Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 369 posts

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

#91

Post by closewith »

abxyz wrote: post #89
closewith wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, under the UK Civil Procedure Rules, you are expected to engage in the Pre-Action Protocol and provide a substantive response within 14 days, and failure to do so can effect you credibility and standing in court. So you do not have to respond, but not doing so risks sanction from the court for non-engagement.

You're proving my point. You are catastrophising. A response to a "spurious defamation letter" does not cost "high four figures". Substantive does not refer to the cost of the response. Substantive means that it addresses the substance of the complaint. The "high four figures" you spent for a lawyer to respond (I disagree with the word "defend") to a legal threat was unnecessary. You paid a bunch of money for some lo…

No, the Pre-Action Protocol is quite a bit more in depth than that and required a significant response including document review and research.

"The statement is true, I will not retract" is not substantive and is effectively calling the bluff. If they take it beyond a letter, those costs will balloon further.

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

#92

Post by abxyz »

closewith wrote: post #91
abxyz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're proving my point. You are catastrophising. A response to a "spurious defamation letter" does not cost "high four figures". Substantive does not refer to the cost of the response. Substantive means that it addresses the substance of the complaint. The "high four figures" you spent for a lawyer to respond (I disagree with the word "defend") to a legal threat was unnecessary. You paid a bunch of money for some lo…

No, the Pre-Action Protocol is quite a bit more in depth than that and required a significant response including document review and research. "The statement is true, I will not retract" is not substantive and is effectively calling the bluff. If they take it beyond a letter, those costs will balloon further.

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/prot...

The "Defendant’s Response to Letter of Claim" section is very clear that it is actually that simple. The burden is almost entirely on the claimant, the defendant has very little to do. Can you provide any evidence that any individual has ever been sanctioned by a U.K. court for either not filing a response, or not filing a substantive response?

You are saying that "costs will balloon further" but you haven't yet established there are any costs. How can costs that do not exist balloon? Any individual could satisfy the "Pre-action Protocol for Media and Communications Claims" with ease, no expense necessary.

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

#93

Post by creer »

Rygian wrote: post #2

> If you take one lesson from this, it’s that you can always say no. I fully understand why this is true, but it seems to ignore any retaliative measures that the management could take against the person who says no. With the benefit of hindsight, any such retaliation would be weaker than ending up in an orange suit. But the person has to find the guts to say "no" without that hindsight.

The threat of retaliation - in the form of being fired, harassed or moved to a dead end position - is very scary to a younger engineer. But from a rational point of view it's not very strong (HOWEVER many managers or CEOs are far from rational.)

- Firing someone has large costs to the employer. You have the job because you are needed. Same for side-lining someone or not promoting them.

- Firing someone removes the final incentives against that person reporting the deed to the govt. It pushes that person toward reporting instead of softer "negotiated" steps such as continuing to argue for legal alternatives or discussing it with an intermediate rather than outright reporting. And many corporate legal or accounting people are amazing at finding alternative ways to achieve the same result in a not-illegal manner.

- A lawyer can help you much more once there is retaliation. The company might end up fighting both the fraud reporting AND the retaliation.

Just firing someone is not a great "solution" for the company.

Letting you believe that they will ... that's very powerful.

(and probably all this is caveat: in countries where retaliation is illegal enough and commonly taken to court or settled. which is not worldwide.)

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

#94

Post by closewith »

abxyz wrote: post #92
closewith wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the Pre-Action Protocol is quite a bit more in depth than that and required a significant response including document review and research. "The statement is true, I will not retract" is not substantive and is effectively calling the bluff. If they take it beyond a letter, those costs will balloon further.

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/prot... The "Defendant’s Response to Letter of Claim" section is very clear that it is actually that simple. The burden is almost entirely on the claimant, the defendant has very little to do. Can you provide any evidence that any individual has ever been sanctioned by a U.K. court for either not filing a response, or not filing a substantive response? You are s…

Costs upon commencement of litigation. Are you being purposely obtuse or trolling?

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

#95

Post by abxyz »

closewith wrote: post #94
abxyz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/prot... The "Defendant’s Response to Letter of Claim" section is very clear that it is actually that simple. The burden is almost entirely on the claimant, the defendant has very little to do. Can you provide any evidence that any individual has ever been sanctioned by a U.K. court for either not filing a response, or not filing a substantive response? You are s…

Costs upon commencement of litigation. Are you being purposely obtuse or trolling?

The point I am making in this thread is that there are no mandatory costs, that receiving an angry letter from the lawyers of a deep-pocketed litigant is financially inconsequential. The choice to hire legal representation and pay them "high four figures" to write a response is a choice. Hiring legal representation for court is a choice, too.

