Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this is that it localizes the consequences of defiance on the weakest part of the chain, all but guaranteeing failure. You can't even expect engineers to blow the whistle on their soon-to-be-former employer.

Ethics is about protecting the weak from the strong, not offering up the weak to get eaten by the strong. Only heroes put the good of the many over their own needs, and you can't expect everyone to be a hero.

Only within the safe, protecting bosom of a strong professional organization can we place moral obligations on workers. But it will never happen while the idea of a guild / union for software engineers is still anathema.

View on HN

> Only heroes put the good of the many over their own needs, and you can't expect everyone to be a hero.

> ...

> it will never happen while the idea of a guild / union for software engineers is still anathema.

Sounds like you're waiting for a union and that's the only solution.

In the interim, we can and should encourage people to be heroes. Let's face it, there are other programming jobs out there. Do you truly need to work for an unethical boss or company?

Everyone may not come up with the same answer depending on their individual situation. We should at least support potential whistleblowers as a community. That's one first step towards becoming a unified group.

I'm not waiting for anything. I'm simply recognizing that "encouraging" engineers to be heroes is the lazy way out and is not a real solution to anything. This is a political problem, it can only be met by an appropriately collective effort.

> Let's face it, there are other programming jobs out there.

OK, let's run with that for a moment. Where else would you have expected the VW whistleblowers to get jobs? Not every engineering job is a fungible web dev position. Those skills are useful for that one industry only, and that worker would have to uproot his family and move to get a less-desirable position.

No matter how you shake it, leaving a job is a major life decision for most people not in Silicon Valley, yes, even most engineers. And even in the fungible sectors like finance and the web, word gets around.

I have wondered if a distributed whistleblowing network ala Wikileaks but focused on putting public pressure on the most egregious offenders would be a worthwhile thing to build. Essentially we'd run outreach campaigns for high-impact sectors that use lots of software engineers and encourage them to spill the beans, which would end up into a select group of news reporters / lawyers who are positioned to take action.

I have a feeling that's not quite the right approach, but I think with a bit of refinement we could come up with something better.

Maybe, maybe not. This is speculation, unless you've done a study to sample a statistically significant portion of the population. I agree, your speculation sounds reasonable. But neither of us knows, and both of us have certain biases that this speculation confirms - and therefore it should be mistrusted until confirmed.

Frankly, I think there is a bigger problem than job security itself. It's that the whistle will be ignored by the general population. Even if you are willing to sacrifice to do what is right, it may not matter because no-one wants to believe, or the spin is so good that no-one believes it anyway.

Everything is speculation until someone makes it real.

> I have wondered if a distributed whistleblowing network ala Wikileaks but focused on putting public pressure on the most egregious offenders would be a worthwhile thing to build.

Perhaps WikiLeaks could be rebuilt. But I think we should try to learn something from v. 1.0 which became politicized very quickly. I think the takeaway is you want someone who is very trusted within our community to run it. An entrepreneur with a good track record of being honest, and perhaps also has a law degree.

> In the interim, we can and should encourage people to be heroes.

In reality it's just not black and white like that. I expect a lot of engineers aren't sure if they should be blowing the whistle about a particular thing. And they have no one to turn to for advice, especially not with the NDAs they will typically sign.

So the position they'll find themselves is this: blow the whistle on a morally gray issue which may or may not justify doing so, and guarantee that you will be fired while not at all guaranteeing that the morally gray project will stop. A probable outcome is that the engineer gets fired, the ethics issues don't get escalated, and someone else is hired to continue the project.

Everything is stacked against the engineer. Telling them to fall on their swords for a maybe outcome is neither realistic nor ethical in itself.

> In reality it's just not black and white like that.

I made it clear in the last paragraph it isn't black and white. Everyone has their own situation. I can still support people to come out before they actually do it.

If you're bit older than a graduate then you have much more to lose and nothing to gain. Mortgages, kids and ageism when looking for new job are not your allies.

So support - OK - support as in how? "like" on facebook? That is not enough to make it work.

Support as in donate to non profits that do this kind of work such as the ACLU, and suggest this opportunity to help to others.

Raising awareness can and does help make it work.

If you don't believe communication is effective then I don't know the point of this conversation.

> In the interim, we can and should encourage people to be heroes. Let's face it, there are other programming jobs out there. Do you truly need to work for an unethical boss or company?

Assuming that the only consequence is needing a new job is naive. Whistleblowers find it very difficult to get hired again.

Encourage as in create a fund for whistleblowers which would cover their legal and life expenses until they get hired again?

Sure, I think that's a great idea. Lots of ways to encourage.

Note there may be existing support groups for this such as the ACLU. I'm not exactly sure which non-profits employ a legal defense staff and cover tech issues.

Every person on the chain has own ethical responsibilities. Both management and engineers. If you knowing participate on something like that, you share responsibility. I know that not participating has a cost and somethings it is too high. However, plenty of times it is not that high and you actually can get different job. Take people who write spyware or write fishy parts of Uber code (not everybody working there!) - they have a choice.

I guarantee you that there were some engineers who recognized situation and left or were let go sooner. It is not just magical heroes. Normal people, men and women take decisions of the "less cool company, less cool project but it is fishy here so I leave" normally. Maybe we should praise and celebrate this sort of decisions more instead of automatically considered them losers. As of now, engineers nor valley don't really value doing the right thing nor are willing to discuss what is the right thing - it values winners no matter what path they took.

Whenever I've raised the issue with other developers they've been open to the idea, but to be perfectly honest I have no idea how you'd even go about starting something like that.

As with everything else hackers do, the way to learn would be to just do. If I were to do it, I'd start with a website and an outreach campaign. Sign people up to a mailing list, then create a membership structure and dues. Set some goals, and put governing procedures in place. Some endorsements from existing outfits like YCombinator itself and more traditional unions would help.

Eventually once you have enough money, you can create professional certification bodies. This is when you can really start ramping up your dues because then you'll be solving an actual industry problem. You could probably take a lot of money from big tech companies to help you out here once you're established.

A professional organization can only be strong, safe, and protecting if it has enough teeth to put moral obligations on workers. That seems unlikely.

Ford did that by paying his workers very well; imagine Foxconn paying their workers enough to buy iPhones! On the odd side he had a team of moral police who would show up at your home unannounced to make sure you were living like a good American.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com