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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Ick. That turned my stomach. Sure it's bad for end users that corporate mobile app development is a swamp. In this case it only affects the vendor who lost out on users and reputation. But cavalier, reckless engineering equally causes harm to the client device or end user - if only in wasted time.

Given the audience here, I hope many would agree it's pitiful that developers are wasting their time building this junk. Some poor sap had to make this, probably sighing and shrugging at the end of each line of code.

Unions or professional body membership is becoming more important for programmers. People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account." Otherwise technologists become just tools of destruction.

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> People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account."

This only works if everyone or the vast majority join unions. Otherwise, those who join will get penalised with lower offers or no offers at all.

> This only works if everyone or the vast majority join unions.

This is a common objection but I think it's wrong. Putting aside the huge differences between US (at will) and global employment law, the idea of a fluid, frictionless workforce is quite the myth. Keeping wages down and conditions poor very much relies on the propagation of that myth that ethics will work against you. so please be careful not to do yourself a disservice (if indeed you are a developer).

In reality quite small minorities have a disproportionate impact on change. Some accounts claim it's as low as three percent. I'm sceptical of that, but the fact remains; if only a handful of people object but with severe consequences by the force of law, employers will play it safe. I find it unlikely that any employers would survive long if it transpired they were disfavouring members of IEEE, ACM, IET or whatever.

> any employers would survive long if it transpired they were disfavouring members of IEEE, ACM, IET or whatever.

I highly doubt most employers even know what those organisations are. Taking it even further, there is probably even a significant amount of devs that are unaware of them as well. I don't think devs have this much power. Unless you are a tech company, devs are likely highly replaceable and in my opinion the trend goes in that direction. Obviously, this excludes skilled FAANG devs

> professional body membership is becoming more important for programmers. People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account."

I think this might be an interesting one to consider, other than the "depressing" bit of course. The problem is, I think, if you have the accreditation and you develop an insecure application, do you lose the accreditation? What's the tradeoff?

And who's the "you" in that case? If you're on a team of ten developers working for a shoddy company - because your family can't eat lofty principles - and a bad piece of software is released, who loses their accreditation? Is it the whole team? Do we go through the commits one by one? Is it just the tech lead, or the PM, or the engineering manager?

The same way it works in engineering. What happens when a building collapses due to not following engineering code?

I think you should study how well such professional posturing helps groups that have it (civil engineers, lawyers, etc).

In my experience it’s a symbolic political power that management has effective ways of limiting.

Uhh... lawyers are doing quite well for themselves, aren't they?

The ones who own the firm do. They are the managers.

Also I think you mistook my comment for something about financial success. I am questioning how much power a lawyer has to invoke moral authority (unless they own the firm).

Why would you want to continue working at such a place as a developer? It's not like it's hard to find another job as developer...

> It's not like it's hard to find another job as developer...

In 2025? Haven't you noticed the massive layoffs by the big companies. Check r/cscareerquestions and read the posts from seniors unable to find a job

Worth mentioning that the IT jobs crisis is mostly an US thing. It's still relatively easy to find a dev job in Poland or many other EU countries. It's worse than before, as in bootcamps are no longer enough, but as a mid+ it's still very easy.

Entry-level jobs? Sure. Senior level and above? You must have been living under the rock for the past year.

Then again, mobile apps are like this tend to be junior work, outsourced to software mills that just burn through juniors cranking out garbage assembled 10% of polyfills and 90% of advertising SDKs. Yes, at this point of your career, you can still say "no" - the company will happily replace you with some other junior, while you replace some other junior somewhere else.

It's easy to find entry level jobs? Where? I was trying for ages and barely anyone even replied to my applications

The growth of fake applicants and fake job listings are another issue entirely, but it still is easier to find an entry-level job than senior-level or above.

The job market since 2022 says otherwise

This is assuming that the developers who did that knew that it was bad and still chose to do it.

What if they didn't know and it's just incompetence?

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