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Comment by OskarS | Hacker News Reader

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 something, then of course you are being coerced and have no choice. But "losing your job" does not rise to that kind of coercion, in my opinion.

Not saying it's easy, it's a horrible situation to be put in and I have huge amounts of sympathy for a person who has to experience this. No one is perfect and act with faultless ethics at all times. But hard or not, it is your duty as a citizen not to violate the law.

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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.

The cases in the article were software engineers in the US, and at FTX. Two were engineering directors and the third was a senior engineer. If any of them didn't have plenty of emergency funds set aside, they should have seriously rethought their spending.

I know plenty of people who saved for years to get a downpayment for a house and then used all of that for just that. After that, it will take a while to replenish their emergency fund with very little margin of error. A job loss would be devastating.

My claim is that that's a bad decision, for exactly that reason. Job loss can happen for any number of reasons, often without warning. Getting a mortgage without any cushion for job loss is a huge risk.

Note also that I'm talking about highly-paid software engineers, not about people in general. Lots of people in the US make way less money than senior software engineers, and they manage to get by. Live at that level and secure your emergency funds first, and you'll be a lot more comfortable dealing with any ethical quandaries at work.

No, you’re claiming they have a spending issue, with the typical judgemental holier-than-thou undertone. My example is not that.

And I’m talking about my SWE neighbors in SV who have a desire to buy their own house just like almost everybody else. It’s just wrong to claim they have a spending issue.

They may be highly paid, but the house prices are commensurately higher too.

It is nearly impossible in the US in general to buy a house without taking on some amount of financial risk. It has nothing to do with being wasteful with money.

If you make say $400k a year and you buy a $2.5M house, at some level you do have a spending issue.

I mean, it's been the standard personal finance advice for decades. Step one is to set aside six months of emergency expenses. If you have an above-average income, you're capable of doing that. It's not "judgmental" to point out that this is indeed an intelligent strategy, just as advisors have been suggesting for years and years.

You yourself said that for the people you know who bought a house without that, "a job loss would be devastating." So you seem to agree with me and the personal finance advisors.

I did not say they had "a spending issue" or that they were "wasteful with money." Those were your terms just now. I simply said they should have rethought. You're turning that into some moral judgement, when all I'm saying is that it's bad strategy.

> Lots of people in the US make way less money than senior software engineers, and they manage to get by.

No, I'm pretty sure this is getting less and less true actually. Credit card debt is at an all time high. Homelessness is rising. Medical debt is crushing.

Indeed, any sufficiently wise man would prefer to place himself in a position of precariousness so that all his acts of crime can be attributed to the man who employs him. Only the financially careful face dilemmas. The spendthrift fears no judgment from society having forced his choice function into an identity of his employer's.

That may be true in the US, but very far from reality in countries that have universal healthcare and a strong social safety net.

One can only conclude that the VW engineers were uniquely immoral, since they have a safety net and nonetheless committed massive scale fraud. At least in America it's coercion. In Europe, it's willful evil.

That safety net does not extend to paying the interest on your house loan.

When unemployment benefits are a large percentage of your salary and last a year plus it does

It does in some places. Firstly banks will usually let you pause or significantly reduce mortgage payments while unemployed. You then make up for it with increased payments (for a period of time) when you regain employment. There is also government help in the form of a loan to pay the interest on your mortgage while unemployed if you've been unemployed for a certain period of time (longer than the bank grace period).

Countrapoint is that these dilemas are NOT dilemas of poor people struggling to feed their kids.They are dilemmas of well doing middle class who in fact, can find another job.

Seriously, we hear the "but the job, but the potential pay raise" exactly as often in a good economy from people having large salaries.

They have choice. They are choosing the fraud over ... still high salary but just not that high.

I don't think that applies to the mid to high level software engineers here

We’re not all from the US.

"losing your job", for a lot of people, is extremely effective coercion.

We are not talking about luxury here. A lot of people depend on their salary to pay rent and put food on the table. This is even more pressing if you have a family that depends on you, if you are in need of healthcare, etc.

What your post fails to recognize is that in the current system, labor is already a form of coercion. You need to work because the option is homelessness and starvation.

If you can avoid those even when unemployed, you are extremely privileged.

If you can avoid those even when unemployed

that would be all developed countries except the united states

So yes, the extremely privileged

privileged? sure, but extremely?

nowadays even in china everyone gets healthcare, working or not, so we are talking about almost a quarter of the worlds population.

380k homeless in UK. 262k in Germany. 122k Australia. 650k in USA. The per capita math is left for the reader but I don't believe there is much distinction here .

