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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Cool, then strike.
I was working at a company at one point that got a contract to build something I viewed equivalent to malware. Immediately I brought it up to several higher-ups that this was not something I was willing to do. One of them brought up the argument "If we don't do it someone else will."
This mentality scares the shit out of me, but it explains a lot of horrible things in the industry.
Believing in that mentality is worse than the reality of the situation. At least if you say no there's a chance it doesn't happen or it gets passed to someone worse than you. If you say yes then not only are you complicit, you are actively enforcing that gloomy mentality for other engineers. Just say no.
It‘s exactly this dangerous mindset that‘s riding us in some AI service hellhole. Too many super talented developers have told themselves exactly that instead of standing up for their principles or even allowing themselves to have principles in the first place.
Only recently have they started leaving companies like OpenAI and taking a stance because they‘re actually seeing what their creation is used for and with how little care for human life it‘s been handled.
Of course many critics knew this was headed towards military contracts and complete Enshittification. It was plain to see OpenAI founders aren‘t the good guys but „someone else would do it anyway“ kept the underlings happy. This deterministic fallacy is also why anyone still works for Meta or Google. It‘s a really lazy excuse.
Is this true though? From my understanding, Altman was able to overrule the board largely because the employees (especially the one who had been with the company for more than 1-2 years) were worried about their stock options.
I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of the OpenAI team are ghouls just like Altman, that fundamentally lack humanity (incapable of honesty, inability to tell right from wrong, incapable of empathy).
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean this in the Hollywood sense, like the evil antagonists in say star wars, I am sure they come off as "normal" during a casual conversation. I am referring to going deeper and asking subtle questions referring to matters of ethics and self-enrichment in an off the record environment. They will always come up with some excuse to justify their greed as being "for the betterment of humanity" or some other comical word salad.
You know I‘m worried you might be exactly on point with this assumption. I still give some of them the benefit of doubt because humans can „reason“ themselves into pretty dangerous things by appealing to authority and the like. Doesn‘t make all of them evil but sure as hell way too gullible for the field they‘re working in.
Happy cake day!
One thing I like to tell people with that attitude is: whatever someone does, there’s always someone else who will see it as an example and challenge to do it “better”. Do you want to be the company that started that chain? Are you prepared to compete in that race?
For something borderline malware, someone will take your lead and make it “better malware”. If you are not prepared to respond in kind, then why did you even go there? If you’re not ready to be known as the top of the line malware creator, why start the product line?
It is unfortunately one of the darker aspects of the hyper-growth-focused tech and engineering is the often highly mercenary/transactional nature of many people in the field. Like, there’s a reason Facebook pays engineers 250-400k or more. Sure, the work can be difficult, but most of the time it’s not that difficult. They’re paying people that much so that they ignore their morals, shut the fuck up, and just take the paycheck and do the work that is helping to destroy society.
It’s immensely distressing to me as a software engineer. I am fully aware that my morality is limiting my earning potential, and that makes me kinda furious - not so much at myself, but that our economic system is set up in such a way that that’s not only possible, but optimal (in terms of earning a nice paycheck and being able to retire somewhat early).
I doubt they're unionized. A strike without a union is just refusing to do your job.
That's what it is with a union too, it's just more organized. You can strike without a union, it's just a lot harder to organize and the stakes are way higher.
And with a union, you have legal protection. Individually, you don't.
Not necessarily. Private unions exist and don't have legal protection.
I've never heard of private unions, so I googled. Sounds like it's just a union at a private company? That's probably the vast majority of unions. And yes, they have protection under the NLRA.
You're right! I didn't realize individual workers and informal unions had a right to strike.
But their protections are a lot more limited than public unions, like the teachers or police unions. If you're striking for better pay or conditions, it seems you can be replaced and, depending on circumstances, fired without legal repercussions, whereas if it's for unfair labor practices, you have more protections.
But you do have a lot more legal protections than I thought, so that's good to know.
in general, assume any conpany where a good bulk of the employees are software engineers to not be unionized. many programmers tend to make significantly more constantly jumping companies, hence the turnover rate and not needing to unionize. Its also kinda ingrained in the hiring structure too as many of the large conpanies contract developers and not hire them outright.
In an ideal world, yes. But most people aren't willing to lose their jobs and healthcare, potentially putting their family's financial situation in dire straits, over protesting this.
Don't blame the workers. Blame the executives.
Not blaming anyone, just saying words don't mean a lot.
That's fair. The way I look at it is that executives curb what the employees actually believe and want to work on. I saw this at a petrochemical company that was part of a big oil company. Everyone was excited about sustainability projects and cutting emissions and renewable technology. The execs just didn't give a shit and continued to push for oil and drilling. If workplaces were democracies, we'd see so much more wonderful things.
Maybe. We might also see more companies going under or not having enough funding to actually innovate.
What seems to work best is a medium-sized business run by a fair, passionate individual who sets the direction of the company. Something like Valve, or successful indie game devs. If my company were a democracy, our revenue would likely plummet because we'd just vote for whatever we wanted to work on, not what actually sells.
I think there's a lot to criticize about publicly traded companies, but good execs do have value. Maybe democratic companies can work well in some areas, but I think it's a case-by-case thing.
I think there's something to be said for medium sized companies. I work for one that's trying to grow and become much larger, but it's decidedly not big. Our execs though actually seem like pretty cool people, and the CEO seems to be a legitimately good person. He's generally been open and honest, and he's told stories that make me think he does actually value employees as people.
He was talking about gay rights and the value of diversity during our weekly company forum the other day, and I asked him about our company's support for DEI given the political pressure from conservatives to abandon it. He said he didn't give a damn about them, and doing the right thing was more important. I don't agree with everything he's done -- we've had layoffs, and morale isn't great, and we're totally broke -- but I respect that he actually seems to mean what he says. And even when we had layoffs, executives and management weren't safe either.
I think a lot of what it comes down to is the genuineness of leadership and how closely tied they are to rank and file employees. That's easier at small and medium companies. Large companies also tend to attract greedy robber barons.
Tactical nuke incoming