311–320 of 376 posts
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Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a paycheck to pay rent and you had to either miss rent or do something less than ethical that your boss was telling you to do?
I've been in worse situations than that and refused orders. So, yes. There are costs involved in taking a stand. If any group has the capacity to take a financial hit in service to an ethical framework it's software engineers.
This is a great example in my opinion of the apathy we need to combat as technologists. Why did NO ONE in any meetings when designing this "feature" or process say anything? "This is wrong/greedy/will have blowback." No one voiced concerns? Or, more specifically, if they did, no one listened? They didn't think this would leak out, with all the hatred regarding wage stagnation, income inequality, corporate greed? A ma…
I'm on the IEEE P7010 Standards working group, which is part of the larger P7000 series that is focused on addressing ethical concerns when building software.[1] As a body, we're going through painstaking effort to build a firm footing for how and why systems designers should build an ethics decision process into their workflow. However I keep struggling to see why any software developer would care to follow our stan…
> ...couriers have braved the elements, gotten by on meager wages and dealt with annoying customers, growling dogs and fifth-floor walk-ups, all for the chance of a big tip from a happy customer. This is not how I experience it working, in my area, with sites like GrubHub and the others. They ask for a tip UPFRONT, before delivery. I usually like to tip cash (for obvious reasons). There is an option for this, and the…
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I think you're missing the point. The problem is not that developers don't care about standards. And its not that developers are just trying to make as much money as possible. Most developers have financial obligations that require them to keep their jobs. The people making unethical decisions are their bosses. The developers cannot contradict their bosses in this way and keep their jobs. However, if you make the sta…
I'm not missing the point. Ethics isn't negotiable. This is not a place to be cynical. "Just following orders" isn't an acceptable excuse. You either quit or you're complicit. It's pretty straightforward actually. What we're trying to get to is a place where there is some incentive for organizations to do the process you described. At a certain point we're just going to legislate it, so we can wait for that blunt ham…
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This sort of process where you shame a group of people into collective action just isn't realistic within the day to day lives of working class people in any society on this planet. Corporate legislation and profit motives are the only real incentives in business, I don't care how much you try to isolate individuals taking part and shame them for complicity. It's not about people capable of making the right choice in…
I'm increasingly convinced that there is no non-coercive way to do it, hence the question: Can anyone think of another way to align incentives other than legislating ethics? I think the current state was inevitable, assuming there wasn't some coercive legislation preventing it. Even then, would people just go do business somewhere else and continue what they are doing because the new system is just viewed as a cost?…
>"Just following orders" isn't an acceptable excuse.
>You either quit or you're complicit. It's pretty straightforward actually.
I meant that I don't really agree with this part of your rhetoric where you are trying to shame people into behaving ethically in business or quit their job. What happens if everyone capable of thinking about morals quits? Do the companies just disappear in a poof of smoke? How does this fix anything, regardless? You have to understand that the situation is not this black and white for 99% of people.
"Tipping Policies" "deceptive tipping policies" Huh... Somehow I think if I set up a tipping jar for the government and kept the majority of the funds, it would be quickly called 'stealing'. Actually, I think in California since the amount is over $10k, it's grand theft. Welcome to the era of legislative capture, when the criminal activities of a corporation are discovered, "journalists" frame the situation as "big c…
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When the pendulum swings very-left (as it will, American politics follow a tick-tock partisan pattern) I believe someone (AOC?) will crack down on "contractor" companies - they're not paying payroll taxes. Not a good thing.
Contracting firms are effectively paying payroll taxes indirectly because contractors are (required to be) paying equivalent self-employment taxes, which figures into labor costs for the firms. And, in any case, a significant part of the left opposes payroll taxes as an an additional (on top of the effects of, e.g, long-term capital gains’ favorable rates) way in which labor is structurally overtaxed compared to othe…
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I'm increasingly convinced that there is no non-coercive way to do it, hence the question: Can anyone think of another way to align incentives other than legislating ethics? I think the current state was inevitable, assuming there wasn't some coercive legislation preventing it. Even then, would people just go do business somewhere else and continue what they are doing because the new system is just viewed as a cost?…
Definitely agree with you that we need legislation. >"Just following orders" isn't an acceptable excuse. >You either quit or you're complicit. It's pretty straightforward actually. I meant that I don't really agree with this part of your rhetoric where you are trying to shame people into behaving ethically in business or quit their job. What happens if everyone capable of thinking about morals quits? Do the companies…
Practically I understand full well that it's not black or white, however if we argue how many shades of grey exist, rather than take bold action, history seems to indicate that little progress will happen.
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When the pendulum swings very-left (as it will, American politics follow a tick-tock partisan pattern) I believe someone (AOC?) will crack down on "contractor" companies - they're not paying payroll taxes. Not a good thing.
What counts as very-left in the US? Serious question; by the standards of everywhere else, the US is skewed very right by default, so what counts as "very-left"?