We are complicit in our employer’s deeds • Hacker News Board

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#101

Post by striking » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #69

techslave wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

Sigh, did you declare an oath to those when you were hired? No, these were never mentioned during your hiring process or ever provided to you by your employer? Then that is just some animal's shit on a wall as irrelevant as wealthy software engineers quitting their jobs in protest. Honestly, what happens you violate those? What are the actual repercussions to you? Then they aren't a code of ethics that applies to you…

I think whatever valid points you might have are getting lost in your attempts at rhetoric.

You may want to reconsider the relevance of the article you linked yourself, given that it contains the phrase

> The Hippocratic Oath has been eclipsed as a document of professional ethics by more extensive, regularly updated ethical codes issued by national medical associations

and that, to my knowledge, it's not considered legally binding.

In fact, you could consider it as similar to the ACM Code of Ethics, as both are not legally binding and yet they both do a pretty good job of mentioning a list of commonly made mistakes that people make that could get them in trouble (legally or morally or ethically) as well as processes for avoiding such mistakes.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#102

Post by screye » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #88

screye wrote: post #66

Tech has a tendency to view the world in isolation. You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries. What does that leave us with ? Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by th…

> Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop. > Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of…

> law could be changed to make it clear that companies have obligations besides solely delivering "value" to their shareholders

There in lies the problem. 'Making clear' means codifying it in law and speaking of it in explicit terms rather than being abstract moral concepts.

But few want to talk policy. Because policy is hard. Really really hard. Moralizing on the other hand is easy. Similarly, calling a certain policy bad is a lot easier than suggesting a concrete alternative.

If for one, would love to ground all moral arguments in policy, instead of talking about things in thin air. Sure, it will make discussions more laborious, but at least at the end of them we will have gone somewhere.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#103

Post by NotAnEconomist » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #66

Tech has a tendency to view the world in isolation. You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries. What does that leave us with ? Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by th…

[dead]

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#104

Post by inetknght » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

random9763 wrote: post #64

spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time; pricey cogs for sure, and replacing them may take some time, but they are still cogs.

> Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time

This kind of thinking is exactly why Amazon warehouse workers are fed up.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#105

Post by foolinaround » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

when every single company seems to have some flaw (like the FAANG examples the article gives), now, the techies might have less choices to work for.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#106

Post by headsupernova » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

jp555 wrote: post #90

spaced-out wrote: post #18

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right? No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of th…

"the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital" ... so they can direct collective actions (eg. a free enterprise). So why would your top-down collective action be any different?

they did not imply top-down organization.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#107

Post by ddevault » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

achenatx wrote: post #100

ddevault wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Did Drew also change all his investments to divest from Amazon or Facebook or other company that is making the world worse? Yes. >Nestle is one of the most evil companies in the world. Are we all boycotting all their products and not investing in their companies? Yes. >Most of us have been very happy with 30% returns in our retirement even though we secretly know it is driven by the same companies we claim must be s…

everyone has a limit to how much they want to help. "The life you can save" makes a strong moral point that if you arent spending every penny to save the life of a child that would die from an easily preventable disease (5000 children die in africa every single day from easily preventable diseases), you have chosen to value their life at less than your fancy dinner, movie, or luxury electronics. Everyone makes those…

You're right, of course, it's a spectrum. But, I addressed a similar comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080583

>There's a pretty damn big difference between throwing out $5 of food while someone across the Earth starves, and in directly making the software which opresses millions of people, raising millions of dollars for the people responsible, and pocketing huge salaries for yourself.

Working for bigcorp as a software engineer is pretty long on that spectrum.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#108

Post by smitty1e » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #12

smitty1e wrote: post #9

If BIGCORP is acting outside of labor laws, then there should be legal action. If the law doesn't explicitly outlaw BIGCORP's actions (yet), and we all kinda know that it should, then opposing BIGCORP is the correct thing to do. If Amazon is acting legally, yet in an ugly way, to suppress workers organizing, it seems hard to complain. Now, if Amazon workers exercise the right of free association in their spare time t…

BIGCORP writes the labor laws. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

Well, if our political system is worth much, then it behooves us to elect some people who can, you know, write laws.

Past the flippancy, this is a huge undertaking.

Half the political battle is showing up; the other half is staying engaged.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#109

Post by amiga_500 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

orhmeh09 wrote: post #62

ghaff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers. Yes, in part. But it's almost always enabling collective action that benefits the (current) workers (and the union officials).

Do you have a source for that claim?

Union membership up, 1% share down:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#110

Post by thayne » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #66

Tech has a tendency to view the world in isolation. You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries. What does that leave us with ? Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by th…

> Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies

Or even illegal, as long as the risk of getting caught and or penalty if caught are sufficiently low compared to the benefit.