echoangle 2y ago

You really think the engineers working on this will be personally liable for this? That would honestly surprise me, the worst i can imagine is punishment for the company as an entity.

fn-mote 2y ago
Yes, we do. Just look at how the engineers get thrown under the bus in a high profile case like the VW car-emissions scandal. Example: engineers blamed is the title in [1]. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/vw-scandal-top-u-s-exec-offers-sincere-apology-cheating-n440971 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/vw-scandal-top-u-s-ex...
- echoangle 2y ago
  Saying stuff like that in a hearing to deflect blame doesn’t surprise me, but were any individual engineers punished for this?

Intermernet 2y ago

I was talking about this with friends the other night. If you've been in the industry long enough, you've probably been party to creating something horrible. It takes a while for the reality of horribleness to crack the glamour of creation and monetary reward, but once it does, everyone I personally know has quit and lived with the regret. I know people who have worked for adtech, gambling and HFT industries who now try to convince younger devs to avoid them. I personally worked briefly for a private prison corp, and I feel dirty and remorseful that I had anything to do with that industry.

throwaway55717 2y ago
Due to an incarcerated family member, I had to deal with privately run prison telecom software, which was as awful and exploitative as you would expect, I could see where someone might feel guilty for working in this area. Evil business model. But one of the worst things about the software was all the bugs. Silent failures so we couldn't tell what was happening, if it was a software problem or if our loved one was being prevented from communicating with us. The messaging and video call system failed us at some crucial moments and created a lot of emotional stress. In fact I think this is part of the awful business model -- cut costs even if it hurts people. Bad software can really make the lives of incarcerated people much worse. So if you were able to do a decent job on that software, whether it was prison telecom or internal tools for a prison contractor, you may have still had a more positive impact than you think, despite the broader business model being totally evil.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  The software on those "Temu" quality Android tablets they sell in prison is the worst I've ever encountered. And I've never seen an update of any note in the years they have been running them. If there is even a dev anywhere that could fix a bug and deploy it... Anyone know the best way to pull an image off a locked-down Android tablet? I have a prison tablet here and I want to see what is inside the APKs.
  - fragmede 2y ago

kevin_nisbet 2y ago

Trying to bring an open mind, I could see a number of plausible scenarios where an engineer could do this, with various degrees of legitimacy. It's certainly a complicated subject, but I think in general companies are really good, especially big ones, at getting people to work on things they might not be comfortable with otherwise. This thread has been talking the extremes like immigration status, but there are all kinds of subtle pressures as well. Some people might not believe they have the political capital to outright refuse a project (especially a pet project of the CEO) vs choose to accept and try to nudge the project onto more solid footing. And I suspect many engineers are terrified of being labelled as not a team player, which aids in the creation of group think, but makes it very difficult to foster a healthy culture of discussion that would bring forward the serious concerns of this work. And there is almost always some room of uncertainty as the last convincer... is it unethical to work on the project if the consumer is fully informed and offers consent to the invasion of privacy? If there is an extreme where it's justifiable, for any reasonable engineer to accept the project, then it get's really muddy on where exactly the line is, and when it should be drawn. I also suspect many of us envision ourselves having much more fortitude than we really do as well, imagining the heroic efforts we'd put in to changing a companies mind from a bad idea... where the more likely outcome for most of us is to fall silently into the background.

qingcharles 2y ago

When I was in the music biz I pushed back hard against DRM. I lost, but being on the inside I could swing the needle to the least restrictive DRM as possible (e.g. it let you burn a CD for instance). Most of the other devs I worked with would have simply taken the ultra-restrictive spec, coded it and gone home happy each night. (I did code some shitty ActiveX object for Sony to put on one of their unrippable CDs though... it let you download a DRM-hobbled version of the song) I can count on one hand though the number of devs I've worked with that saw coding as anything more than a 9-5 grind and would have spoken up if asked to do something shady.