75% of Software Engineers Faced Retaliation Last Time They Reported Wrongdoing | Hacker News Reader

75% of Software Engineers Faced Retaliation Last Time They Reported Wrongdoing

engprax.com

279 pointsIcyApril148 comments

I once reported something that my boss said to the heads of the company. They sent HR in to take care of it instead. My boss said, "I could get fired for what you said I did." He didn't deny it, just that I could cause him to get fired. I said, "Yeah!" or something similar.

The company's response? I was to talk to my boss first next time before going above his head. For something he did that was (I think) illegal, and clearly not okay. I assume that was so he could sweep it under the rug.

That year, I didn't get a raise, when I normally got rather large raises. I went somewhere else 6 months later and immediately earned 40% more.

I'm not at all surprised that 75% say they faced retaliation.

Give us a hint: was it legal pre-1965?

I worked at a place where the person in charge of hiring for that department passed on a great candidate that was black, not because he didn't like black people IMO, but because he said "if were wrong about him being great, black people are way too hard to fire". That was the only openly crazy racist statement I've really ever heard in a corporate environment.

It may be useful to separate fact and ideology here. I.e.:

(1) Does such a dynamic exist?

(2) If so, what's the right way to deal with that fact during hiring?

It's harder to have a meaningful discussion if those two things are conflated.

The only black person I've ever seen get 'fired' in my work life, actually got paid $20k to leave after threatening to kill two coworkers. When corporate security came down to interview everyone, he started saying he was driven to these extreme feelings because he was passed up for promotions because he was black. In all honesty, he was well below average at his job and was lucky to even remain working let alone get a promotion. But still, he got $20k to leave.

I’ve heard “HR said we can’t hire any more white men”.

Was that exactly what HR said? Who knows. But it affected that hiring round.

I’ve had friends told that by recruiters.

It's definitely unrelated to that, and I'm not even 100% sure it is illegal now.

I have watched HR videos while employed at every tech company I have worked at that would insist that retaliation is forbidden and it's ok to report wrongdoing.

Let's say, for example, I wanted to report something along the lines of: <person_with_specific attribute> becoming a manager, then every one on the team slowly being replaced with <person_with_specific attribute> at <large_well_known_tech_company>. I'm not convinced this is possible without retaliation.

I would love to see a survey with one question asked at all tech companies with more then 100 employees. "Promotions are based on merit, answer from 0 to 10."

It's so bad, sometimes you face pre-emptive retaliation if you have a habit of speaking up lol. HR says that to avoid lawsuits. If you bring retaliation and bullying to HR, you will be fired but not right away so it won't look like retaliation but maybe after significant time has passed.

The best place you can be in corporate america is unseen by middle management and have a good immediate boss who values you.

It still baffles me to think that some still believe that HR is on their side. Human resource is there to safeguard the company from regulatory, compliance, and legal challenges.

Some people are inexperienced and/or naturally trusting. HR always talks sweet and acts like they're the good guys here to help you. They wouldn't do this unless some people were going to fall for it.

Is it in tech or in other industries too? (I am not that experienced, and have had relatively positive experiences with HR, besides occasional incompetence.)

As a worker, ask yourself some questions: was HR hired to represent you, or to represent the corporation? Is HR part of your personal legal counsel team? Who signs HR's paychecks?

Yes, but what surprises me is that HR is not that smart usually like you are saying, they don't think out what is in the best interest of the company but rather usually just side with a middle manager's opinion, at least with big companies. With smaller companies, execs are more in touch with line managers and employees, they still look after the company period but at least it is not a wasteful kelptocracy.

Is attribute illegal or harassing or just something you don't like?

Because those are very important distinctions for formal complaints.

I bet he meant ppl coming from specific country :)

I've heard about it already

What company?

Apple.

I've seen it and heard of it numerous times with India and China. But not Korea, Japan, Pakistan, or other countries. I find this inexplicable.

Here is a simple explanation: how many people there are from India or China immigrating to the US on H1B vs from those other countries you listed?

I would be more surprised if it was anything but “India and China” in your observations, just due to raw volumes.

I listed those three countries for two reasons: First, because they are adjacent to the first two I listed. Secondly, because workers from those countries are numerous enough in the companies I have worked that they could plausibly form ethnic enclave teams if they were inclined to.

In contrast, I have only worked with a small handful of Australians.. they are too few and far between to plausibly form all-Australian teams. I have worked with far more Japanese, Korean and Pakistani coworkers; these nationalities have been heavily represented in the workplaces I have experience with yet I've never seen nor heard of a team where they were conspicuously over-represented.

Another thing: In my entire career I've never been on a team of only white people (of any nationality), nor to the best of my recollection have I ever seen a team larger than 4 or 5 that only had white people. Guestimating some rough numbers... if a company is 50% white and 15% Chinese and there are no ethnic biases present, what are the odds I would see numerous large all-Chinese teams but never a large all-white team? This sort of circumstance arising without bias seems deeply implausible.

>I would love to see a survey with one question asked at all tech companies with more then 100 employees. "Promotions are based on merit, answer from 0 to 10."

I work in company which had huge freezings and promotions almost fully paused during last 1.5 year. The only promoted ppl that I worked close enough to evaluate them were really, really good.

And what wrongdoing do you think is happening in this scenario?

In-group preferences. Granted, there are non-discriminatory explanations: say your manager just happens to know a lot of potential referrals that are of the same identity group. This is totally plausible, most people do indeed tend to have more social connections with people sharing identity characteristics. It's hard to know for sure if favoritism is happening.

The way to tell would be to send effectively identical resumes differing only in the identity characteristics of the applicant and observing if there are disparities. Of course, most companies aren't interested in doing this: why would a company want to incriminate itself?

