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Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#151
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't sweat it, a lot of economic activity is just information arbitrage.

Sounds like a dream job or a nice side gig if you just want a job. Login, run script, log out, bill for thousands, then go back to doing your own thing. Intentionally withholding stuff without offering an upfront option is shady though.

I remember this guy that automated his own job while working on distance... In the end he had a full time job automated into a couple of hours a month. https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/93696/is-it-un...

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#152
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re kidding. I can’t even imagine something like this happening in business.

The Big Short - nice movie, check it out :-)

I agree. I’ve both seen it and read the book.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#154
post #149

I wrote the initial SEO optimizations for reddit.

And what were they?

The main one was the code that put the title of the post in the link. That created a huge traffic boost.

Also added a sitemap and rel=canonical links.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#155

I wrote the initial SEO optimizations for reddit.

So, to be clear, the real problem here is the "upvote this so that when people search..." meme that you inadvertently created. :)

Apparently. Although in my defense that didn't happen till much later once reddit got a lot more popular.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#156

One of my employees was contracting out his entire job. His performance was great and then fell off a cliff. Turns out he stopped paying the contractor and the contractor stopped doing his work for him. When he had to do it himself it was horrible.

I don't fault the guy for the arbitrage, just for not fulfilling the contract. It would be about equally unethical if he were doing the great work himself and got bored and wandered away.

I strongly disagree. Even if we ignore confidentiality and security issues, there is a fundamental difference between contractors and employees. Employees are generally paid less than contractors and are provided stability inn return the company gets a stable employee.

Contractors are expected to be shorter term and change tasking if new opportunities arise, even for a short time.

If both parties enter into a deal then it's fine, if one is misrepresenting themselves it's not.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#157

I built campaign sites for the automotive industry. Always felt wrong. Was asked to pitch for a client in the petroleum industry and declined. That felt great.

I remember working for a heart/health charity at the same time as a large fast food company. That felt weird.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#158

I built my computer graphics final project in Haskell so that the TA wouldn't be able to run it and grade it. Then for our presentation, I babbled on and on about the math and went over time so we wouldn't have to give a really crappy demo.

Reminds me of

    int main(int args, char ** argv)
    {
        static int foo[640*1024];
        return 0;
    }
This compiled into a valid MS-DOS .exe, but spit out "Out of memory" and exited when attempted to run. Was quite handy for getting an extra day to work on lab assignments back at school.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#159
So my dad told me this story once,

He was working on a large, industrial construction project and they were nearing the end of it, so a QA engineer was scheduled to do a walk-through, and before that happened a higher-up purposefully damaged finished work, dented a pipe with wrench, unscrewed a bolt, etc... That way when the QA engineer did his checks, he'd find these obvious, easily fixable defects and mark them, whereas if he had found no problems, he would end up digging deeper, since he'll feel like he has to find something, and then he might potentially uncover some major, catastrophic problem that'd be impossible to fix and still hit the customer's deadline.

Theoretically everyone's happier at the end of it... QA because they did their job and found stuff wrong, the client cause the project was finished on time, and all that for an afternoon of extra work.

I worked for a company with an extensive QA process and on occasion I found myself being less then thorough before handing the code off. I knew there were bugs, but just left them in there, because they had bug quotas they had to meet, and we had a tight deadline, etc... At least that's what you tell yourself to justify the behavior.

Sometimes I wonder just how much of this kind of greasing-the-wheels goes on in other industries...

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#160
post #145

When a deadline had passed sent blank tapes to clients and then claimed the postal services had wiped them when scanning with xrays, asking the clients to send back the tapes so we bought a few more days

This also happened more recently in the CD era with intentionally badly burned CDs.
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