151–160 of 192 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The corporations are their workers. The suits are only powerful because we collectively chose to listen to them.
The suits control the purse strings, that's why they are powerful. If you don't listen, you get shown the door and they'll pay someone who will listen.
If you eat vegetables in the US, they were probably picked by farmworkers paid below minimum wage who are probably do not have legal work authorization. If you eat meat, in addition to having killed an animal (which isn't an ethical issue for everyone) meat processing plants continue to be the source of endless health and safety violations and which also exploit immigrants, both legal and illegal. There is no ethical…
You don't have to be perfect in order to make better, more ethical, choices.
Yes, you're entirely correct that living a perfectly ethical life is nearly impossible.
That's still no excuse for not putting in the effort.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies like Amazon were not always in the position you've described. It took decades to get there. And there would have been numerous opportunities along the way where a single engineer could have had a massive impact. A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company. Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the id…
So you're saying Amazon is all my fault? :) [ employee #2 ] Edit : to be a little less terse, in 1996 I quit working for Amazon. There were multiple reasons, some not connected with the company, but a number that were based on my perception of what sort of corporate culture it was going to be have. And yet ... here we are. Is there anything I could have done in the 14 months I helped build the initial version of amaz…
The people who tend to get power are far from being the most qualified to shape society. People who are good at taking tend to be bad at giving. Shaping society in a good way requires an altruistic (not opportunistic) mindset. Opportunists will constantly see a way to profit and will not be able to resist the temptation. Their personal interests will always get mixed up in their philanthropy so it will never be truly effective. The faith which winners place in the virtues of capitalism is part of the problem.
Ultimately, profit is the product of exploitation. Most successful people will refuse to acknowledge this and that is why they tend to not be effective at shaping a healthy society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you help a dubious firm progress, you further that dubious behaviour. Techies, and everyone else, included. Edit, re the enlightening discussion below: You are complicit in your employer’s behaviour, more-so if you are reasonably able to find another job, but decide against it.
That's really not a useful distinction though. If you drive or ride in any sort of vehicle that uses gasoline, then you're helping big oil get away with the deepwater horizon oil spill. ... Or even if you purchase any good or service that was transported by a vehicle that uses gasoline. By using gas you're normalizing a system that accepts oil extraction as necessary which furthers the dubious behavior of the people…
Filling your car with petrol and choosing to stay with a dubious firm are at opposite ends.
The difference, to me, is your ability to avoid the complicity.
It’s hard, for most, not to drive in their petrol-based car.
But for many techies, it’s not hard to choose a different tech firm.
The author brings up the Nuremberg defense[1] as an example of complicity which is indefensible, but this is rhetorically quite hollow. If you go a little bit further into political theory and consider Arendt's conception of the banality of evil[2], and furthermore the idea of a panopticon[3], you very quickly come to the philosophical impasse between individual culpability and agency and systematic mechanisms and the political.
What is this impasse? Plainly, I think it is that the individual has nearly zero agency alone, and only has power when effectively organizing into groups. That makes arguments like these functionally useless (or even "usefully idiotic"[5]), because they fundamentally misattribute the locus of value production, capture of capital and political clout onto the individual, in what Marx would call the petite bourgeoisie[4].
This misattribution misses the asymmetric distribution of power towards the top of organizational hierarchies, especially within the size of large mega-corporations. If this author were correct and engineers were truly accountable for the work of their employers, what is the unique labor that managers and executives contribute to the corporation that ICs do not provide? And who has the power to make and override decisions at a corporate policy level? It's transparently obvious that corporations are intentionally set up divide labor such that decision making agency is allocated towards executive leadership and management, and that line level ICs serve to execute on those decisions but do not have the agency to veto decisions they disagree with.
This is obvious to anyone who has ever worked at a mega-corporation, enough so that I wonder if the author has. If they have not, then the post amounts merely to speculation about something the author doesn't have enough firsthand experience with to credibly analyze. That doesn't mean it should have never been written, but I certainly got no value from it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_bana...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon#Criticism_and_use_a...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying Amazon is all my fault? :) [ employee #2 ] Edit : to be a little less terse, in 1996 I quit working for Amazon. There were multiple reasons, some not connected with the company, but a number that were based on my perception of what sort of corporate culture it was going to be have. And yet ... here we are. Is there anything I could have done in the 14 months I helped build the initial version of amaz…
This makes a very good point. This is a systemic problem. Our political and economic system facilitates monopolies. This gives certain individuals a disproportionate amount of power over society. The people who tend to get power are far from being the most qualified to shape society. People who are good at taking tend to be bad at giving. Shaping society in a good way requires an altruistic (not opportunistic) mindse…
(obviously, razor blades are not a particularly current example :)
Uggghhhh, the entitlement of well paid and under qualified developers is loathsome. To everybody else who doesn’t share that entitlement it looks like gross ethnocentricity. Look, if you want all your crying and personal opinions to actually mean something start someplace rational. Start by asking (demanding) for a uniform of code of ethics. Every other professional industry has this, but not software. https://en.m.w…
https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html
> An essential aim of computing professionals is to minimize negative consequences of computing, including threats to health, safety, personal security, and privacy. When the interests of multiple groups conflict, the needs of those less advantaged should be given increased attention and priority.
Debt and healthcare are used to ensure that you don't have the freedom to walk away from immorality. If you're in debt for your (or your kids' and/or partner's) house or education, or depend upon your employer for healthcare, you are not free to walk away. You might be able to switch jobs for something less objectionable, but so long as "not doing the immoral thing" means "my kid might not get treated for their cance…
>A good software engineer with only a couple of years of experience under their belt can expect to have an offer within 1 or 2 months of starting their search.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really not a useful distinction though. If you drive or ride in any sort of vehicle that uses gasoline, then you're helping big oil get away with the deepwater horizon oil spill. ... Or even if you purchase any good or service that was transported by a vehicle that uses gasoline. By using gas you're normalizing a system that accepts oil extraction as necessary which furthers the dubious behavior of the people…
It’s not binary. There are degrees. Filling your car with petrol and choosing to stay with a dubious firm are at opposite ends. The difference, to me, is your ability to avoid the complicity. It’s hard, for most, not to drive in their petrol-based car. But for many techies, it’s not hard to choose a different tech firm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a bigcorp programmer, you should absolutely have enough income to be secure from any real discomfort. You're right, you're not secure from all possible reductions in peak earnings. You may sacrifice some potential income and future wealth by switching jobs. There will always be richer neighbourhoods & schools, so that may mean risking a sacrifice in future lifestyle. But that's not the kind of risk that the articl…
Simply not true, at all. When supporting a family that comes first. Always.