3 ms·

Definitely a good way to drive talent overseas. Get the low level people to assume all of the risk with none of the upsides; ask recent grades and junior people

Definitely a good way to drive talent overseas. Get the low level people to assume all of the risk with none of the upsides; ask recent grades and junior people to do E2E ethical analysis on every project in addition to their 60 hour/week job, give the truly evil people convenient, lower-level scapegoats.

Waterluvian 1y ago
Completely agree. My feeling is that corporate officers should bear the burden that the corporation as a person currently bears. I can only imagine how much better things would be in past experiences if the C-levels felt a personal need to actually know how the sausage is being made.
- genocidicbunny 1y ago
  I can't fully agree because the way I see it, that is in a way scapegoating the company executives. Are they responsible? Probably, yes, they set the direction of the company and give the orders at the highest level. But we the engineers and designers are the ones actually implementing what is probably a fairly nebulous order at the highest levels into something concrete. They deign that there should be evil created, but we're the ones who are actually making it happen. Some of the responsibility lies with us, and we need to not pretend that's not the case.
  - DrScientist 1y ago
    I'd agree at a personal/moral level there is equal responsibility. However that doesn't recognise both the power and risk/reward imbalance here. If you, as an employee did this - maybe you'd add a few dollars to your stock options over time. If your Zuck - that's potentially billions. And in terms of downside - if you are Zuck and stop it in the company - there is no comeback - if you are an engineer blowing the whistle - you may find it hard to work in the industry ever again - and only one of those two actually needs to work.
    - Ray20 1y ago
      Sounds like a typical blurring of responsibility through bureaucracy. "If Zak is a billionaire, then he is responsible, but since he essentially did nothing wrong, then no one will be held accountable." Total nonsense. There are specific crimes, and there are specific people who planned this crimes, specific peoples who ordered them to be carried out, and who carried them out. And these people should be held accountable for these crimes. Even if they work 60 hours a week for minimum wage and would have been fired if they hadn't committed them. They should have quit in such cases, not committed crimes. And on the other hand, if your employees, without your knowledge, somehow decided that the only way they could reach their targets was to commit a crime, why should you be held responsible for that? Even if you have 20 megayachts and your employees work 60 hours a week for minimum wage.
      - SoftTalker 1y ago
        > if your employees, without your knowledge, somehow decided that the only way they could reach their targets was to commit a crime, why should you be held responsible for that? Thats where "known or should have known" becomes relevant. It's your company, it's your responsiblity to know what they are doing.
        Ray20 1y ago
        No, what you are suggesting is a typical strategy of avoiding punishment and creating an opportunity to break the law. A very common strategy, used everywhere, especially in dictatorial and socialist regimes. There is a substitution of one real crime, committed by real people, for a crime "they didn’t know, but should have" against other people, for which there is no real responsibility, while the real criminals are declared to be simply "cogs" in the system. As a result, no one is held accountable for a crime for which dozens of people who directly committed it could go to prison for many years, because the person held responsible is a high-ranking manager who "should have known, but did not know," who himself issues "a severe reprimand" or assigns a tiny fine for it. Thus, the entire system is drowning in crimes, the commission of crimes becomes a REQUIREMENT of the system and the commission of crimes becomes a guarantee of the loyalty to the system.
  - wapeoifjaweofji 1y ago
    > I can't fully agree because the way I see it, that is in a way scapegoating the company executives. Frankly, that's what the money's for.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Do you also take personal responsibility for your company’s hiring practices, investment strategy, and marketing content? None of that would exist without you. I think anyone would agree that there’s a level of flagrantly where individuals should feel culpability and make the right choices (“write software to prescribe poison to groups we don’t like”). But something like this? Two apps establishing a comms channel? How many millions of times does this get done per year with no ill intent or effect? Is every engineer supposed to demand to know l of the use cases, and cross reference to other projects they’re not working on? At some point it’s only fair to say that individuals should exercise their conscience when they have enough information, but it is not incumbent on every engineer to demand justification for every project. That’s where the decision makers who do have the time, resources, and chatter to know better should be taking at least legal responsibility.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      As a software developer no I don't feel responsible for those things, because I don't have any involvement with them as part of my job. But the people who work in HR, finance, and marketing are responsible for those things. I agree that the junior engineer implementing a localhost listener on Android might not understand what it is going to be used for and might not even think to ask. But somewhere, a senior engineer or PM or manager knows, and yes as you say that's the point where responsibility can be assigned, and increasingly up the line from there.
    - genocidicbunny 1y ago
      When I was involved in the hiring pipeline, I absolutely felt a level of personal responsibility since I was directly contributing to the decision to hire or not hire an applicant. That's not to say I was willing to shoulder the entirety of the responsibility, but knowing that my decision would affect not only the applicant, but their potential future coworkers too, I did feel responsible for making sure I had as much information as I could get and that I was making the best decisions I could.
account42 1y ago
You don't need to invest significant time to realize that working around privacy restrictions is wrong and you shouldn't do it.
- brookst 1y ago
  Have you worked in software? This is a complex, multi-application system with IPC. Most of the people implementing it probably had no idea what the partner applications were, let alone the business intent. Nobody sits down with a mid-level developer and says “we need your native app to receive webrtc connections that will be used to send app-layer telemetry that circumvents privacy protections”. The requirement is just to receive events and log them. And odds are there were all sorts of harmless events as well. At the level where people had a holistic view of the system and intent, sure, throw them in jail. I’d guess that’s about 1% of the people who designed, implemented, tested, documented this code.

