Slashdot Mirror
How Do Developers Handle Moral Dilemmas?
DwightFagen asks: "I'm curious to know how developers in the Slashdot community handle situations in which they are given a project that rubs against their moral borders. I was recently hired as a Flash developer for a design and development company and am just beginning my second project. This particular assignment is to build the video portion of an online magazine. This magazine deals with various topics and is by no means a pornographic site (although some content may border on that), but it seems one of its key tenets is to be untethered by social moral values. Though I do not believe such things should in any way be censored or banned from the internet, I do not wish to actively support something I believe to be an exploitation of human beings. What would you in the Slashdot community do in such a situation? Have any of you dealt with something like this before?"
"For the sake of clarity, I'd like to mention that I'm all for the freedom of expression on the internet and that I do not in any way judge people based on the media they choose to consume.
If this were a clear cut case of pornography, my choice would be simple; but that is not the case. I do still hold myself to certain standards and believe in the value of integrity and I would also like to do work that my family and friends can be proud of (or at least work that I could show them). However, I would also like to keep my job and would not want to put my small company of very nice people in a difficult position (as the deadline is not so far off)."
If this were a clear cut case of pornography, my choice would be simple; but that is not the case. I do still hold myself to certain standards and believe in the value of integrity and I would also like to do work that my family and friends can be proud of (or at least work that I could show them). However, I would also like to keep my job and would not want to put my small company of very nice people in a difficult position (as the deadline is not so far off)."
If you are uncomfortable with the work you are being required to do, state so clearly to your boss and request that you not be placed on this project. Talk it through with your boss and see what can be done. If you feel strongly enough about it, find another job where such issues are not likely to arise.
I think by choosing the career of a Flash designer you have already proven yourself morally bankrupt. I bet you also produce "Best Viewed with Internet Explorer" sites.
PS: Links to the boobies plz!
like, ya know, freedom and human rights and such, instead of "ooh, boobs!" We tend to deal with it by doing more good than harm, but in this industry it aint really possible to not also do harm (unless you wanna end up like RMS).
Sucks, but its so.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Then design the site such that it makes a mockery of what it purports to represent.
Behold: http://newbirth.org/
Be glad you still have a job in that type of position. What you're doing is something that an H-1B (Foreign-born worker) could do, probably for less than you. But anyway, you're probably not making much if all your job is is Flash development. So, frankly, you should be grateful that you're getting to stay in that line of work. :/ Not to say the pay sucks, but beggars can't be choosers, especially when you've got some major competition coming in from overseas (Let's thank the U.S. Congress for that.)
I cannot possibly imagine what they want you to work on.
Apparently they are not breaking laws of any kind, so what really is the problem?
Is your morale really that much tighter than the rules imposed on you by one of the tightest legal systems in the world?
And exploitation? What?
All people involved in whatever you are doing, have made their own choise whether to participate or not. And they probably even get paid for it. Don't impose your values on everyone. If the rest is okay with what is happening, why can't you simply accept it?
I do not wish to actively support something I believe to be an exploitation of human beings.
Unfortunately for the logic based sector of society, they lack basic skills in value judgements.
Value judgements have three outcomes (unlike logic's two), they are "greater than", "less than", and "equal to".
Assign a weight to you're self-appointed moral. Call that x. Now, assign a value to having a job. Call that y.
1) x > y
2) x < y
3) x = y
1) If x > y, quit. Pure and simple.
2) If x < y, deal with it. We can't have everything.
3) If x = y, keep the status quo. Don't accept a new job of this, but keep any current ones.
With practice these jusdgements become easier (and more refined), and so does assigning values. But, unlike logic, these are not objective facts agreed upon by all logical people, these are subjective values that change by the person. And rightly so.
Oh yeah, let me be the first to welcome your to the real world. It takes a little trying, but i think you'll like it here. You've made a good first step.
Have you read my journal today?
Simple: have no morals.
Due to a traumatic event I witnessed as a child, I promised myself always to follow my moral principles. This turned out to be a surprisingly good strategy in all situations of my life. One thing however is absolutely essential: that you question those moral principles. They might be wrong. Some of them are wrong. Find them, weed them out.
I realize it's probably against your religion to read these two philosophers, but I encourage you to sneak a peek while your God isn't paying attention.
You can't live by axioms alone. Thou shalt not bear false witness, sayeth God. But would you then turn Anne Frank over to the authorities when the Gestapo comes knocking? Thou shalt keep the Sabbath. A hungry baby knows nothing of why you won't buy milk on Saturday.
Sartre gets to the heart of the axiom problem. There are simply too many variables to declare some certain action (a categorical imperative) to be the Right Thing. You eventually get to the point where you are now, confused about how to proceed.