It should be noted that even if there is a non-discriminatory explanation, it is still illegal under the disparate impact legal theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

Not exactly, as per your link:

> ...an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class...

Requiring doctors to have an MD is going to have a disparate impact on all sorts of factors, including protected classes. Likewise, an anonymized leetcode question isn't going to pass candidates uniformly across identities. But there's a pretty strong case that the use of such measures is justified.

Prioritizing candidates with a referral might be argued to be a disparate impact without justification, and that's somewhere there might be a stronger case but it's not so clear cut.

Notably, "justification" is an affirmative defense (they don't have to prove you were unjustified - you have to prove you were justified. Guilty until proven innocent, in other words), and in practice must meet a very high bar - e.g. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., that started all this, ruled that an IQ test for management positions is not justified. More recently, a test for teachers where Whites had a higher pass rate than Blacks or Latinos (no word on Asians) was also ruled unjustified:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-latino-teachers-collectin...

A controversial ruling, especially given how prevalent exams are for employment: MD, JD for lawyers, heck even a bachelor's degree is a disparate impact. Notably, one of the lawyers who helped overturn Brown vs Board of Education (now a judge) ruled in favor of New York in a lower court: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teach...

Do you have evidence that in-group preferences are happening? Your workplace becoming more diverse is not proof of in-group preferences.

The situation laid out in the comment above is that of a workplace becoming less and less diverse, not more.

The situation did not make it clear one way or another. Probably on purpose.

> ...along the lines of: <person_with_specific attribute> becoming a manager, then every one on the team slowly being replaced with <person_with_specific attribute>...

The commenter made it clear the team is becoming not just less diverse, but completely homogenous: "every one on the team" sharing the same identity characteristic as the lead.

> I'm not convinced this is possible without retaliation.

This is true! Unfortunately nobody who investigates this stuff has any sense of discretion, so the subject gets tipped off during the questioning itself.

This isn't even limited to HR/corporate anything, I've had this happen with fucking CPS of all things. They didn't even try to be indirect and outright questioned the alleged perpetrator using the exact verbiage from my supposedly-anonymous report-- events of which only I was a witness to. My working relationship with the subject was great from there.

Right now I'm mulling over what to do with a report from HR personnel about one of their own, involving a [female] employee reporting their known-autistic, high-achieving [female] boss for actual espionage. Our workplace harassment policy says to report everything, even if it's hearsay. As with social media abuse claims, there is no consequence for false reporting or claims made in bad faith, so now I'm spinning wheels on this. I can't tell if it's a disgruntled employee, or the named exec trying to stage a persecution complex.

Whether or not she actually did it, based on the specificity of the claims, if I question the subject, she'll know who reported her. If she did do what's alleged, I can't prove it and she certainly wouldn't admit it, so the only possible outcome my intervention facilitates is opening the door for retaliation either way. I don't want to be the arbiter of HR's internal workplace politics, but who am I going to report false/bad-faith claims to? HR? (Legal won't hear anything without evidence.)

These decisions aren't easy. The workplace "rules" are so incoherent they're easily exploited. I'm taking the workplace harassment training right now; reportable offenses apparently include gossip about someone's hairstyle. Apparently nobody has ever played the game of crybullying before...

If it's not worth risking your entire career for, it's not worth reporting. Unethical business practices? Grow up. Fraud? There's probably a hotline for that. Sexual assault? Call the police. If you don't want retaliation from the company, don't fucking involve the company.

I know a girl at a Fortune 500 company (not a dev) who was in corporate sales. She went with a more experienced sales person (a guy) who took her and the client to Hooters. No joke. This is like 2019 so in full swing Me Too movement.

When she reported it she was immediately put on a PIP for bad performance. Then she was really dressed down privately by her boss for bringing it up. She taped the convo (legal in her state).

Even presented with that evidence they fired her. They went to the EEOC to protest. The EEOC said that there's almost nothing you can do. So, regardless she hired a lawyer. It wasn't the money it was the fact she was fired despite reporting this (and having good sales numbers).

She spent 2k out of pocket. They said "No we aren't gonna settle". Finally they offered to pay her lawyers fees. She said no and that she was going to finance a movie (low budget but who cares) of what happened to her and form a support group. And talk with ProPublica about the company.

Over 3 hours they negotiated until they gave her a bit under half a million.

The only way to really get justice is just to do things like that I guess. Reporting it has the opposite effect. Eventually many of the other guys involved were let go.

Glad she got something for that awful treatment. But the thing is, this sort of thing doesn't really scale. A lot of (most?) people don't have the time/resources to attempt any of this and are too afraid to have a future job call the previous job and hear negative feedback because of the retaliation, thus hindering future employment prospects. The whole thing is extremely against the employee.

And the companies know this. That 1 person a year that has the balls to retaliate and who the company has to eventually settle with is effectively just a cost of doing business, and so nothing changes.

I once worked for a crypto startup that turned out to build a ponzi scheme. I of course quit, and asked for my due money from paychecks not paid yet. No money to be seen. I reported the startup to the police, but the police didn't seem all too interested for doing anything about it. I then threatened the startup with going to the local business news outlet and reporting my story, to which they finally responded with and gave my missing money, but the thing is - I had talked to the business outlet, and they also didn't care about the story. I was bluffing and just got lucky. And as far as I know they continued with their business just fine.

It definitely doesn't scale. And if this is before Me Too then she doesn't get anything either. But, idk what else you can do. I'm glad she got some good money out of it but as you said for most people it's not possible.

Most people who even have the money don't want to risk it, they just move on.

