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.
Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
151–160 of 520 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#152Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#153Amazing there’s nothing here about crypto.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#154Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#155I 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. :)
Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#156One 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.
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?
#157I 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.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?
#158I 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.
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?
#159He 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?
#160When 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