Maybe there isn't anything inherently good or evil. That's Nietzche's point. Blessed are the meek, we hear. But aren't they simply damned in this lifetime? Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness. To what end? Strength, pride, and a burning desire to do something are the hallmarks of Nietzche's 'Superman'.
You sit here twiddling your thumbs hoping that someone will bust down your morals and help you see the light. That's sadly pathetic. If you don't want to do the job because you find it disagreeable, then don't do it. If you think you can live with yourself and your misgivings, then do it. Asking others for help in this situation only makes us culpable when you end up violating your own morals and feel guilty about it. I'm not sure we want to be your serpent to your Eve.
Sell Fish
I love humanity, it is people I hate
and quit.
Seriously. If you're not going to stand up for your beliefs, why bother having them?
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
In related news, 18 out of 12 slashcode developers believe the fundamental axioms of mathematics are oppressive and immoral.
My gut reaction is one of, "Shut up, suck it up, and do the job. Morals have no business in the workplace. You are a paid employee/droid that is given a task to complete. So do it. Have your morals on your time not the company's."
On the other hand, when I found myself in a moral dilemma seeing one account executive stealing supplies, software, and property from the company, an account supervisor rigging a winning spot in a contest for her niece that our company ran for a large restaurant chain, I made the choice to stand up and speak out. While they thanked me for speaking up, and "looked into the matter", it became clear that I wasted my breath.
That is until I was "downsized", and a couple of months later so was the thief. The account supervisor got her hands slapped and was taken off that account.
So it's really your choice. For me, I'd love to go back and tell myself to STFU and keep my head down.
That's my two cents.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Well, for those of us who care about REAL morals like, ya know, freedom and human rights and such, instead of "ooh, boobs!"
There are worse things than nudity, obviously. Including twits who've boiled a fairly nuanced area worthy of concern down to a false dichotomy featuring a vague glittering good and a gross oversimplification.
The OP took some care to show that he doesn't expect everyone else to share his particular standards and he's willing to respect the rights of others to produce and publish things he doesn't want to be involved in. His question isn't about whether YOU think porn is good or evil, it isn't about whether YOU think it's more important to write letters for Amnesty International or keep adult vids out of the hands of local kids. His question is about how to handle things when your employer wants you to participate in a project that crosses whatever your ethical boundaries may be. Maybe that's making a porn directory, maybe it's writing marketing copy for Exxon. If you want to contribute to the discussion, stepping up the ladder of abstraction and providing some advice on grappling with the situation would be a better alternative to criticizing the OP's or anyone else's particular moral values.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Contractual: you must honor commitments. If you've promised God to pray five times a day, if you're promised your wife to stay with her, then those are moral obligations. On this theory, ask whether you've promised to work on the project yet.
Textual: you follow what your holy book says. There has just got to be some Bible verse against Flash.
Compassionate: you ask whether people are hurt or helped by your actions. Will the company be better off? The customer? The customer's customers? Start thinking about those last and you have a reason not to work on tobacco ads, for example.
Reciprocal: you follow the Golden Rule. What would you hope for if you were one of the parties affected by your decision?
Foreseeable consequences: what will follow from your actions?
Arbitrary crap: you grew up around people who thought something was immoral, like say interracial marriage, and you've never checked the idea against any kind of principle. This is the most common approach.
Whatever standard you use, there has to be a set of priorities to go with it. You're using the job to support your family. You'd have to quit if the place were kidnapping the homeless and turning them into Soylent Green, but for much else you have to balance against your family's well being. You have talked this over with your wife??
If it is easy for you to find work at similar compensation levels that do not compromise your morals there is no reason for you to continue to do this work. They are your morals and you are more than welcome to them so long as you are not forcing them on others. If you are concerned about the well being of your co-workers simply offer to help transition to the new person. Who knows, maybe other people in your company involved in the project have similar moral objections but are afraid to speak out. If leaving this place of employment is not a problem, go ahead and speak your mind in a calm, reasonable matter. But bear in mind there is not legal protection for employment based on morals when no laws matters prohibit such activities. Nor should you expect your company & coworkers to bend down to the lowest common denominator of the most stringent set of morals in the company.
However, if you don't think that you can find equitable work else where and are not willing to take a cut in pay, I strongly suggest you do what the rest of us do and play ball until such a time comes when you can afford to move on.
I myself have been in a similar situation to you (though not related to pornography), the conclusion i came up with is...
If your a professional you wont let your beliefs get in the way of your work.
I get into programming about 20 years ago, i love programming, i expect to always have a project on the go (and maybe one day i will finish one), but its taken me this long to understand that i dont want to be a professional programmer.
Professionalism means that you have to be prepared to compromise your own goals so the teams goals are achieved.