The problem is the lawsuit payday only works once. Regardless about how horrible an employer is, it marks someone as perpetually radioactive from being hired anywhere else.

Not really. How would future employers know?

Part of their deal entailed the company would not say anything negative to any company looking to hire here in the future.

Even if you file a lawsuit against a company they aren't going to generally say "Well, they filed a lawsuit against us". They generally don't say anything disparaging unless you are dealing with a mom and pop type of company.

Off the record conversations when doing background checks, this is one reason why companies never let anyone know why they weren't chosen.

A standard HR background check is looking for lawsuits from potential employees. No one wants to hire persistent litigators.

One time is a persistent litigator? A EEOC claim is private BTW.

For many HR departments? Absolutely.

Sure they'd reject her but you calling her a "persistent litigator" doesn't make any sense.

It’s important to know what the HR dept would consider her, because it has consequences for her.

We can argue how true it is or not all we want, they won’t care one bit.

More accurate headline would be "75% of Software Engineers Who Reported Wrongdoing Claim They Faced Retaliation". I know there are some obvious cases where people were explicitly retaliated against, but I'm also not sure you can just automatically trust someone when they say they didn't get that raise they obviously deserved due to retaliation.

Also, I stared at this sentence for a long time trying to figure it out: "Meanwhile, the Horizon IT Inquiry continues to investigate how faulty accounting software has been blamed for multiple suicides and what has been described as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history”, with those wrongly imprisoned including a pregnant woman."

Maybe if I'm British that makes more sense but seems like it was just thrown in there to crank up the drama.

yeah current phrasing implies that at least 75% have reported

I worked in a big media company and the department next to me had a manager that would get angry and throw stuff on the wall. Once he grabbed the desk IP phone and threw it at the white board, cord and all.

Made some of the employees pretty nervous in weekly meetings. One of them complained to the HR. The employee's contract was not renewed that quarter and nothing ever came of the manager.

It doesn't surprise me 75% of SWEs report retaliation based on my experience in tech, but credit to 100% of people with integrity that spoke truth to power and risked paying the price. The world would be a lot better place (in my humble opinion) if more people spoke up when things were wrong, and were less afraid of losing a job at a company crossing an ethical line they hold. I know that's a luxury opinion, but if you did the right thing and lost something important, that's a company throwing away the best of humanity and a clearly toxic culture.

More great corporate culture would be awesome. But it's very hard for the employee to distinguish between talk and policy versus reality on the ground. So even when the corporate culture and incentives are actually good and clean, it's risky for the employee to speak up.

What might help is more communication of the proportion of complaints or reports that resulted in what. In a "measure it if you want to see it happen" manner. The measure will then be gamed but hopefully that's only a second order effect.

Early in my career, I dealt with this garage.

Once, I reported the VP of engineering for instructing me to commit fraud. I got back "Just do what he says, he's got experience in these things.". Then they hired someone to take over my team.

Another time, I reported someone for sexual assault to HR. I shared the incident without names at first and HR told me "oh, that's awful. Who is it? They need to go.". When I shared the name, I got "oh. Well, they are too important to the company. I'll talk to them."

I put in my resignation shortly after that.

I won't work for people like that anymore.

>Another time, I reported someone for sexual assault to HR.

I'd probably go directly to the police about something like that.

If you're working at a French company or in France, you can knock at any union's door and report retaliation. They will give you advice, access to a psychologist and legal council (and representation if you want to go further)

Oh yeah, the worst thing you can do is speak up at work. Especially if any of the higher-ups are assholes up to no good. That's why recruiters value long-term stays at a job because it shows that you either have too much to lose or are too much of a coward to stand up for yourself.

Internal recruiters might value that, but third-party recruiters don't. The more people jump around between companies, the more money they make in commissions.

What's the definition of "wrongdoing" in the context of this article?...

* Criminality?

* Illegality?

* Immorality (and according to whose standards)?

* Misrepresentation/dishonesty?

* Abuse?

As an engineer, you generally don't know which one applies. Even qualified lawyers don't decide on the actual criminality (a jury or judge after a valid trial does).

So I assume that "reporting wrongdoing" encompasses reporting up your management chain anything that "feels off," from mildly misleading marketing to actual witnessed or experienced harassment. Probably, in the vast majority of the cases, you are not qualified to judge it.

And in any case, even if you are wrong and the reported thing is "ok", there should never be any retaliation for just raising concerns and speaking up.

Side note and something hilarious, creepy, but kind of making sense: at one workplace (not SV big tech, but a big company), I had a manager-only training about "illegal harassment" that explicitly taught us what kinds of harassment are illegal (against protected categories) vs. "just" breaking the company's code of conduct, with quizzes on hypothetical situations and asking us "is this bad behavior potentially illegal harassment?".

Does this really require an explanation? There is a right way of how things should be done, that includes everything you listed and also internal company rules, industry standard ethics and business practices but also implied and informally accepted norms and anything that isn't in the interest of the company.

So long as the person believes it is wrong, they can be corrected if they are wrong but they shouldn't be retaliated against!

Does it matter in the context of the article? Would any option from that list make retaliation okay?

> Immorality (and according to whose standards)?

> Misrepresentation/dishonesty?

These can be a matter of perspective and if someone’s morals doesn’t align with their employer’s, then they probably shouldn’t work there.

If I report my boss for an off-color joke about Sri Lankans, I might rightfully be seen as a firestarter or someone who is looking for trouble so that they can tattle. I’m okay with quashing tattletales.

If I report my boss because I see him embezzling company funds and I’m retaliated against, that would be less okay.

Are you saying that retaliation for report a person in a hiring position making racist jokes is reasonable? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying.