You're right, the numbers are very close to recent official figures. I looked them up to calculate the per capita rates. So USA is actually better than other countries? Kind of defeats these arguments here - interesting. (By the way I’m not from us)

Based on the latest available data (mostly 2023) and current population estimates:

* *UK:* ~56.0 per 10,000 people (1 in 178) * *Australia:* ~45.4 per 10,000 people (1 in 220) [using 2021 census data] * *Germany:* ~31.0 per 10,000 people (1 in 323) * *USA:* ~19.4 per 10,000 people (1 in 515)

The per capita distinction is more significant than the raw numbers suggest.

(Note: Methodologies for counting vary by country, which can affect direct comparisons.)

Your last paragraph is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. TLDR: the US figures should be WAY higher if you expand the definition of homelessness like those other countries do.

More research shows the U.S. rate looks lower largely because it uses a narrow, one-night "Point In Time" measure that excludes many precarious living situations other countries intentionally count. If you harmonise definitions, the U.S. does not outperform high-safety-net countries; on unsheltered homelessness in particular, it fares worse.

In UK official usage, being legally homeless often includes people the state is actively accommodating; it is not limited to street homelessness like the US PIT figure. In Australia, their figures include couch surfing (staying temporarily with other households and those in “severely crowded” dwellings). In Germany, apart from again having a more expansive definition of homelessness, their figures also include ~130k Ukrainian refugees.

Just one example: the US figures should at least include >1.2 million students experiencing homelessness.

also, despite being homeless people in germany can get financial support and healthcare, which was the original point about the fear of losing your job. and losing your job in germany does not make you homeless. you'd have to get evicted from your home (but not for failing to pay rent, as you would cover that with the financial support) so the group that is being talked about in the original paragraph that fears losing their job, and the group that is homeless in germany have nothing to do with each other, because the first group does not exist. most of tho homeless in germany never had a job to begin with.

I think the risk is somewhat higher than just losing your job - you are potentially burning your whole referral network in the process (especially if you end up with your name in the press during any resulting prosecution).

For a junior engineer it may not be that hard to fly under the radar, but senior/staff level folks tend to be well known by the execs. And execs talk, they call their friends to vet future hires... burn your execs, and maybe you don't work in that town again

Probably for the best...

Like, anyone who would work with some of my previous employers, are places I wouldn't want to work anyway. It's a big wide world out there.

> Probably for the best...

Quite. One of my first gigs was at a large real-estate aggregator. The people were great but the highest levels of the company did

- A pet “adoption” site, in quotes because to my knowledge the pets weren’t real and it was a subscription service with no means of cancellation outside of a voicemail box - A kind of Craigslist-esque site for selling home improvement services that was wildly vulnerable to XSS - I discovered that during an unannounced client demo when my own manager had said “you guys try to break it” - We were a PHP shop from the beginning. One day, engineering gets pulled into a meeting room and told that they’ve been developing 2.0 in an office downtown, with a separate team, in ColdFusion. They fired the lead engineer on the spot and most of us left or got fired shortly thereafter. They did offer to train us in CF, but the bad blood was too thick for my taste.

All that is to say, if I ever get wind of the owner or CEO being involved anywhere that I’m working, I’ll probably be walking.

> 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.

When your access to food, housing, heating and healthcare for your family are dependent on your income, you may find yourself facing very difficult decisions. Most parents will risk whatever legal ramifications to care for their kids and that's inherent moral and ethical, even if the downstream outcome is not. That is because it is the socioeconomic system rather than the individual who is acting immorally.

> The law is the law, and there is no excuse for breaking it.

This is an infantile view. The law is a framework and there are lots of circumstances where breaking it is not only excusable, it's the only moral action.

> When your access to food, housing, heating and healthcare for your family are dependent on your income, you may find yourself facing very difficult decisions

This is the time when your ethics are tested. Anyone can do the right thing when they're getting paid for it.

There's a nice Jordan Peterson quote:

> There was a lesson to learn from the holocaust. We're always reminded that: "Never forget, we've learned our lesson." "What was the lesson?" That's the question. The lesson is, "You're the Nazi". No-one wants to learn that; If you were there, that would have been you. You might think "Well, I'd be Oskar Schindler and I'd be rescuing the Jews." It's like, no, afraid not. You'd at least not be saying anything. And you might also be actively participating. You might also enjoy it.

Hindsight theoretical morality is very different from experience on the ground, where peer pressure, stress, uncertainty, exploding situations and fog of war come into the mix.

Seems like a better lesson would be "don't be the Nazi."

It's not like it's impossible. The Nazis arrested 800,000 Germans for active resistance activities, and several hundred thousand Germans deserted the military, many of those defecting to the Allies.

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

It wasn't a huge percentage, but we don't know how many actively resisted without getting caught, or resisted in more passive ways. And that was resistance against the Nazis, who had no qualms about killing resistors. Risking or quitting your job to not only do what's right, but avoid getting in trouble with your government, isn't in the same ballpark.

