The only thing worse than an echo chamber is letting a self-created bad idea fester in the head.
I came to the conclusion a few months ago that software developers and coders who worked at Meta, Google, Amazon, etc are as culprit as their CEOs and the company itself. I will lay down my points below, but I understand that this might be a logical extreme of my distaste for these corporations.
Here’s my rationale:
- Actions of the company they serve: The corporations they serve actively disenfranchise users, track them, sell their private / personal information to unscrupulous parties without any care on how it affects the person, or the society. They thrive on engagement rather than content. They have “commodified” the fundamental right to privacy. This has real world implications that has directly resulted in the spread of misinformation, political unrest, threatened elections, riots, and deaths of thousands of people.
- Awareness of the consequences: By virtue of their position, these are people with the capacity to read, and think for themselves. There are news articles: across the political spectrum in all major news sites, that report how the platform/ company they serve negatively affects society. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica fiasco, Snowden’s expose, etc are credible and well documented examples that even non-tech people are aware. Yet they choose to ignore all this, and continue working / seek to join these companies.
- Cowardice: It is often wrapped in the garb of “self-interest”, but they do not raise their voice when they know that the software and platform they’re told to develop is going to be used to spy on their brethren. They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.
For a large chunk of my career, I worked in aerospace and ‘defense’ machining. Made all kinds parts for all kinds of weapons, it was really cool! Murica! As I got older, I lost my religion, I lost the far right brainwashing I was raised with.
My hands were making weapons that the US government was often selling to other countries. My hands were making weapons to kill various groups of brown people all over the world. It really began to bother me.
I no longer make things to kill people.
Yes, you are culpable for the effects of what you produce in your profession. A thinking person should consider the effects of their work.
Being poor never helps. Quiet quit / be overemployed
problem here is you want to keep learning and growing which has the unfortunate consequence of improving the software.
Improve yours, not theirs.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Employees make a choice to work there and therefore choose to be part of that problem.
I generally agree but not everyone can choose where they work. For many people, the choice is starving on the street or work for Evil Corp.
No one who qualifies to work for Evil Corp is going to fucking starve on the street if they decide to look for work elsewhere instead.
Re 1: People keep lumping Google with Amazon and Meta, but Google does not sell your private data and alerts you if it finds out the government to accessed your data. People keep assuming that because the general tech community sells data that Google does it too, but check their privacy policy or just ask anyone who’s worked there. They don’t.
User data at Google is locked up tighter than fort knox. That’s why the Snowden leak was such a huge deal, because the NSA was taking advantage of a security flaw that Google didn’t know it had to scrape user data. Google patched it immediately after they found out.
Amazon, Meta, and Uber, are much less scrupulous.
If by “when asked” you mean “given a search warrant with very clear evidence that this man had stolen a car”, then… Yes? I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here.
The ex-boyfriend had signed into the guy’s phone. It’s not like the police just cast a wide net and randomly got his data.
This was maybe a good point to make back during the pandemic when programmers actually had good job opportunities and could find somewhere else. Nowadays you will struggle to find a job as a programmer unless you have lots of experience. So people have to take any job they can get, whether they like it or not. Some people working in this field have gotten themselves into financial trouble doing things like buying houses based on their salary and then getting fired and only having lower paying positions available.