Racism in employment is explicitly illegal, and any Sri Lankan could now point to this manager's "off color" (racist) jokes as evidence of race based bias at your company. e.g. this manager's behavior is creating significant legal and financial risk for the company.

That said you should absolutely report the racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic "jokes" and if your company retaliates because "you're a tattletale for reporting discriminatory comments in our workplace so we should punish/fire them" you should sue them, for quite a lot of money. Because here's the thing, a new hire, an intern, or a person on a work based visa say may not feel safe making a complaint, especially if they're the subject group for the discriminatory "joke" as this manager has already demonstrated they're worth joking about. So if you are in a position where you can report such behaviour you can directly help others.

Also it's a professional environment, even if it were legal, wtf is a manager or anyone making racist jokes?

I have seen criminality being reported in written format and sometimes to as high as the Federal Police and nothing ever come of it.

Those with power are not going to roll over and accept their mistakes and change. They arm twist everyone and everything to get their way.

Does it matter? The start of the article is talking about reporting stuff _to their employer_, not e.g. a government watchdog or something.

> 53% of software engineers have suspected wrongdoing at work with ~145,000 software engineers in the UK having experienced retaliation the last time they reported it _to their employers_. (emphasis mine)

If your company is silently setting the policy that _internal communication_ raising that something bad is going on will be punished, then you're creating an environment where all of these will flourish.

Even if the reporter is mistaken about whether something is illegal, or holds a moral view which is not shared by most of upper management, the responsible response is still, "thanks for raising this to our attention; we'll have someone appropriately unrelated to the complaint look into it." If your response is "telling us about bad stuff will be punished" then obviously when something bad occurs that you'd actually want to stop (e.g. b/c it will create legal liabilities, damage the brand, etc), you'll learn about it too late.

Even the framing of high rates of "retaliation" sort of presumes that _reporting something wrong_ internally is a hostile action, which is already toxic and dangerous.

Exactly. It's easy to wax rhetorical hypotheticals in news copy.

In the real world, there are better ways to handle different things. Some things need leading questions. Others with concern or prodding questions. Still other things can be joked about. Serious matters should be handled cautiously and perhaps with the input of others where appropriate. There are also some boundaries beyond which matters aren't someone's business to address.

Your ability to get hired for jobs relies on your future employees knowing that you didn't "rat" on your previous employers. Every company has skeletons in the closet so keeping your mouth shut is part of what gets your hired

In my last job, I was 1 of 2 network admins. The other network admin, while never consulted, made it public that he didn't believe I should be allowed to touch networking gear.

I did get warned early that I needed to copy his configs or else, they were good configs and so I did use them as templates for sure. But then came a time when I was scheduled for 4 weeks in advanced and I had constant emergency jobs. He ended up picking up a couple jobs, but he was under the impression he had all the networking jobs. So he flips out because I had been stealing his work... whatever. I had been helping him with his workload, now it was time I needed help. But no, he didn't actually do the work, he then looked up every single one of my tickets and anything network related he noted and then investigated if I did it correctly. Mind you, he's not above me in the heirarchy. This is a peer who now is putting together a list of all the problems he found.

The only real problem which he found was that I hadn't put the devices into RANCID. You know the rancid server nobody told me about and never gave me credentials to.

But after he was told to stop that and do work. He went to my client and started badmouthing me. My client who likes me got rather upset, recorded it and sent it to me. They are sales people, they record calls all the time. Well his biggest complaint about me was that I hadn't renewed my cisco certifications, and if I'm not certified, I shouldn't touch cisco equipment. but he also blamed me for an outage that only he could have caused. I was driving to another job at that time and nobody else had any audit logs on being on my client...

So I went to HR, I made a formal harassment complaint. HR listened to me explain my side, then said it's he said she said. That I'm not the first to complain, but they needed something more concrete.

Well the next morning, I got fired by my boss.

I feel like I'm still facing retaliation for quitting a company 3 years ago. I'm more experienced and more efficient than I've ever been as a software engineer but I can't keep a job and nobody answers my job applications anymore even after changing countries (I have multiple citizenships). I apply for hundreds and get literally 0 calls back. Even my sister who works in HR can't believe it so we started applying together. I constantly hear stories of junior devs straight out of no-name universities getting jobs easily with huge salaries. I don't know what the heck is going on. Is there some algorithm systematically filtering me out based on my name or seniority?

>junior devs straight out of no-name universities

Nobody cares what university you went to.

Right now a lot of people without any history of whistleblowing have the same story

> junior devs straight out of no-name universities getting jobs easily

I'm a soon-to-be grad from a Top 5 Canadian school with multiple internships (no big names, unfortunately), it's been very difficult for me to get callbacks. In fact my ratio of getting past the first screen is about 2/125.

I would blame your experience more on the market.

> I apply for hundreds and get literally 0 calls back

You can’t meaningfully apply for hundreds of jobs. Apply to 3 or 4 and spend 10x longer on each application. Email the recruiter telling them why you are interested and a good fit, tailor your resume to each one.

I’ve sat on plenty of hiring calls and in my personal experience there are just too many candidates applying with the completely wrong credentials or background using LinkedIn “easy apply” or the equivalent. Nearly all of those just basically get “easy rejected” on our first pass through candidates.

I can imagine this being true, I never bought into the trainings and the whole corporate values.

It always feels like is something companies do, because everyone is expect to act that way publicly.

I was once peremptorily retaliated against for just being in the room with a director of what was a major cell phone manufacturer who muted a call periodically to make racist/non-native English speaking comments about remote new hires. Although I failed to say something and should've, my badge was deactivated the next day without a single word. There was a good deal of obnoxious arrogance at that particular shop, so it wasn't much of a loss.

