Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

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One more thing (apologies):

If you take the engineer off the hook because “they can’t change things,” you know what inevitably happens? You discover that the product and eng managers can’t change things either. In theory, maybe, but in practice they are given accountability for revenue and growth targets, so what choice do they have?

Let’s move up the ladder. Can we blame the directors and ELT. No, the markets hold them accountable for growth, and every company plays dirty, so what choice do THEY have?

Pretty soon everyone is shrugging, and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable because no one person can make change without sacrifice, and sometimes not even then, it would take mass walkouts or protests , and each person is but a drop in the bucket.

This mechanism of not holding people accountable because they don’t have sufficient authority or power to make unilateral change is how all systemic injustices persist. Racism, sexism, class distinctions, corruption in government, predatory corporations, all of them.

They persist because individuals say, “What can I do? Nothing, so I might as well go along with it.” And if everyone accepts this...

The next thing you know, they’re writing software to assist opressive regimes oppress their citizens.

Agree in spirit, but in the case of Google/Alphabet there is somewhere for the buck to stop: AFAIK Larry + Sergei (+ maybe Eric?) control more than half of the equity in terms of voting power, so if they want too promote their principles at the expense of revenue growth they can do that regardless of the feelings of other shareholders.

This is more speculative, but I think public markets don't really react adversely to visionary CEOs / founders putting principles over growth, so it's not like they would make all their paid-in-equity engineers take a pay cut for their principles either.

All participants are equally complicit, but some are more equally complicit than others :-)

p.s. I know the market seems to like Apple’s perspective on privacy, but unless we can examine an altrnate universe where iPhones aren’t selling like hotcakes, it’s tough to know whether the market values the eithics involved, or just thinks it’s a fine strategy.

If the latter, the market doesnkt really value their values, but rther their ability to make money. Which is mot the same thing.

We can examine an alternate universe where iPhones aren’t selling like hotcakes actually.

> With only seven million iPhones sold in China during the second quarter of 2018, Apple's market share in the country dropped by 12.5 percent year on year to 6.7 percent, according to a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC)

Apple have some very particular values in China though, storing iCloud data and encryption keys on state-owned servers. But the trend to decline started a long before that recent Apple decision.

Hasn't Apple basically abandoned the low price phone market in the same period though?

Maybe.

> If you head over to Xiaomi China’s official store (via XDA-Developers) you’ll see three new bundles unsubtly named the XS, XS Max, and XR sets. Included in each bundle is a new Xiaomi phone — either the Mi Mix 2S, Mi 8, or Mi 8 SE, respectively — a Xiaomi Notebook, a Mi Band 3, and a Bluetooth earpiece/earphones, all for the same price as their namesake iPhones.

Apple could already make tons of money off of user data right now. Do you not think people have suggested this within Apple? It'd be ridiculous to assume so.

They are leaving a ton of money on the table taking their privacy stance right now.

Well as a consumer, I value their perspective on privacy, and am willing to throw money at them to protect it. Sadly, I don't think most other consumers factor in privacy to that extent.

To be fair, the OP was complaining about short-term biases from management. The entire ethical discussion is pushed way over its actual relevance (really, how big an ethical flaw is not deleting a cookie? Google will identify you anyway, cookie or not).

That said, about this:

> and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable

It looks completely backwards. Environments that fix systemic problems are overwhelmingly on the side of not blaming individuals and looking only at the system. You are probably thinking about goal misalignment problems, and yet, just going after the individuals is still counterproductive if the system won't support the ones that do the right thing.

> > and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable

> It looks completely backwards. Environments that fix systemic problems are overwhelmingly on the side of not blaming individuals and looking only at the system.

That's a fascinating exchange. I find myself siding more with you than with braythwayt, but still uncertain because the idea is new to me. Is there a good writeup of arguments for both sides?

I don't think these two ideas are as opposed as you're implying. They're describing two different perspectives on the same process. To wit:

1. Individuals have values and ethics that they'll make a reasonable effort to comply with. Society recognizes this and rewards and punishes individuals for the ethical bent of the projects they are clearly responsible for.

2. As the size and complexity of a project grows responsibility becomes diffuse until there's no single individual to hold responsible for any given decision. Once this happens the informal, personalized ethical safeguards begin to break down.

3. Once the informal individual scale safeguards have dissolved they usually can't be rebuilt. Instead they need to be replaced with formal safeguard mechanisms that operate at the project scale.

I don't know of any good writeup on the side of blaming the individual. On the side of fixing the system, I think the canon would be to look at systems theory (at the more human centered flank, like Meadows). You can get to the same conclusion on administration theory from Deming and his following, or any of the X-safety groups, like work-safety, aviation-safety, nuclear-safety, etc.

What really confuses the discussion is that a well working system that deals with ethical failures does necessarily hold people personally accountable. But you can't fix it by focusing on the "holding people accountable" part, it never works. You have to focus on the "system" part.

Putting yourself in a weaker position due to your views doesn't scale and thus doesn't work. For one hero there are ten conformists at the same level of skill, waiting for him/her to leave. While it's brave, it is also pointless. The problem as you state it can be solved only by explicit consensus, being it a law or just a manifesto. Modern privacy has no professional and power-y organization under it, except for few self-distanced like GNU, FSF, etc. Moreover, by staying at google engineers who have an opinion probably can influence much more than those who left.

If your argument is that they can do more good by staying, fine. I say the exact same thing about staying in Ontario despite the recent election of a wannabe Trump populist.

But if you say, “Ontario made this stupid decision,” I can’t tell you, “I didn’t vote for this, I can’t change it, I’m not responsible.”

I have to tell you, “It sucks, and as a citizen I bear some of the responsibility, and here’s what I’m doing in the hopes of fixing it.”

My only argument is that people who stay have some accountability. Accountability doesn’t mean they are automatically bad people, but it does mean we can ask them, “What are you doing about it?” And they don’t get to shrug and say, “Nothing I can do, so my conscience is clear.”

I see your point, but personally believe that we shouldn't dismiss high morals of those who realized to work for misbehaving businesses. It is just impractical to think that these grounds are unbreakable in general, so why care at all. Why not give them vote box instead.

You are weakening your own case by grandstanding. No sane person would expect you to "take responsibility" for some politician you didn't like (or help) to get elected in Ontario (a place with 14 Million people, but of limited global impact). You staying in Ontario (even without engaging in political activism) is not at all comparable to directly working on products you consider immoral in a company with an engineering workforce roughly one thousands the size of that but vastly bigger global impact. Neither in terms of personal culpability, sacrifices required or plausible positive effect your decisions might have.

you can use the same argument to tell people not to vote. it's not a good one.

Not a good one use or argument itself?

Citation needed. How do you know that? Maybe it's more like this: For every conscientious person deciding not to take a stand because they think it's pointless, there are ten conscientious persons also deciding not to take a stand because they think it's pointless.

Maybe when one person speaks up, others will be emboldened.

It is called a hunger strike and for that you must be literally hungry anyway. All other strikes are solved by dealing with few instigators. I doubt that it really requires any citation, since it is a manager’s textbook case.

Collective action problems are an awful mess. By the time it's clear to everyone that a problem exists, few individuals can get results in return for impoverishing and isolating themselves by taking a stand. The few who can are so dependent on the system that they aren't going to do anything without the threat of a guillotine or FBI raid.

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