Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 520 posts

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

#51

Post by diminoten »

j88439h84 wrote: post #40
iammiles wrote: post #31

Circumvented browser features to force autoplay on videos with high volume on our websites. While not a morally bankrupt thing to do especially compared to some of the other examples, we all felt dirty doing it.

> While not a morally bankrupt thing to do Could you explain this position? (Honestly asking.)

From my perspective, at least you could stop going to the website if they did stuff like this, and TBH anyone's free to do whatever they want on their website. A lot of these other stories are doing things without informing customers, or using customer data illegally, and stuff like that.

It's sure not great if you want people to come back to your site, but it's not morally bankrupt.

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

#52

Post by sjtgraham »

jscholes wrote: post #35
throwawaymath wrote: post #25

I've done a lot of work involving scraping, data analysis and reversing private API access from mobile applications. A lot of this work is legally defensible (if you do it correctly) and not particularly unethical. After doing a bunch of this type of work I started to accrue subject matter expertise in the area that led other companies to come to me with more questionable projects in mind. I turned down many of these…

> A lot of this work is legally defensible (if you do it correctly) Could you expand on the correctness aspect? I'm currently working in this space for what I believe to be good reasons (to improve the accessibility of a particular service for visually impaired users). But I'm eager not to abuse my position and knowledge.

Depends on jurisdiction OP operates in, but clean room reverse engineering is one technique, i.e. OP reverse engineers a piece of software, documents how it works at a high level, and hands off the documentation to legal counsel who reviews it for IP infringement etc. The doc is then handed off to a completely different team/engineer who implements the API contract documented by OP.

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

#53

Post by linkmotif »

iammiles wrote: post #31

Circumvented browser features to force autoplay on videos with high volume on our websites. While not a morally bankrupt thing to do especially compared to some of the other examples, we all felt dirty doing it.

Your superiors thought this was a good thing? Funny how people do t realize that makes your product insta-toxic. Or am I naive?

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

#55

Post by qmalzp »

throwawaymath wrote: post #25

I've done a lot of work involving scraping, data analysis and reversing private API access from mobile applications. A lot of this work is legally defensible (if you do it correctly) and not particularly unethical. After doing a bunch of this type of work I started to accrue subject matter expertise in the area that led other companies to come to me with more questionable projects in mind. I turned down many of these…

First project sounds like Coinbase.

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

#56

Post by ptenk »

throwawaymath wrote: post #25

I've done a lot of work involving scraping, data analysis and reversing private API access from mobile applications. A lot of this work is legally defensible (if you do it correctly) and not particularly unethical. After doing a bunch of this type of work I started to accrue subject matter expertise in the area that led other companies to come to me with more questionable projects in mind. I turned down many of these…

Thank you for sharing. This is why I never sign up for any fintech services. The amount of data I hand over is never worth the "benefits" they provide.

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

#57

Post by zuck9 »

thom wrote: post #30

As a gentle satire of a much-hated London-based design company we were working with during a project for a major brand, I added something called 'disco mode' to the customer's site if you crafted the correct query string. It progressively added more and more random jQuery effects to the page on a timer, while the customer's logo jumped to a beat.

That's an Easter egg.

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

#59

Post by ColinWright »

danso wrote: post #43
throwaway0255 wrote: post #8

I was once assigned a task that had been estimated at 8 hours of development time, but only required the modification of a single line of code. I finished it in 5 minutes. My boss asked what happened, I told him, and he told me to revert the code, work on other tasks, and redo it at the end of the day so he could bill for 8 hours (in addition to billing for the other tasks I worked on). I did it and didn’t say anythi…

Guess I haven't had enough coffee -- I'm struggling to remember the joke in which the punchline is the professional telling the client something like "You're not paying me to do [one simple/small thing], but for the years of experience it takes to know that [it's that one simple thing]". The problem with trying to charge for programming work is that so much non-trivial work can be summed up as a few keystrokes, or an…

Available in many, many places, but here's one:

https://www.buzzmaven.com/old-engineer-hammer-2/

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

#60

Post by INeedToGetOut »

I live in a dictatorial country with 90%+ of the tech, industrial, and service sector owned directly by the president's family. So I kinda feel like whatever work I take on in this country is evil in one way or another.

I haven't had to hack independent media agencies and opposition parties yet and I plan to keep it that way.

Post reply on HN