Im way too passionate about programming to be a professional, i hate it when im expected to "finish" a project and move on, to have to give up on all the ideas i have floating around in my head... i care about quality.
I now consider myself to be a craftsman, and i suspect a lot of open source programmers are this way inclined.
If open source was about professionalism, programmers wouldnt care about peer review, they wouldnt argue about coding style, or languages, they would just care about adding the next feature.
A craftsman/artist wants perfection, a professional just wants to finish...
Your first mistake was taking a job that would put you in this position. For future reference, I suggest telling prospective employers that you have personal reasons for not working on so-called "adult-oriented" content like this. You need to say this up front or you will end up surprising them (and not in a good way) when it comes up later. Admittedly, if you say this in a job interview, you are likely to lose some possible opportunities, but your convictions are nothing more than vapor if you don't actually stand by them.
Oh, the other thing about convictions: if you are plagued with regret after you make a decision based on your convictions, there is a chance that they weren't really convictions after all, but simply some kind of moral costume you put on to help yourself feel better. Test and refine your convictions as time passes, but don't regret them: you have to believe them fully.
I was recently offered more than five times my current hourly rate to be the lead developer on a big Flash and video-intensive web site for a new casino. I have moral objections to casinos, so I turned it down. The money would have been very handy, but I still have to live with my own conscience. I'm sure someone else has picked up the job. I have zero regrets about my decision. I simply refuse to be associated with casinos and all the social problems they lead to (dramatically increased bankruptcy rates, violent crime, auto thefts, larceny, substance abuse, suicide rates, etc.).
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
at least you don't find abandoned ponies at the pound.
... harder to identify. Wait until feeding time.
Sure you do, it's just that they're a bit
We live, as we dream -- alone....
But while we're discussing Nietzsche, why not read his Genealology of Morals:
Why isn't the OP's tolerance enough, why is acceptance important, espesially from someone you don't know? And to paraphrase the GP, I would also like to know where the hell this "borg instinct" in humans came from? (We all have it, I'm not picking on you...,ok, I am a little bit. :)
The irony is that (so far) the "borg instinct" has resulted in a system where after 10,000yrs we cannot even agree to stop throwing high tech rocks at each other.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Oh, fucking please. He didn't say he owns the same company that he quit from. And he certainly didn't say he was swiping computer parts.
So whatever "it's good to not have morals" crusade you're on, I'm sure you can find less lame ways to support it than baseless "selling old computer parts you swipe from work doesn't really qualify as a business" accusations.
Maybe you just really don't have morals. Good for you. By all means, stick to that, then. But some of us do and still have a good job anyway. Some of us did leave jobs we didn't like (for ethical or other reasons)... and just found a better job instead. Go figure. Not all jobs require being a spineless minion to the biggest sociopath available.
In fact, sometimes a better job than the insecurity/denial guys trying to rationalize their taking shit and being used.See, the funny thing is, the PHB's who can operate an unethical business, usually don't show much more empathy to their employees either.
And _especially_ if your reason is "but I won't find another job if I quit", I'd strongly advise you to rethink and reevaluate it all again. Don't tell me whether it was true or not, tell it to yourself in the mirror. Do you actually believe it? Really? Again, don't tell me, tell it to yourself.
Because in all cases I've seen, it wasn't true. It was just a case of a sociopath PHB keeping a _good_ employee in line by crushing their self-esteem and sense of security.
So was it your own idea, or did someone (directly or indirectly) give you an idea along the lines of, "If you quit working for me, you'll never find another job at your age / in this economy / whatever"? Because if it was someone else, rest assured that it was a lie. The kind who'd keep you in line with that kind of a lie, would replace you at the drop of a hat, if they actually thought there are better people than you available cheaper in the unemployed pool. If you actually were too expensive / old / unskilled / unable to learn / whatever for the job, then the same kind of boss would have already replaced you long ago. (And it would be only business, so don't take it as necessarily criticizing them.) Rest assured that all the "be thankful to me that you have a job at all" BS is just a lie to keep you too scared to grow a spine or a pair of balls. They're _not_ doing you a favour, they're only doing themselves a favour with that lie.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Like many others here, I see no harm in a bared breast, but there are a LOT of groups/religions that INSIST on various moral standards for their followers. Just because *I* don't: wear a burqa/handle snakes/speak in tongues/want porn banned/avoid animal products doesn't mean that somehow I've the right to pass judgement on those who do. I'm firmly convinced this is one of humankind's biggest follies: Paying FAR too much attention to a few minor differences, while ignoring our myriad similarities.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
What is inherently bad about alcohol?
I do agree that excessive alcohol usage is bad, but doesnt excessive *anything* lead to very bad things?
I know many Christians who think alcohol is the "demon drink", so Im not attacking Islam... just all the religions that have this belief.