The courts are very kind to people who choose to represent themselves, especially when the litigants are obviously abusing the system to try and silence individuals. The point you're making seems to be that you must spend money to defend against spurious defamation claims so I have asked you to provide any evidence of a case where an individual is accused of libel and has suffered because they chose not to spend money.

I am not trolling. I disagree with the suggestion that the U.K. libel laws create an environment where people are scared to speak truth because there is a real threat of an expensive lawsuit. My position is that the fear people have of expensive lawsuits comes from other people fear mongering, in comments like yours, either based on a misunderstanding of a case they've seen publicised or because of information they've been given by legal professionals in a different context.

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

#96

Post by moron4hire »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #85
moron4hire wrote: post #60

Many years ago, I was working for a consulting firm doing work for a, erhm, "large insurance provider headquartered in Illinois". I was building a tool their insurance adjusters could use to use GPS devices to check how far houses were from the coast line and deny flood coverage to anyone within a certain boundary. Note that this was during the time of Selective Availability, so GPS devices were only good to 100m pre…

Does this pre-date flood zone maps or something? That's a way better indicator of risk than miles from the coast.

I don't know. This was 25 years ago and I was pretty young at the time. Clients being clients, they probably didn't know, either. Consulting being consulting, probably nobody would have sprung for it (the maps if they needed licensing, or even just the development to use them) if anyone did know.

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

#97

Post by closewith »

abxyz wrote: post #95
closewith wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs upon commencement of litigation. Are you being purposely obtuse or trolling?

The point I am making in this thread is that there are no mandatory costs, that receiving an angry letter from the lawyers of a deep-pocketed litigant is financially inconsequential. The choice to hire legal representation and pay them "high four figures" to write a response is a choice. Hiring legal representation for court is a choice, too. The courts are very kind to people who choose to represent themselves, espe…

Okay, so you are trolling or you are at peak levels at HN arrogance.

No, the chilling effect of UK defamation laws is not an artefact of scaremongering. No, you have not discovered the secret truth hidden by the legal profession. Yes, defamation cases are a real threat and expensive to defend as the burden of proof lies on the defendant, not the allegedly defamed.

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

#98

Post by array_key_first »

OskarS wrote: post #4
Rygian wrote: post #2

> If you take one lesson from this, it’s that you can always say no. I fully understand why this is true, but it seems to ignore any retaliative measures that the management could take against the person who says no. With the benefit of hindsight, any such retaliation would be weaker than ending up in an orange suit. But the person has to find the guts to say "no" without that hindsight.

I would argue that you have a moral and ethical responsibility to say no when your manager asks you to do something illegal, even if it does cost you your job. The law is the law, and there is no excuse for breaking it. Your manager is certainly culpable, but if you act against the law, you are culpable as well. The exception is if you fear literal physical violence against you or others, or are being blackmailed or…

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 enough.

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

#99

Post by array_key_first »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #5
sltr wrote: post #3

Software developers should sign a code of ethics, like other professions do and then cite it when asked to do unscrupulous things. This would work for activities that aren't illegal but still unethical, like defaulting user privacy choices to open/public. Citing professional organizations like ACM or IEEE would deter retaliation.

The code of ethics would need to be absolute, enforceable, unambiguous (without lawyers to interpret), and universal to really eliminate these activities.

I don't think it needs to be (it isn't for anything else), and I also don't think it needs to eliminate all activies (it doesn't for anything else).

But right now we have nothing. Surely, something is better than nothing. We can't have nothing and already be out of ideas.

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

#100

Post by BowBun »

mattlondon wrote: post #58
Timshel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And crucially there is never some black and white issue. The three example given are quite black and white ...

The article makes it sound clear sure. But then the article has been edited. I would not have been surprised if the 5 million user thing was couched as some sort of "we need to generate some realistic test data to load test our systems - please create 5 million accounts very similar to these paying ones, remember this is testing so they need to be as realistic and believable as possible ". If I got that request (perh…

I think this skips over an important fact from the article - the head of growth + CEO were in the room making this request, then the eng director raised concerns, then they assuaged his concerns by saying it's ok for 'investor purposes'.

I can see the situation you're describing, sorta. Though if it was me and someone asked me to generate a list of 5 million real-ish user accounts in a report, I'd immediately ask why. If it's to commit fraud or lie to investors, I would be like hell no! If we're doing load testing or something legit, for sure. But I feel like benign use-cases of generating 5 million accounts would not include the "make it look real" aspect.

I also don't think the Reddit comparison makes sense, since Reddit didn't seek to sell the company at the time based on the # of users. Growth hacking is one thing, lying to investors about users is another. Because this data point was a key decision factor for a financial transaction, this fake information/lie becomes fraud.

Post reply on HN