The figure of German soldiers deaths has an estimation of 50% suicides.

You might want to think about why Petersen wants you to think you’re the Nazi. What change is he trying to effect in our culture, and how does that belief support his desire? Rhetoric always aims to effect some change in the attitude of the listener, and never without some benefit of the speaker.

> You might want to think about why Petersen wants you to think you’re the Nazi. What change is he trying to effect in our culture, and how does that belief support his desire? Rhetoric always aims to effect some change in the attitude of the listener, and never without some benefit of the speaker.

What benefit do you think he's trying to get from it? I'm honestly trying to figure out the nefarious angle and coming up blank.

It seems to me like a very similar sentiment to that great "are we the baddies?" sketch from Mitchell and Webb. [1] I see both as an exercise in moral humility.

See the Milgram experiment, or the Asch experiment. Most people do cave to pressure from authorities and the group. Everybody believes they're they exception. Statistically, most of them are wrong.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY

> You might want to think about why Petersen wants you to think ...

What's your take on that?

Not that person but the my take on their take is that Peterson is greasing you up to accept more authoritarian control since he puts you in the in-group of the oppressors to ease the societal drift.

I don't necessarily agree. I think he is pointing out that people morally grandstand and the majority will not act out how they say they would.

Note that in the quote, he is, himself, moral grandstanding.

I thought the lesson was to not base your morality and what you are willing to do on the laws, because they can change at a whim. And for the democratic politicians, don't play with fire and take problems seriously.

Nah. I’ve been in the exact situation you describe and it’s pretty obvious tbh. Loss of a job is a temporary setback. Being locked up in a jail is a permanent one.

Right, saying outright that Thoreau was wrong and also that pretty much every famous person who took him to heart was wrong too is a rather strong position to take and likely very, very hard to defend.

Or, for a more obscure example, that Antigone should just have said 'yes daddy' and left it at that with the play ending somewhere in the initial conversation with Ismene.

It is not moral to break the law in the furtherance of fraud. That’s the point.

But if the fraud secures the livelyhood of $bignum children and they would starve without their parents committing that fraud?

I think my son would rather have me in his life than have me in jail.

We're not talking about living in a totalitarian state and breaking the law by aiding the resistance here. The cases in the article is like committing financial fraud or faking customer data. And then, yeah, I do think there is no excuse for going along with it, you have a duty as a member of society not to do such things, even if it costs your your job. It's not easy, and as I said I have enormous sympathy for a person in this position, but there is a clear right thing to do, and you have an obligation to act accordingly.

To get rich at your software startup is not one of the situations where you have a moral obligation to break the law. None of these people were stealing bread from the rich to feed their children.

As a parent, I would risk destitution over going to prison every single time. I don’t even have to think about it.

At least in the case of engineers, we're talking about highly compensated people. You should have a solid emergency fund put together within a few months of starting your career. From there, it's on you to not put yourself into an economically precarious position. People who are making multiples of the median household don't have food/shelter as an excuse.

Not that it's much of an excuse for everyone else either, but with people in the professional-managerial class it's absurd.

Globally, most software developers are not highly paid and certainly not enough to be above financial pressure.

Becoming a whistleblower or refusing unethical demands can also lead to being blacklisted, as in most industries, loyalty is valued more highly than ethics.

And the more people that buy into that, the worse it gets. That’s why this has to be fought tooth and nail from day one.

If you want to fight corruption and unethical behaviour, start with a just society that doesn't tie a person's value and well-being directly to their income. Otherwise you're fighting incentives and will never win.

You don’t get to a just society by not fighting corruption. Ask yourself not what “engineers globally” can do, but what you can do. Historically, pressure from the educated middle class has made huge impacts on culture and society.

Corruption is both a systemic and moral problem. You can’t build a just society without confronting corruption and you can’t sustain anti-corruption without reducing inequality.

Yeah, but you have to factor in the probability of the orange jumpsuit.

You're not going to be of much use to your family in jail.

It's still a difficult decision, but it's not just your job vs your morality. It's your job vs morality+potential jail.

We dish out criminal sentences precisely in order to affect the equation like this, because we know people don't always act on morality alone.

> […] that's inherent moral and ethical, even if the downstream outcome is not. That is because it is the socioeconomic system rather than the individual who is acting immorally.

Wow. This is incredibly dangerous way of thinking. Are any “downstream outcomes” justified as moral in such a case? How about outcomes involving people dying eg due to safety or quality rules broken? People may do things like that “to feed their kids” but that does not make it ethical, especially when we actually talk about preservation of certain social status rather than real survival.

> But "losing your job" does not rise to that kind of coercion, in my opinion.

it depends how many friends and family you have in the area that can host your whole family that is now homeless. it depends how much disruption you are willing to inflict on your kids definitely right now as opposed to maybe in the future.

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