Pretty vague article, does not give a definition of wrongdoing.

> Despite software delivery metrics prioritising speed, the British public and software engineers agree it’s the least important factor. Instead, the public cares most about data security, data accuracy and preventing serious bugs.

Does anybody know the source of the claim? I'd like to present it to our management team if it's sound enough :-D

Once upon a time, I raised concerns about rushed changes and weakening the security configuration of a private credit card processing network. It was Stanford University and I was summarily "forced to resign" for not immediately complying.

PS: My boss also embezzled office equipment for personal use.

Um... this is an ad for a consultancy.

We're in dark times for people with morals.

Not sure it's been better, and not betting that it will get better.

The Old Testament has a lot on this theme, so I don't think it's a new problem.

Minus Victorian prostitutes but add rockets and screens, we're living in Charles Dickens' times.

Well no shit, reporting wrongdoing means getting on the wrong side of someone more powerful than you. Here are things that would make it possible to fix this:

    - Unionization
    - Strong Federal whistleblower protections

That's about it. Of the two, the most important is unionization, because the company can buy off the feds via the revolving door.

I've found that there isn't a lot of discussion or research around this subject. Shoutout to engprax, a compliance company, for clearly approaching the issue.

Is it actually an issue though? Software engineers by design (?) are not capital "P" professionals. There's no certification or board underwriting our work. Software engineering/developers have had the latitude to "move fast" and represent the only "professional" trade that has the ability to "try again" (with a deployment) versus a structural engineer for example.

> Dr Junade Ali CEng FIET, the Principal Investigator of the study, said: “Recent developments demonstrate the fundamental importance of software engineers being free to raise the alarm when they become aware of potential wrongdoing; unfortunately our research has highlighted that software engineers are not sufficiently protected when they need to do so. From software engineers facing mass retaliation for speaking up and banned gagging clauses still being used, to ‘industry-standard’ software development metrics not considering the public’s risk appetite; this investigation has highlighted systematic and profound issues with society-wide impact, given how integral computers are to all our lives.

With the ubiquitous nature of software in modern society are we at the point were we need certification? The development and certification of "industry-standards"? This theme, balancing innovation with responsibility, is throughout the the Biden Administration's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (Order).

Who is really responsible though? The developers who wrote the code? Or the executive who ordered the change?

There's are plenty of examples of this in recent history. Where engineers/developers released code they knew was harmful/fraudulent but did so anyway under fear of retaliation.

> FTX (Nishad Singh) https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-secret-software-chang...

> Pollen https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pollen/#:~:text=Later%2C%....

I wonder where this is going to go.

> Who is really responsible though? The developers who wrote the code?

Yes. The person who wrote the shit is responsible as much as the person who ordered the change.

I could not agree more.

We are all responsible for our actions and the results our actions cause. "I was just following orders" in no way absolves anyone of that responsibility.

That you may pay a price for doing the right thing doesn't make avoiding doing it acceptable.

When that cost includes possibly losing everything your worked for and your kids suffering it ceases to be so clear cut.

If the society you live in won't look out for you in these situations, why should you look out for it? Take care of you and yours first.

> it ceases to be so clear cut.

I think it's still clear cut. Losing everything is a lamentable disaster, to be sure, but that doesn't change the ethics of the situation.

> If the society you live in won't look out for you in these situations

It's not some faceless "society", it's actual people, including the specific people you know. If you're willing to do things that are harmful to others, you're actively working to make the world worse for everyone -- including yourself and those you love.

For me that is a bit too simple (no offense meant). If you are threatened you have to balance the harm you would be suffering by not complying with the harm you would be causing by complying.

I wasn't really saying differently. What I'm saying is that if you choose to do something you know is wrong -- even if it you feel there is no other option -- you're still doing wrong and are responsible for that.

True, but sometimes you are caught between a rock and a hard place. While it does not change the responsibility for your decision, it changes the ethics.

Gross negligence can have serious consequences. Software developers aren't immune to litigation.

It seems to me that killing off organizations that do harm in your community goes right along with taking care of you and yours first.

not everyone has the ability to quit their jobs on the spot for morality sake. there is no social safety net in america. people can't risk losing their jobs and health insurance

Sure they can. People lose their jobs without notice every day and while it's often a horrible situation, it's one that people can and do recover from.

But I'm not even really arguing that people who do bad things because they want to avoid harmful repercussions must choose differently. I'm arguing that people who do that are choosing to do something unethical, and we are what we do.

Perhaps the ethical tradeoff makes some practical sense for some -- but it's still an ethical tradeoff.

Are you talking specifically about engineering? If you have strong ethical disagreements with your current employer, start prepping for interviews. Start early. Invest 2-3 months. Starts interviewing. Sign an offer. Then quit. I don't think anyone in this thread is suggesting a sole family provider should just quit on an arbitrary day and lose their health insurance.

Then you aren't an engineer. You are just a cog.

Unless you are independently wealthy, you are indeed a cog. Maybe you're a well paid cog. But you're still a cog.

Even doctors have to work for a living. That makes them a cog too.

Nothing wrong with seeing where you fit, and securing your future with strategic choices to get away from toxic shit. But you're still a cog.

And you can be an engineer and still be a cog.

The other name for a "cog" is a proletariat.

Engineers are bourgeoisie.

Some engineers and part of the professional managerial class. Many (if not most) engineers are proletarians

Engineers are not part of the proletariat, at all. There are no working class engineers.

However, many members of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie LARP as proletariat — particularly academics.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/02/middle-class-income-in-major....