Waterluvian 1y ago

Completely agree. My feeling is that corporate officers should bear the burden that the corporation as a person currently bears. I can only imagine how much better things would be in past experiences if the C-levels felt a personal need to actually know how the sausage is being made.

genocidicbunny 1y ago
I can't fully agree because the way I see it, that is in a way scapegoating the company executives. Are they responsible? Probably, yes, they set the direction of the company and give the orders at the highest level. But we the engineers and designers are the ones actually implementing what is probably a fairly nebulous order at the highest levels into something concrete. They deign that there should be evil created, but we're the ones who are actually making it happen. Some of the responsibility lies with us, and we need to not pretend that's not the case.
- DrScientist 1y ago
  I'd agree at a personal/moral level there is equal responsibility. However that doesn't recognise both the power and risk/reward imbalance here. If you, as an employee did this - maybe you'd add a few dollars to your stock options over time. If your Zuck - that's potentially billions. And in terms of downside - if you are Zuck and stop it in the company - there is no comeback - if you are an engineer blowing the whistle - you may find it hard to work in the industry ever again - and only one of those two actually needs to work.
  - Ray20 1y ago
    Sounds like a typical blurring of responsibility through bureaucracy. "If Zak is a billionaire, then he is responsible, but since he essentially did nothing wrong, then no one will be held accountable." Total nonsense. There are specific crimes, and there are specific people who planned this crimes, specific peoples who ordered them to be carried out, and who carried them out. And these people should be held accountable for these crimes. Even if they work 60 hours a week for minimum wage and would have been fired if they hadn't committed them. They should have quit in such cases, not committed crimes. And on the other hand, if your employees, without your knowledge, somehow decided that the only way they could reach their targets was to commit a crime, why should you be held responsible for that? Even if you have 20 megayachts and your employees work 60 hours a week for minimum wage.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      > if your employees, without your knowledge, somehow decided that the only way they could reach their targets was to commit a crime, why should you be held responsible for that? Thats where "known or should have known" becomes relevant. It's your company, it's your responsiblity to know what they are doing.
      - Ray20 1y ago
        No, what you are suggesting is a typical strategy of avoiding punishment and creating an opportunity to break the law. A very common strategy, used everywhere, especially in dictatorial and socialist regimes. There is a substitution of one real crime, committed by real people, for a crime "they didn’t know, but should have" against other people, for which there is no real responsibility, while the real criminals are declared to be simply "cogs" in the system. As a result, no one is held accountable for a crime for which dozens of people who directly committed it could go to prison for many years, because the person held responsible is a high-ranking manager who "should have known, but did not know," who himself issues "a severe reprimand" or assigns a tiny fine for it. Thus, the entire system is drowning in crimes, the commission of crimes becomes a REQUIREMENT of the system and the commission of crimes becomes a guarantee of the loyalty to the system.
- wapeoifjaweofji 1y ago
  > I can't fully agree because the way I see it, that is in a way scapegoating the company executives. Frankly, that's what the money's for.
- brookst 1y ago
  Do you also take personal responsibility for your company’s hiring practices, investment strategy, and marketing content? None of that would exist without you. I think anyone would agree that there’s a level of flagrantly where individuals should feel culpability and make the right choices (“write software to prescribe poison to groups we don’t like”). But something like this? Two apps establishing a comms channel? How many millions of times does this get done per year with no ill intent or effect? Is every engineer supposed to demand to know l of the use cases, and cross reference to other projects they’re not working on? At some point it’s only fair to say that individuals should exercise their conscience when they have enough information, but it is not incumbent on every engineer to demand justification for every project. That’s where the decision makers who do have the time, resources, and chatter to know better should be taking at least legal responsibility.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    As a software developer no I don't feel responsible for those things, because I don't have any involvement with them as part of my job. But the people who work in HR, finance, and marketing are responsible for those things. I agree that the junior engineer implementing a localhost listener on Android might not understand what it is going to be used for and might not even think to ask. But somewhere, a senior engineer or PM or manager knows, and yes as you say that's the point where responsibility can be assigned, and increasingly up the line from there.
  - genocidicbunny 1y ago
    When I was involved in the hiring pipeline, I absolutely felt a level of personal responsibility since I was directly contributing to the decision to hire or not hire an applicant. That's not to say I was willing to shoulder the entirety of the responsibility, but knowing that my decision would affect not only the applicant, but their potential future coworkers too, I did feel responsible for making sure I had as much information as I could get and that I was making the best decisions I could.

account42 1y ago

You don't need to invest significant time to realize that working around privacy restrictions is wrong and you shouldn't do it.

brookst 1y ago
Have you worked in software? This is a complex, multi-application system with IPC. Most of the people implementing it probably had no idea what the partner applications were, let alone the business intent. Nobody sits down with a mid-level developer and says “we need your native app to receive webrtc connections that will be used to send app-layer telemetry that circumvents privacy protections”. The requirement is just to receive events and log them. And odds are there were all sorts of harmless events as well. At the level where people had a holistic view of the system and intent, sure, throw them in jail. I’d guess that’s about 1% of the people who designed, implemented, tested, documented this code.