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No snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche - "I didn't write it, I just had the idea" - "I didn't implement it, I just made the prototype" - "It wasn't

No snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche - "I didn't write it, I just had the idea" - "I didn't implement it, I just made the prototype" - "It wasn't my product, I just fixed some bugs with it" - "I can't track everything in these implementation updates, I just work with what I am given" - "I didn't collect the data, I just deal with what is in the dataset"

bigyabai 1y ago
The snowflakes don't run the company. If you work somewhere that is designing a really big gun and the CEO uses it to commit an awful crime, you don't share the blame for one person's irresponsibility. It's not a satisfying answer, but it really is up to executives to decide where they draw the line. Nobody else in the business can say 'no'. Likewise, when we blame IBM for supplying the Nazis during WWII, we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. They aren't the problem; executives without morals are.
- defrost 1y ago
  > we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. Well, you're not. However: Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust suggest that a good number of these "early database workers" were working directly with Hollerith codes on human flesh and tasked with the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime, along with military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity. You might argue they are no more responsible for concentration camps than concentration camp guards, but these are the people punching holes in cards and filtering them with knitting needles while looking out the window at piles of shoes and gold teeth to tabulate.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    With different executives, that might not have happened. With different tabulators I don't think anything would have changed. You're not really disproving my point by emphasizing that the end operators of these machines were typically Nazis.
    - 8note 1y ago
      with different tabulators, it wouldnt have happened, because they would have refused, and protested to make sure no scabs went in to do that work. workers, especially professionals, have a duty to not do that bad work, and to make sure that that bad work doesnt happen

bigyabai 1y ago

The snowflakes don't run the company. If you work somewhere that is designing a really big gun and the CEO uses it to commit an awful crime, you don't share the blame for one person's irresponsibility. It's not a satisfying answer, but it really is up to executives to decide where they draw the line. Nobody else in the business can say 'no'. Likewise, when we blame IBM for supplying the Nazis during WWII, we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. They aren't the problem; executives without morals are.

defrost 1y ago
> we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. Well, you're not. However: Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust suggest that a good number of these "early database workers" were working directly with Hollerith codes on human flesh and tasked with the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime, along with military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity. You might argue they are no more responsible for concentration camps than concentration camp guards, but these are the people punching holes in cards and filtering them with knitting needles while looking out the window at piles of shoes and gold teeth to tabulate.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  With different executives, that might not have happened. With different tabulators I don't think anything would have changed. You're not really disproving my point by emphasizing that the end operators of these machines were typically Nazis.
  - 8note 1y ago
    with different tabulators, it wouldnt have happened, because they would have refused, and protested to make sure no scabs went in to do that work. workers, especially professionals, have a duty to not do that bad work, and to make sure that that bad work doesnt happen