I was under the impression that what defines the proletariat is someone whose income primarily comes from their labour, rather than capital. In this case, plenty of academics and engineers certainly qualify if they need to work to live.

I think the parent commenter is using the term in that context, rather than if they work a blue-collar job or if they’re middle class.

The distinction has never been “work to live”, but working class versus professional class.

Also, academics and engineers don’t derive their income from labor, but from connections, bureaucratic status, and knowledge asymmetry. That’s why they’re part of the bourgeoisie and not proletariat.

Eg, lawyers were never part of the proletariat — yet they also need to work to survive.

> Also, academics and engineers don’t derive their income from labor

I'm an engineer and absolutely derive my income from labor. I don't get paid for just knowing people or knowledge asymmetry, I get paid for producing stuff.

…based on your specialized knowledge.

See my example about lawyers:

> Eg, lawyers were never part of the proletariat — yet they also need to work to survive.

Perhaps you could address that.

There are many ways we can use distinctions to classify everyone, but if we’re using the term proletariat like I mentioned, that’s certainly defined as someone who gets their income through labour power. [1]

I’m a bit confused by your examples with academics or engineers as well. If an engineer stops fulfilling their deliverables, they’ll likely stop being employed. Same goes for a postdoc not producing any research. I’ve certainly seen people get fired for failing to get work done even though they have connections in their industry. It almost seems like your conception of who is bourgeoises and who is not is based on how snobby the caricature of their job is.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm

You didn’t address my example:

> Eg, lawyers were never part of the proletariat — yet they also need to work to survive.

Please do.

I guess it would depend on the particular lawyer, don’t you think?

Or, if the work from their clients (labour power) is sustaining them, they’d be part of the proletariat, but if they’re able to get by from the labour of others or capital they own (eg: investments, articling) then they wouldn’t be. Does that make sense?

> There are no working class engineers.

I'm not sure how you can say this. I suppose it may depend on how you define "working class", though. If you mean it in the sense of "middle class", then there are lots of them.

Middle class is bourgeoisie.

This might be the first time you've considered the question, but it's not novel. The ACM has a code of ethics required for membership. A compatriot of mine has focused on encouraging employers to pay for their engineers' ACM memberships, and require membership, as a way of advancing ethical standards in the profession.

Of course it's not perfect, but it's not like it's the first time it's occurred to someone to address.

> The ACM has a code of ethics required for membership.

The ACM has never taken action against an ACM member for an ethics violation that was not directly related to research misconduct in an ACM publication (edit: or inappropriate behavior at an ACM conference). Unlike a medical board or bar association, the ACM has no capacity, resources, or staff tasked to enforce even research ethics violations outside of ACM publications, much less ACM members day-to-day work they don't submit to a publication. And even then, it is up to the peer reviewers and editors of that publication. Otherwise, it remains just a list of suggestions.

At one time the ethics code said ACM members should respect terms of service, which means no bots or web scraping, but that was never enforced. You can find tons of research in ACM publications that uses web scraping of big sites that prohibit it in the ToS. The ACM certainly doesn't have capacity to police ethics violations by ACM members in industry. And if it started to do so, I suspect you'd see ACM membership plummet by those who fear they could be next.

These are all very valid points, and I appreciate you making them!

But what I was trying to point out to GP is that the conversation here is not starting from 0. Certainly I'm not suggesting that ACM membership or their code is a sufficient answer, or the only possible answer.

As a tangent, I'll point out that often, codes of conduct or ethical guidelines aren't "policed" in the way you seem to imply--by some kind of active enforcement function. They generally come up after the fact, in some venue like a deposition or court case where questions like "did X act in accordance with the generally accepted standards and practices of Y". And I wouldn't expect the ACM to publicize most of what they do, anyway.

The reason I bring up ACM and their code of conduct is because a compatriot of mine has been advocating for companies to encourage or require their employees to become members of the ACM, and to pay for it. The idea being that progress can be made on becoming the kind of big-P professional GP is describing. I don't really know if that can work, but I do think it sounds like it's better than nothing. And that it could be a basis for improvement in time.

I try to adhere to association of civil engineer's code of ethics:

https://www.asce.org/career-growth/ethics/code-of-ethics

I wish more software folk did.

> Is it actually an issue though? Software engineers by design (?) are not capital "P" professionals. There's no certification or board underwriting our work. Software engineering/developers have had the latitude to "move fast" and represent the only "professional" trade that has the ability to "try again" (with a deployment) versus a structural engineer for example.

You're turning the word professional into a euphemism, it isn't. It's a profession when you are paid to do the task. Industries have already plenty of regulation by sectors, there is no need for more regulation, it already exists. A "software engineer" wide certification will only create more gatekeepers in a domain that has too many of them already. There are already certifications within each industries that software developers serve. I'm absolutely opposed to any sort of certification process for software engineering itself. Within a certain sector? Banking? Avionics? Cars? Sure. And these already exist.

Every time something shady is talked about on HN you have a bunch of people coming in and talking about "Think of the children, there needs to be a certification for deploying a freaking blog on a server". Just No.

> Is it actually an issue though?

The corporations (companies, not trade associations) should care - even if the engineers tough it out. It's often an issue to them. Besides avoiding costly incoming litigation, corporations shouldn't be in the business of encouraging fiefdom, empire building, all the way to outright racism or harassement in groups. None of this overall helps the corporation achieve its objectives. While a manager is busy hiring only their friends or whatever other hobby they have, they are not doing their job.

Conflicts of interest do appear when a corporation estimates a person or group does a very effective "technical" job in spite of their hobbies. Then there's a dilemna: rebuild that group or tolerate the BS a little longer. Even then, they really should care.

