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

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

#351

Post by whoknowsidont » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

teiferer wrote: post #321

whoknowsidont wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. For people in specific classes that benefit from networks and status: it is not. It should be default. If you abuse your power and position, it should have cascading effects not just for you but people that benefited from it. This idea that only one person at fault when there are 10's of people that hide behind the crime is just non-sense…

Collective punishment also has done immeasurable damage to society and I'm glad that most reasonable systems of law do not consider it legal. Go after the guilty party and revert whatever benefits they got. If money went to dependents, that money is to be seized. But those who received the money are not at fault per se. Unless they helped in the crime, then they are obviously guilty too, but not of receiving fund but…

You just repeated what I said.

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

#352

Post by Xelbair » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 11:42 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #350

Xelbair wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and how many more fall upwards?

I have no idea, I'm just saying it's a weird comment to make on an article where both the engineer behind the fraud _and_ the management faced consequences of their actions.

have you read the reply thread?

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

#353

Post by peterpeppers » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 4:54 AM UTC

gregoryl wrote: post #164

peterpeppers wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 2010s, we had a similar situation but it wasn’t illegal. I used to work for a large drug distributor both pre and during the opioid epidemic. At the time (pre-SUPPORT Act), distributors weren’t required to notify the DEA about anomalous ordering so we didn’t provide data to law enforcement unless they sent a subpoena. To increase profits, we identified our best customers of opioids and updated our inventory tr…

It really seems like you have effectively caused the deaths of many people through your actions. Does that have a lingering impact on you?

No.

Patient took medication and were responsible for their health.

Doctors wrote the scripts and have the ultimate responsibility to the patients.

Pharmacies dispensed the medications as instructed by the scripts.

Big Pharma (Sackler) makes and markets the drugs.

Distribution is only responsible for making sure drugs arrive efficiently to their location. I would work for a drug distributor again if the pay were better.

Americans are always looking for someone else to blame for their choices.

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

#354

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 5:44 AM UTC

hvb2 wrote: post #347

lazyasciiart wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't work. The US has been actively trying this in many states, so we have data on the relationship between deterrence effect and the likelihood*harshness of punishments - it turns out likelihood really controls the strength of the effect of deterrence. If you have extremely harsh punishments you DO incentivize doing a lot of damage to get away with it, and also incentivize repeat or exacerbated offending.…

Uh you don't have data on that for white collar crime. If you do, please share. Petty theft is done for different reasons to white collar crime. I agree with you that the punishment is not a deterrence for small offences. I think there's a lot of deterrence coming from the Enron case where people actually went to jail. That's just too rare because you quickly get into questions of intent. And to prove intent is reall…

Lots, actually. Here's one analysis; https://waynelawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/61Wayn...

Your note about 'proving intent is really hard' is kind of the underlying reason - white collar criminals tend to believe they will never be caught/convicted. So making sentences more severe for those who are caught and convicted doesn't actually impact those future criminals, because their calculations say there's no risk of it being applied to them.

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

#355

Post by scott_w » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 8:24 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #290

Spooky23 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you commit any number of stupid or criminal acts, you are legally blacklisted from the financial industry for life.

Should be unable to be a politician, or take part in the political process beyond voting (eg party donations), too.

This is dangerous because of how easy it is to abuse. Look at Türkiye where İmamoğlu was arrested and had his university degree removed on trumped up charges as he's a potential threat to Erdoğan's chances of re-election.

In Türkiye, certain crimes disbar you from running for election (and you're required to have a university degree).

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

#356

Post by gregoryl » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 9:23 AM UTC

peterpeppers wrote: post #353

gregoryl wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really seems like you have effectively caused the deaths of many people through your actions. Does that have a lingering impact on you?

No. Patient took medication and were responsible for their health. Doctors wrote the scripts and have the ultimate responsibility to the patients. Pharmacies dispensed the medications as instructed by the scripts. Big Pharma (Sackler) makes and markets the drugs. Distribution is only responsible for making sure drugs arrive efficiently to their location. I would work for a drug distributor again if the pay were bette…

I'm not American; I also wasn't blaming you for anything - I took care to avoid that!

I appreciate the reply none the less.

You mentioned targeted rebates, which feel a lot more "active". My personal ethical barrier seems to be where its a direct interaction with the problem domain. e.g. I'll work on a tool for email marketing, which incidentally gets used by gambling orgs, but I wouldn't work directly on say, Roulette software.

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

#357

Post by flir » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 9:56 AM UTC

teiferer wrote: post #224

flir wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being struck off by professional organisations is a thing, though. On the one hand I don't want the bar to this discipline raised. On the other hand, I don't want people like us (metaphorically) building bridges that tip every two hundredth car into the river.

Of course not. But 10 years later, rehabilitation could be in the cards?

Five years and a tribunal hearing for doctors in the UK. Seems like they take it on a case-by-case basis.

(source: https://www.mpts-uk.org/-/media/mpts-documents/dc4432-guidan...)

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

#358

Post by phatskat » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:04 AM UTC

nekusar wrote: post #281

stavros wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very smooth gradient from optimizing a sales funnel to writing gambling software. I don't know where the line is, but in both cases you're exploiting human psychology to make more money.

Absolutely is. And its also why some of the anarchist folks I hang out with say there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. And definitely in areas, they're completely correct.

> there's no ethical consumption under capitalism

I tend to agree too. It’s incredibly hard to do much in the US without bumping into some ugly part of capitalism because the ugly parts constitute the majority.

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

#359

Post by phatskat » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:08 AM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #263

comprev wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it any different from working at a gambling company writing addictive software? There will always be someone willing to do the work if the pay is good enough.

It's probably slightly worse because opioids actually kill people whereas gambling just financially ruins them (which can lead to suicide, but still I know which I would pick). But it's only a slight difference. I don't think people who work at predatory apps/gambling systems should be able to sleep at night either. Not all gambling though; I don't have any objection to occasional sports betting for example. But if y…

> Not all gambling though; I don't have any objection to occasional sports betting for example.

The “occasional” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I associate sports betting with the much more dangerous side of gambling than any kind of P2W system.

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

#360

Post by phatskat » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:11 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #303

jcz_nz wrote: post #114

In 2010 WellPoint was found to be automatically targeting insurance policies of women with breast cancer for cancellation, using any pretext. Angela Braly was the CEO at the time, now at ExxonMobile. WellPoint was the second largest health insurer in the US at the time. This required a lot of business analysis and software development - and people had to realize what this code was doing. I’m guessing bonuses were pai…

Seems to be a trend of Women (especially the 30 under 30) in tech being especially fraudy.

Seems like a trend because you happen to focus on the gender being “interesting” - in reality we’ve always had fraud in tech and men have certainly led a ton of it.

I guess my point is: why is gender at all relevant here?