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Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? (nytimes.com)
Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built. An anonymous reader shares a report: At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech start-ups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere. That's a change from the past, when Silicon Valley workers typically developed products with little questioning about the social costs. It is also a sign of how some tech companies, which grew by serving consumers and businesses, are expanding more into government work. And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
"You can think you're building technology for one purpose, and then you find out it's really twisted," said Laura Nolan, 38, a senior software engineer who resigned from Google in June over the company's involvement in Project Maven, an effort to build artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense that could be used to target drone strikes. All of this has led to growing tensions between tech employees and managers. In recent months, workers at Google, Microsoft and Amazon have signed petitions and protested to executives over how some of the technology they helped create is being used. At smaller companies, engineers have begun asking more questions about ethics.
things change....
Why now?
Why not before.
They have been doing evil shit for a long while now.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Let me fix that for you. "A small portion of the workforce of tech companies are concerned that the choices their employers are making goes counter to their personal political stance, and demand that their personal stance should dictate the company stance." There fixed.
At some point if you disagree with the way your employer does business, either:
1) get involved in business leadership to change the path
2) go work somewhere that matches your personal believes more closely
3) leave your politics at home and do the best job you can for what you were hired to make
A bit late to the party, aren't we? I mean -- overall "Better late than never" still rings true, but it's hard to ignore the fact that tech titans have been doing things that are unethical in different ways for quite a while.
Amazon has been gobbling up larger chunks of the economy for a decade, and will likely face a breakup at some point.
Facebook ran unethical (no explicit consent) experiments in 2012 seeing who they could persuade to vote and who they couldn't.
Google had a "collect first, ask later" data policy, and their initial maps datasets were picked up by wardriving around the US storing everyone's open WiFi network data and taking photographs long before that was an accepted data-gathering norm.
Twitter kickbans whomever they like, which is fine, but makes a showing of it being an open discussion forum for international politics and routinely "just happens" to silence folks that don't match the political whims of the Bay.
Everyone else has been making Skinner boxes for a decade and a half, trying to find any way to keep folks more and more addicted to their specific forms of entertainment, in a way far more insidious than the tobacco industry ever did.
Apple... is doing basically okay.
I'm glad people are waking up to the power of the tech. It shouldn't have had to take Chinese dissident crackdowns to do it. And GPLv3+No-Military-Use-Because-I-Don't-Like-Your-View-On-SSM isn't the answer.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
This is about as genuine as when the ECO vigilantes would all pile into their Hummer to go protest some oil related activity and leave the place trashed.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We just need a way of doing that isn't as outdated at what the legal and medical professions have. We don't want a protection racket or something the enshrines the outdated education model requiring degrees but we do need something to fall back on.
Are the first to die a slow and painful death due to the fact that a true enemy of the state exploits the hole/vulnerability that this tech would have closed to kill citizens in mass.
Be it biological, cyber, or armed conflict. I hope they are the first to go
We know these kind of things happen every day as executives hunt the Almighty Dollar. This is just a high-profile example of it happening, obviously. However, it is good to hear students are determined to practice ethical business. The advanced students will have their pick of the litter when it comes to jobs, and they will be highly desired wherever they go, and with enough transparency they'll be allowed to choose the nature of their projects. It's the average and less-than-average programmers that will accept the jobs with slighter shades of gray applied to them as they work a bit harder to find stability in the workplace. We can only assume that these kind of projects will have higher costs associated to them, and the final product will not reach its full potential. It's the circle of life
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
You're building it for that fat six-figure paycheck. There's your answer. Next!
It's OK to use facial recognition as a convenient way to unlock your phone, but not to track you when you walk down the street.
It's OK to use facial recognition as a way to find friends by the pictures they post, but not to track your known associates in defying the government.
The tech is the same, just who uses it. If you want to object to selling it to China, why didn't you object to doing it for InstaFaceTwits?
When i was truck driving, i didnt get to pick & choose who i delivered loads for. The company said "go here & move that trailer to Saskatoon" and off you went.
When i was a short order cook, i didnt get to pick & choose who i made pancakes or fried chicken for... i didnt get to bitch when they went & put ketchup on the steaks. The job was cook things, so i cooked things.
