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

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#61

Post by codesections » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

polishdude20 wrote: post #31

codesections wrote: post #10

I agree with this, but also think that working for an employer that is "making a negative impact on the world" might _sometimes_ be the right choice. Specifically, it could be justified for two reasons: First: you might have more impact on the organization from the inside than from the outside (this is most relevant to people joining at a high/senior level). For example, Google seems to be making privacy far, far wor…

About double think, what is the difference between cognitive dissonance and your mind actually changing about a certain company or role because you now are more informed about it and choose to see it in a better light? People swear to never do things all the time until they do them. Does that mean they're evil people? Or does that mean their views have changed? And if their views have changed, who are we to tell them…

> People swear to never do things all the time until they do them. Does that mean they're evil people? Or does that mean their views have changed?

I think it's important to distinguish between two types of changes: changes in factual information versus changes in values. If someone changes their mind because they have more information, then that's basically fine (it could be bad if the new information is wrong or misleading, of course, but there's no fundamental objection). And working at a company does sometimes lead to this sort of change (learning about confidential info, for example).

If someone changes their views based on something other than facts, though, it means that their values have changed: something that used to be important to them no longer is, or something else has grown in importance. In my experience, this sort of change is much more common when someone works for an employer for a long period of time – it's not that they have learned important new facts about that employer, it's just that they are now culturally "on the inside" and don't want to think ill of their friends and colleagues (there's that cognitive dissonance again).

You asked "who are we to tell them what's wrong and right?". I believe that we _can_ legitimately criticize someone else's value system, but that's getting into (admittedly contended) philosophy.

Instead of wading into the philosophical debate, I'll just say this: Most people don't want their values to change (that's almost what it means for something to be a "value": you value it!). And (imo) most people significantly underestimate the amount of values drift that can take place for purely social reasons. Given that I care about living up to my values, I don't want to hack my brain in ways that make me stop caring about those values. And that's just as true when the change to my brain comes from working ~5 years with basically decent folks as if it came from brain surgery. (And, imo, smart nerds are especially at risk of underestimating how much their values can drift based on their peer group.)

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#62

Post by orhmeh09 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #58

ForHackernews wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers. Maybe if we call it a "guild" (like the screen actors guild) it'll be more palatable to software developers who fancy themselves beyond the need for something as blue-collar as a union.

>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?

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#63

Post by yters » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #15

Loughla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was sort of the entire point of the writing. Because tech folks are in a privileged class, they have the ability to move jobs based on morals. And therefore they should. Not doing that, when you are making as much as you are as a programmer at BIGCORP means you are complicit in the bad behavior. That was the entire point. He addressed your concern in the first two paragraphs.

If you were to ask my circle of friends and family, even bigcorp programmer money isn’t sufficient to feel secure due to future economic volatility. Especially if your goal is to make sure your kids get to live in the richer neighborhoods and go to the richer schools, and so on and so forth. And it’s not just a perceived fear. The data shows that if you’re not in the portion of people increasing their rate of income/…

Is it true there are only two possibilities: maximizing richness or heading to the poorhouse with family?

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#64

Post by random9763 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

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.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#65

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #50

Things aren't so black and white. By some people's standards, Amazon has been exploiting warehouse workers for quite a while now (unpaid bathroom breaks and so on). By others', Amazon warehouses provide jobs to poor communities. Facebook may be bad for privacy, but communities of all sorts get together and old friends reconnect on their platforms. Instagram brings beauty to lots of people. Remember how things were be…

[deleted]

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#66

Post by screye » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

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 them. Just because we establish a few degrees of separation from the problem, doesn't mean we stop being complicit in it.

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 the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).

It seems that the political left (which usually drives these movements) would rather put the onus on the companies to change while taking millions in lobbying money, than hold them accountable for their actions.

I recognize that the systemic favoring of republicans in the electoral system, might force the left to keep appearances, lest be viewed as hostile to businesses and lose the vital 5% of the swing electorate. But, that still means, that the problem is lack of electoral reform and not 'Amazon being a greedy company'.

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#67

Post by yters » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

What if everyone with a sense of morality dropped out of big corps and government, leaving only the apathetic and evil? Is that more likely to turn the big corps and gov into forces of good, or evil?

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#68

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#69

Post by austincheney » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

techslave wrote: post #53

austincheney wrote: post #41

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

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.

As a medical doctor if you violate the Hippocratic Oath you will certainly lose your license to practice medicine and probably go to jail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

Re: We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

#70

Post by bcrosby95 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #25

lotsofpulp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to ask my circle of friends and family, even bigcorp programmer money isn’t sufficient to feel secure due to future economic volatility. Especially if your goal is to make sure your kids get to live in the richer neighborhoods and go to the richer schools, and so on and so forth. And it’s not just a perceived fear. The data shows that if you’re not in the portion of people increasing their rate of income/…

The level of hubris shown here is obscene. The median household income in the United States was $63,179 in 2018. Richer neighborhoods? Richer schools? Give me a break. This is wanton greed on plain display, and blatant disregard for the systemmic suppression of the poor that you are directly enabling by working at bigcorp.

Do people that make the median household income in the USA feel secure? If they don't, your statistic is irrelevant. And in my experience they don't, especially if they live in higher cost of living areas where most of the tech jobs are.