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Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#311

Post by mielioort »

1718627440 wrote: post #248
teiferer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

That's true. We judge people to be guilty and then they get a punishment. But after the punishment they have payed back their guilt and are now not guilty anymore, that's kind of the deal.

[dead]

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#312

Post by furyofantares »

teiferer wrote: post #205
jcz_nz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, these folks need to have their names permanently attached to this atrocity. These weren’t decisions made by “a corporation” - these people sat across a meeting room table and actually concluded that targeting breast cancer patients was an acceptable means to an end. Lori A. Beer was the CIO at the time. Now at JP Morgan.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

> These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes.

If "targeting insurance policies of women with breast cancer for cancellation, using any pretext" is accurate - I'm curious how that compares to the absolutely worst crimes to you.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#313

Post by mettamage »

qwertytyyuu wrote: post #273
array_key_first wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, for most people, getting the shit beaten out of them is a preferable outcome to losing their job. For most people, their job is the only thing standing between them and being homeless, losing their car, losing their kids, their partner, etc. This is why having a culture that treats firing people as no big deal leads to wack ass incentives. You can make people do almost anything if you threaten their job enou…

I don't think that applies to the mid to high level software engineers here

We’re not all from the US.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#314

Post by xbar »

teiferer wrote: post #205
jcz_nz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, these folks need to have their names permanently attached to this atrocity. These weren’t decisions made by “a corporation” - these people sat across a meeting room table and actually concluded that targeting breast cancer patients was an acceptable means to an end. Lori A. Beer was the CIO at the time. Now at JP Morgan.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

Personal accountability with consequences that make fraud unpalatable means setting a high bar on white collar crime.

If you are saying that twentysomething founders should not be held accountable for the mistakes of their "youth," then you might be inclined hold the investors personally accountable for funding them--similar to parents being liable for their teenagers' driving mishaps.

I am disinclined to believe that Javice and his ilk are very much corrected by the Department of Corrections or later life experiences.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#315

Post by marcosdumay »

andrepd wrote: post #211
teiferer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

It's a bit disingenuous to argue "they shouldn't get life without the possibility of parole" when in fact most of this economic white-collar crime goes completely unpunished, or at best gets a fine targeted at the company and never at the individual people who committed the crimes.

What is disingenuous is claiming that putting a crazy punishment on the paper will change anything when absolutely nobody gets caught.

If you tear apart whatever guarantees human rights exist on your places just so your can impose unreasonable punishment to nobody, then don't act surprised when somebody else uses it against real people you sympathize with. (And yeah, if you are from the US or some other place where lifelong punishment is common, you should be fighting to fix this, not to add support to it.)

On the other hand, you could be pushing for those people being punished at all, by reasonable crimes that your law probably already recognizes or that could be added without rotting your society. But yeah, maybe that's too much.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#316

Post by ajross »

m3047 wrote: post #300
ajross wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No legitimate business person I have ever met holds this position Well, sure, that's true. But only because that's a no-true-scotsman fallacy in incubation. All these perps are "legitimate business people" until they aren't. And they cross that rubicon, almost to a person, still believing that they're legitimate business people and that this is all a clever hack. It looks obvious only in hindsight when you're looki…

> What gets them in trouble is the clever hacking, not a fundamental moral flaw. I think you've got that backwards. Crims gonna crim. A clever hacker will evaluate ALL the risks, whereas a moral flaw blinds people to risks. Doesn't mean somebody can't have both attributes. I quite literally stole an education, and there's a college transcript to prove it. I was a clever hacker, and I worked hard; I was aided and abet…

> A clever hacker will evaluate ALL the risks

Once more, this is a no-true-scotsman argument hanging on your added adjective "clever". All the frausters and criminals in the linked articles were "clever hackers" until they weren't. You probably are too.

Introspection and humility are among the hardest skills for hackers to develop (probably harder for us than for the general population, honestly, as our cheating gets rewarded!), and they're exactly what are being demanded here to keep us out of jail. And I'm pointing out the fallacies inherent in all the "it would never happen to me" argumentation.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#317

Post by teiferer »

bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #307
teiferer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

Well, that's nice that you feel that way. But, you don't get to decide what people "deserve" or what "should" happen. I happen to disagree. I think these crimes (and many others) should follow you more or less permanently. My opinions on what "should" be the case have just as much validity as yours. Please be self aware when you are making baseless moral claims.

I don't think I wrote anything about the validity of other opinions. I have mine, you have yours, that's fine.

A bit of self-awareness would suit yourself well. I didn't make any moral clas, baseless or not.

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#318

Post by teiferer »

iwontberude wrote: post #309
teiferer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life…

Yeah no, sociopathy isn’t something that ever goes away after someone becomes her age.

It's not? Are you a neuroscientist and/or have evidence for that claim? Then we can talk, I'm interested.

Or do you just claim this because that's your gut feeling?

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#319

Post by iwontberude »

teiferer wrote: post #318
iwontberude wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no, sociopathy isn’t something that ever goes away after someone becomes her age.

It's not? Are you a neuroscientist and/or have evidence for that claim? Then we can talk, I'm interested. Or do you just claim this because that's your gut feeling?

History is the best teacher

Re: Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

#320

Post by marcosdumay »

callc wrote: post #109
muzani wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have plenty of difficulty just following the Agile Manifesto.

The agile manifesto is far from a set of ethics that if you disagree with you can’t help but sound like the bad guy. For example, try disagreeing with the statement “SWEs should take reasonable effort to protect user data”

No, it's just a bunch of counter-intuitive rules that if followed make life better for both the developers and their customers/bosses. (On most circumstances, not all.)

If the customers/bosses do not even allow those to be followed, what chance do you think some pro-social rules with actual costs have?

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