I have had jobs in the past where i disagreed with the people i worked for and disliked them on a personal level... i left those jobs for those very reasons & went & found another more palatable job elsewhere.
And the shift coincides with concerns in Silicon Valley about the Trump administration's policies and the larger role of technology in government.
While one would hope that they would be concerned no matter who's in office, it doesn't appear to be the case. It's just like the "Presidential Alert" that went out last week. Even though it was something started under the Obama administration, people were suing simply because it was Trump doing it. Would they be sharing their concerns if Hillary Clinton was president right now? People need to realize that it doesn't matter if it's your person or not who is in power, because eventually it's going to be someone who's not your person. Can you trust they aren't going to misuse your technology?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
My friend was working on what he thought was a video game audio/video sharing app, I'm not a gamer but I know there are several apps now that side by side video of you playing and what's going on in the game. Turns out it was really cam-girl software.
Be good little Nazi soldiers and know you'll never face a tribunal for just following orders.
I miss the days when invoking Godwin's law got you modded down rather than up. What the hell happened to Slashdot?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Most of what people do is useless. Myself I work in electronics hardware, I create next year's landfill.
Mostly random stuff.
This will never get modded high enough. They understand that by working for a company, that company gets to decide how their labor is applied right?
Corporations in general have a very easy answer to people who grow morals once they start receiving that wonderful paycheck. It usually involves removing that paycheck. People can go into the whole "we need more people that stand up for good!", but in reality if you want to pull something like this you stand a good chance of not being hired in that particular field again. If you've got the financial means to not have to worry about a paycheck, then more power to you.
The same software can be used for many different applications. Do you stop working on Kafka because some spy agencies use it in their big data stack?
We were invaded by the seven digit snowflakes. If you actually do remember, you must have updated your ID.
Just another day in Paradise
Shut the hell up is what happened. /sarcasm*
* Remember when we didn't need to use "/sarcasm" at the end of our posts? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
#DeleteFacebook
I can get that "fat six-figure paycheck" at a few thousand companies. So now I can be picky and work on things I believe in, as can most developers.
Just another day in Paradise
People made up emotionally satisfying stories and decided to believe them. It's not Slashdot, it's everywhere. Reality doesn't play any more because it's not dramatic enough for bored narcissists.
As a kid (just like any kid) I asked why. Why is the sky blue. Why is water wet.
I never stopped asking that question. The reason has changed. At work I ask it, so I can figure out a way to make it easier for them AND for me.
For reporting it is nice to know if they want to increase or decrease FTE count. That way I can dig up extra information that can come in handy and/or present the same numbers in a different way.
For a website it is good to know if they want more or less contacts. Having asked these questions a lot, they will know to expect them and understand that answering them will be benefitial for both.
Now if you only look at what was asked and do only that, you will not only create a "do as I expect, not as I say" mentelaty, you will have no say in the matter and need to clean up a lot of shit afterwards.
Do if you start asking the question 'why' now, you are several decades to late.
And yes, more than once I have save the company a shitload of money. Also: not all companies work that way. Draw yoru own conclusions in that case.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Hmmm... actually, isn't the labor market tightening?
The most reliable indicator of the labor market that I've found in Silicon Valley is discarded lottery scratchers in the parking lot of convenience stores. After the Great Recession was officially over, I've picked up hundreds of discarded scratchers to enter into the Second Chance drawing. For the last several years I've been able to find a half-dozen discarded scratchers each month. I haven't found any discarded scratchers in the last six months. People are too busy working to play lotto scratchers.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
It's OK to use facial recognition as a convenient way to unlock your phone, but not to track you when you walk down the street.
It's OK to use facial recognition as a way to find friends by the pictures they post, but not to track your known associates in defying the government.
The tech is the same, just who uses it. If you want to object to selling it to China, why didn't you object to doing it for InstaFaceTwits?
I think that's kind of the point - it DOES matter what it is being used for. Granted, you can't control how it's used after it's been created, but if you are developing something like facial recognition you KNOW it will be used for nefarious reasons at some point.
