Perhaps not really relevant to the discussion, but what is the role of Microsoft's president within the company?
Runs the commercial side of the company (sales/marketing/operations). No direct control over product development.
Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
131–140 of 240 posts
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#132Why can't big tech self-regulate? Why must it always be a solution that depends on big government instead? Why should anyone trust the government given the last few thousand years of history?
Companies will do anything to earn a profit. Asking them to self-regulate is orthogonal to the goal of maximizing profits.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, y…
>>> Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. It is an excuse. If my livelihood depends on it, my children's health insurance depends on it (especially if you have kids that need continuous care), my kids university tuition depends on it, etc, etc... So, per…
Don't want to open up a whole other can of worms but this is very clearly the role of a union in quite a number of industries. Such a body would offer both legal and financial support in a situation where an engineer was being asked to do something they felt was illegal or sketchy.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#134I see a lot of criticism that this is self-serving by Microsoft, that they’re advocating for regulation that will hurt their competitors like Google and Amazon much harder than themselves.
I say... *that’s great.” Privacy advocates can get one of the world’s most powerful companies as an ally, just by a common self interest. I don’t mind that this is self serving from Microsoft, I hope they are successful. Other allies could be the media companies hurt by Facebook, advertisers bidding up each other on Google, etc. there should be a selfish coalition of privacy defenders just to protect their own businesses.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read that by the fact that you only talked about punishing engineers. And I'm not misreading your comment on purpose, trust me I had to read it 4 times just to make sure I wasn't crazy and I was actually reading what I thought I was: someone advocating that bottom of the food chain employees be criminally liable for code they write. You are making an us-vs-them argument, to be sure. Your "us" is consumers and your…
Disagree. The idea that whatever you are asked to do has been vetted by others is an abdication of ethical responsibility. At present, a lot of what tech companies do is still legal, but that doesnt make it right. It's still legal because the maps of cyber law are largely still uncharted. An engineer working on a project that tracks user behavior without consent (for example) shouldn't be absolved or responsibility b…
Sometimes it is not clear cut.
Getting the same result in different ways can legal or not:
Obvious example:
Saving a x amount of money from taxes using a legal loophole is legal.
An exact equal company trying to save the exact same amount of money by lying to is doing something illegal.
Far less obvious example:
Around here (and possibly elsewhere, I don't know) if you make a drink from wine and spirits you have to pour the spirit first because increasing the strength of wine is illegal, but decreasing the strengt of spirits are OK.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#136The threats to democracy arguments are so overblown. We're about to have a huge election. There is no literal threat to democracy. Hmmm...it must be some kind of metaphor. So what do people mean when they say this? The NPR piece says Smith suggests "the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country". This metaphor seems hyperbolic as well. To use "cannibalize" means that something will eat itself.…
> There is no literal threat to democracy. What would you consider a threat to democracy?
Censorship
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. It is an excuse. If my livelihood depends on it, my children's health insurance depends on it (especially if you have kids that need continuous care), my kids university tuition depends on it, etc, etc... So, per…
Your and your children’s well being depend on your having a job. They don’t depend strictly on your current job. Approximately all engineers at big tech companies could put in their 2 week’s notice on Monday and find another job above the 95th salary percentile during that 2 week period.
That is a very optimistic view about how easy it is for the average engineer (many of whom are not even in software) to land a new job. Especially one that doesn't require them to move or otherwise make significant changes.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, y…
Not very realistic for people who need to put food on the table and where the evil vs non evil is not that clear. Especially if you work on a very small cog in the machine, which most engineers do ofcourse. Where do you draw the line? Maybe your company makes software that is nice but it is sold to companies using it for evil? I think this is too vague and not solvable by engineers unless in clear cut cases like you…
>>Not very realistic for people who need to put food on the table and where the evil vs non evil is not that clear.
Evil vs. non-evil being not that clear is not a problem. That's why we have the court system: to sort those types of things out.
As for "needing to put food on the table", how far are you willing to take that logic? It seems you could use it to justify virtually any behavior, as long as you get paid doing it.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, y…
If you think salaries are high now, just wait until every engineer needs a personal lawyer to review every change request their boss makes of them.
You can train them enough to not be helpless without a lawyer. Doctors don't need one for every medical decision they make. You do need larger support systems to make this work though and that doesn't get built overnight.
It certainly does limit new engineer throughput for society because of training times and increase salaries though.
Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't advocate that corporate execs have shielding and the engineers don't. Where did you read that? It sounds to me that you're misreading my comment on purpose, to make an us-vs-them argument that I fundamentally disagree with. This isn't about engineers vs bosses, it's about doing the right thing no matter what's on your business card. The argument "if we can't shift the blame up, it'll automatically go down" si…
I read that by the fact that you only talked about punishing engineers. And I'm not misreading your comment on purpose, trust me I had to read it 4 times just to make sure I wasn't crazy and I was actually reading what I thought I was: someone advocating that bottom of the food chain employees be criminally liable for code they write. You are making an us-vs-them argument, to be sure. Your "us" is consumers and your…
if you read it 4x and don't see his point, consider reading it another 4 times. you seem to be advocating that certain employees, "bottom of the food chain" in your parlance, aren't culpable for their actions whereas the parent was saying everyone is culpable for their actions