I have left the last 2 shops I worked at due to being put into shitty situations and either nothing was done, or for my last role I was very clearly forced to have no choice but to quit. I'll keep the details to a minimum to protect their and my own privacy, though I'm not sure I owe them that.

2 jobs ago:

I was told by my cto that we were going to use a pen testing firm to get a report on our new system, pretty standard stuff. What was not cool was that this pen testing firm offered a week trial or something like that, and my cto's plan was to utilize their services for the report, which was needed for us to satisfy an enterprise requirement so we could sign a deal and collect $$$, and cancel quickly as to avoid paying the pen testing company the 40k or some large amount for their services. Is it maybe the pen testing firm's fault for offering a free trial, maybe, but at the very least it's a snake like move to do such a thing esp when our company was going to use the report to generate unknown amounts of enterprise cash going forward. If we found value in it, and it made us comply and get deals, we should pay that company for their services, just like we'd want others to do for our company. I would not have liked to hear anyone at the company suggest such slimy tactics, let alone my CTO. I was pretty tight-nit with the CEO, and was a very early employee. We had seen many ups and downs together both professionally and personally. I went to him as a friend, because I felt almost like a cofounder without the perks, because I had been there so long, and wanted to let my ceo and my friend know what a C level was telling me to do, because I honestly didn't know if I was being told to commit fraud, and at the very least, that shit can't be coming from the top, it'll only get more slimy down the chain if that's the precedent the org leader sets. I was shocked when the ceo didn't believe me after he spoke to the cto. I was then faced with the choice to stay and work under a cto I now had a major issue with and didn't respect, or quit the company I felt I helped build. I quit, with no plan in place because that request came out of the blue and forced me in between rock and hard place. Thankfully I landed on my feet quickly, at the last job I had...

1 job ago:

A coworker on my team started to hold calls over after standup with just us 2, and then would start quizzing me on systems as if they didn't know how they worked. Some of these systems mind you, this person wrote, yet I was multiple times forced into a corner with them as they played dumb and asked leading and trivial questions, as if I were being tested by them for unknown reasons. The first few times this happened I chalked it up to me misinterpreting what was going on, but I started to pay closer attention after that to see if it was being done deliberately, and it without a doubt was. One of the most extreme calls I was being asked to explain to this person a system they authored, and they knew I knew they authored it, because I had done much of the code review for them when they wrote it. I asked this person why they were making me explain the code to them, they wrote it, and the person once again acted like they weren't sure what I meant. I became very pissed off at being (I hate this word but it's a textbook example) gaslit by a coworker, so much so that I hung up the call and immediately messaged my vp. This is where it gets shitty. The vp heard my issue and saw how upset I was. I was furious. I was threatening to quit. They talked to the other person, and came back to me and said they were "choosing to believe the other person", which if you majored in doublespeak or do pr for a living, is another way of saying "I think you're lying". Now my vp of eng is telling me he doesn't believe me when I go to him upset about a coworker intentionally fucking with me. Why I had any faith in them after being called a liar and left to be messed with is beyond me. At this point I'm thinking there must be something wrong with me that I'm not believed when I go to my leaders with legit issues. It honestly is one of the worst feelings to know I'm not lying, yet not have the people who should have my back believe me, and I still get upset to this day looking back at how I was dismissed when I had no reason to lie or make up stories. Long story short I should have left then, but stuck it out another 6 months, being harassed by this person in different ways the whole time. I on more than one occasion regrettably lost my cool with them in public channels and was not professional. I was burned out, and harassed by a psychopath and not believed by leadership. I quit when in an all hands they announced the coworker's promotion to my team's manager, which now put my harasser who was on the same level as me, in a position of power, as my boss, and it was clear that they wanted me out, but didn't want to fire me, so I was forced into either quitting my job or staying at a place where my harasser is now my boss and in charge of everything I do every day, and having the ability to sabotage my ability to earn more money, performance reviews, workloads, stress levels, or advance my career beyond my current role. I quit. I was fucked with by a coworker, called a liar, and forced to either work under a psycho person or quit the company and abandon the large project I had created while working there that I honestly loved to wake up every day and get to work on. That one really fucked me up.

I've been out of work for a year now. Lost everything. I honestly don't even want to go back to software, but due to financial obligations and the debt from being out of work and losing all my possessions, I have no choice. Software is mentally taxing enough, let alone when you try to do the right thing in the face of corruption and nobody believes you, or you are the daily victim of a mind fuck from some unstable coworker with a bone to pick. That made my existing sabbatical level burnout turn into something that honestly has to be some form of trauma, and I haven't wanted to write a line of code since I quit that job a year ago, and I haven't. A week after I quit, the first huge rounds of layoffs started as well. Now I'm being asked in intro calls why there's a year gap on my resume, and I've already experienced people not believing me when I tell them the truth, so, I've been "contracting" here and there for a year, which is a lie. Funny how my attempts to be an honest person cost me two careers I never wanted to leave and resulted in me being the one telling fucking lies. Universe you are a cruel and mysterious sob.