There are all kinds of things like this that I refuse to use - facial recognition, fingerprint readers, facebook, smart devices that monitor you (Echo, fitbit, etc.) My location on my phone is turned off, unless I need to use it. Webcams are unplugged when not in use. I'm not naive enough to think that I am still not being tracked by Google et al because we do live in the digital age. But I am not about just to give up all information about myself freely for goofy convenience.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What, you don't think your owned by the corporation you work for? you're delusional
And I'm dead fucking serious.. Nobody makes decisions at a business but the guy who's name is over the door. Workers are owned, any ideas they have at the office belong the corporation. It's really your choice - if you don't like the direction a company is doing, or what it's doing with your work, leave. That's really the only choice you have.
You can start your own company, you can work somewhere else or you can shutthefuckup. Some day when your noble-ism gets you unemployed, you've got a family to take care of and a roof to put over your head you'll remove your cranium from your rectum and realize you just need to work. Till then, just take the advice of those who've been there before.
you think I'm extreme... try telling your employer you disagree with what their doing and you won't do the job for which you were hired...hope you like unemployment.
view point is irrelevant. do what your told self righteous millennial.
When you find out that your project is being used for evil, use it to make popcorn.
Fight Spammers!
While we certainly need freedom and protection against powerful interests, we also need technologies for offensive and defensive, including true military, use.
Russia, China, and various others exist that are not our friends. The consistently seek advantageous against us. We cannot pretend that we are not in a game of conquest when others around us most certainly are. That is just a fact.
You canâ(TM)t get anywhere near as fat a paycheck outside just a handful of companies like Google, FB, Netflix and MS/Amazon, but the latter two only pay well if youâ(TM)re very senior (director and up). Between a $100k pay bump and doing something ethnically dubious, 99.999% of people will pick the former. Thatâ(TM)s why during each of the ethics shitstorms only a handful employees depart, and half of those were on their way out anyway.
Rewrote the sentence ruined the meaning: should be âoebetween $100k pay bump and NOT doing something ethically dubiousâ.
I never did work on missile tech etc. during the cold water. But I knew people who did and I'm almost old enough to have done this. I don't think it's possible to convey the mood of the time. After the near TEOTWAWKI due to the Cuban missile crisis, nobody really knew whether ICBM war was going to happen or not (It still may, who knows?). The idea was that a good deterrent was something that kept the peace. Who knows? We're still here, maybe it did.
I don't know where the hell you're looking, but $100k developer jobs are a dime a dozen. I'm a software hiring manager. If you can't find more than just Google, FB, Netflix and Amazon, you're not looking.
Just another day in Paradise
Hey it's fine if you atone by retiring at 35 to do some bullshit charity work, in between yoga classes and wheatgrass smoothies!
Politics turned ugly(er) and Godwin himself called a moratorium on Godwin's law since the Nazi comparisons were increasingly valid.
Why?
Because the outraged will end up building something even worse - being blinded by their outrage.
Because those who do actually care will be replaced by someone who doesn't - one of the purposes of outsourcing/H1B.
Is there no hope? Probably not - the world has reached critical mass of evil + idiots.
I miss the days when invoking Godwin's law got you modded down rather than up. What the hell happened to Slashdot?
Why do you ask a question like this? You know this answer, you seem to just be playing dumb: Nazis happened. Not figurative Nazis, actual Nazis wearing swastikas and talking about racial purity.
Godwin's law is a problem insofar as it represents people abandoning reasonable, proportionate discourse and invoking the most extreme thing that they can. Godwin's law is not a problem when you're talking about Nazis. Discussions about politics in the US have reached that point.
$100k yes, $300-500k -- not so much. That's how much people are making at Google.
Don't worry, the fed is working on screwing up the economy to loosen the labor market to "cool down" the economy. One thing I hoped was that Trump would light into the federal reserve. He has been issuing his opinion which is more than I can say for the last few weak, ignorant presidents. Listening to the statementsfrom fed heads about why and when they are going to mess with interest rates to put people out of work is like talking with that IT guy that has all the passwords and has been running the systems for ten years by himself. Lots of words that lead people to get overwhelmed by the complexity of thier statement so that people relinquish authorityto them. All they spew is crap.