I wrote another day, that the co-workers are not the friends. Many disagreed. But that’s typical shit. The psycho stories are rare and nobody believes them unless one experiences that in person. A colleague can go from nice sport partner to complete psycho when circumstances change. I got lots of advice from my parents and grandparents about work. I thought, it was some decades old crap. But I was wrong. I naively believed, that going to work and delivering best results is what counts. Wrong!!! That does not count! I was too young and too stupid not to analyze entrenched actors and who’s really in control. My direct manager was not in control, he was a clerk for weird group of people on different levels. That was very funny, because I have great experience in my field. And every project plan I created for a stupid device was canceled, because it interfered with parts designed by important people. My work was sabotaged for years. I even reported some weird hardware buying scheme at the 5x market rate. Made myself very unpopular. Lost belief in my skills completely. Found a new job as software developer leaving hardware design completely, because this area is poisoned to me by my last job. My sanity was saved by running a consultancy on the side. I delivered everything what clients asked on time and with acceptable quality, so I know, that everything I do is all right. Despite that I had hard time digesting the situation at work and comparing it to my own results. The gap was just too big. Now I see that my project was always derailed by the important guy without any technical knowledge, but with connections everywhere. This story costs the company millions. Because the current system is like from 1985 looking at the technical level of it. But since the important people stick to it (because this outdated crap keeps them important) nothing will change. Depending on factory load the yearly loss can be two digit million number. But in the reality nobody cares about such things, it’s a collateral in a game of power.

Just 75%? A friend was working for one of those AI startups. They wanted him to download and effectively steal documents for training their LLM. When he pointed out that the TOS explicitly forbade mass downloading, they fired him immediately. Sleezy times.

If it was a website, their ToS can say anything, it's still legal to download everything there.

Maybe, maybe not. But his main fault was pointing out the possible legal problem. As soon as he pointed to it, simple negligence and a possible Chewbacca defense became intent. Which is a huge difference in legal interpretation and penalties.

Yeah. You report these things verbally in person, not on written media. This has two advantages: your employer can decide to investigate or forget about it, and you can judge whether you are getting a bad response in person during your report, and act accordingly.

You make a report in writing if you could personally be held liable, and you want your disagreement on the record. But doing so is a burning your bridges moment.

Not quite sure how you handle this if you are remote...

> You report these things verbally in person, not on written media.

I think this is dangerous. If push comes to shove, you will not have anything to defend yourself with, because of no documentation.

I'm not sure what scenario you have in mind, in which the thing they have been annoyed by would be useful as a defence.

If you have something to report, usually you are somehow involved. The company might then try to pin responsibility on you for doing the bad thing and trying to verbally blackmail them.

Well, that's why I said you need things in writing in the case where you could be personally liable for the act.

Normally this discussion arises before the bad thing has been done, or if you weren't involved and found out about it. If you in fact committed it on their behalf without telling them first, then you are actually the bad guy.

Which is why, shouldn't the right course of action be for that person to point out the potential problem (and in writing is fine), and a legal dept or exec to come back with a theory of why it's fine and we are going to continue doing it? - It's not like it's all that hard under the current legal system.

Things are much more likely to go sideways if (a) there was already some background feeling that this person had to go, or (b) the person makes a nuisance of themselves after legal or higher-ups have already decided that no, this was fine.

Seems to me when a manager "jumps straight to firing" someone, either they are insane or there is something missing to the story. Insane is very much not impossible (and disfunction itself obviously) but missing story is not impossible either.

The parent comment never made the claim that it was illegal. Sleezy and legal are not mutually exclusive. The parent comment also didn't limit it to just downloading but to also "training an LLM"

Weren't Chat-GPT and Bard also trained on pirated content and other content for which they never had explicit consent on the basis of "who cares, what are you gonna do about it?"

It's not clear if a TOS can be used to de facto limit fair use, or if use for LLM training is fair use or not.

I was listening to a podcast with Jim Rutt and he said that he encouraged people to give "bad news" and to not shoot the messenger. He was also against office politics and fired people for it. I wish more companies had this culture.

Do you honestly think the line between giving bad news or reporting bad behaviour and office politics is so clear cut?

Indeed. The line between an earnest report of bad news/behavior and a less than earnest political play can be extremely unclear.

Depends on the leadership style. Trad, Molochian behavior is unconstrained. Jim Rutt, Molochian behavior is scrutinized.

I don't know about Jim Rutt, but my overall impression is that most, if not all, companies are supposedly encouraging this culture of giving "bad news" and non-retaliation. Also reinforced by the usual compliance voodoo about supposedly anonymous reporting opportunities.

I've never gained the impression that that was anything more than lip-service. The two people I know of who dared to say something were shown the door. Quietly, discreetly, done in a way so they wouldn't dare to sue.

Therefore, imho, if you do report anything, make sure it cannot be traced back to you. Or just don't, it usually isn't worth it.

> The two people I know of who dared to say something were shown the door. Quietly, discreetly, done in a way so they wouldn't dare to sue.

How does this work? If I'm in this position, you'd have to either give me a lot of money or threaten to kill my family. I'd be surprised if a business tried the latter.

I don't know. I just know that they left the company, to everyone's surprise, shortly after something was reported, to work on something completely different two towns over.

Whatever else folks may think of them, what I’ve seen of strong unions makes them look very effective at, specifically, making people feel safe speaking up about breaches of policy (including things like discrimination or hostile workplaces) or safety violations.

Not surprised at all. The behavior of the shitheads is downstream of the assholes at the top.

For reference, this is the Future Fossils podcast 181. The leadership thing is in the first minute.

Extensible to nearly all professions? In academia it happens..

Definitely every profession. Exposing a problem either makes someone more powerful than you look bad, or makes you look bad for throwing someone else under the bus. Either way you're at risk of either retaliation or bad working relationships. The only relatively safe way to report problems is to do it anonymously and pray it doesn't come back on you.

https://www.asce.org/career-growth/ethics/code-of-ethics is my guideline.

It is very brief and sharp, perhaps pro-active on creating an environment where bullshit does not happen, so perhaps optimistically, it does not need to be reported.

Profits before ethics..

As long as management will be done by people, it will happen. It either should be done by computer/AI/whatever completely, or it should be controlled by purely emotionless and unbiased entities.

With any luck this will happen sooner than later.

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