7 ms·

The author seems like a nice guy, but perhaps a bit naive regarding the efforts big tech companies go to to crush employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-

The author seems like a nice guy, but perhaps a bit naive regarding the efforts big tech companies go to to crush employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...). They appear to be a staff level engineer at a big tech company - I don't know how much money they make, but I suspect it's an ungodly amount. The organisation he works for is implicated in surveillance, monopoly exploitation, and current military action involving particularly unpopular wars. No one forced him into this role - he could have made less money elsewhere but decided not to. He has decided to be a cog in a larger, poorly functioning machine, and is handsomely rewarded for it. This sacrifice is, for many, a worthwhile trade. If you don't want to engage with the moral ramifications of your profession, you are generally socially allowed to do so, provided the profession is above board. Unfortunately, you cannot then write a post trying to defend your position, saying that what I do is good, actually, meanwhile cashing your high 6-7 figure check. This is incoherent. It is financially profitable to be a political actor within a decaying monopolist apparatus, but I don't need to accept that it's also a pathway to a well-lived life.

conception 9mo ago
Evergreen: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
- bdangubic 9mo ago
  except they do understand it of course but choose not to accept it :)
stanfordkid 9mo ago
The dude works for GitHub. I don’t doubt there is some rotten code on there, but what you’re saying seems like a stretch and exactly what he’s describing.
- rrdharan 9mo ago
  GitHub is owned by Microsoft which covers most of what GP is alluding to…
- makeitdouble 9mo ago
  It's been almost 8 years now since the Microsoft acquisition, should it still be seen as an independent culture ?
  - stavros 9mo ago
    Jesus, what is up with time? I thought this was max two years ago, and the "8" was unpleasantly surprising to read.
    - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
      I would have guessed covid was earlier, at least. Getting older is worse than travelling near light speed dammmit.
- rainonmoon 9mo ago
  Microsoft is currently a target of BDS, which calls it "perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza." This isn't about some hobbyist's wonky code. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft
- enraged_camel 9mo ago
  Yeah, that was bizarre to read. I thought “wait, Sean works for Palantir?!”
ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
I chose to spend most of my career at a company that did stuff I found morally acceptable (inspiring, even). I made probably half what I could have made at places that were more dodgy. I have found that mentioning that, elicits scorn and derision from many in tech. Eh. Whatevs. I'm OK with it (but it appears a lot of others aren't, which mystifies me).
- the_cat_kittles 9mo ago
  its because it hurts peoples feelings to confront the truth
- shikshake 9mo ago
  Your comment really resonates with me, I’m in a similar position though much more junior. My colleagues in tech can’t fathom that I actively choose to stay where I am and make 50% of their salary. I’ve found talking about ethics and moral responsibility with people working in big tech is futile and frustrating. Almost everyone takes it as a personal attack though I never hold anyone else to my moral standards.
  - strken 9mo ago
    Is that surprising? Big tech selects for people with few ties to a real life community (because they're willing to move to the Bay Area/NY/Seattle/etc.), no particular moral objections to the work, and enough brainpower to rationalise anything. Also, religion and philosophy are alike in that some people have a rich inner life that they are not willing to share with most of the world. Your acquaintance who works for a defence contractor is not going to explain why he believes propping up the Pax Americana (or helping ICE deport migrants, or working for a social media company, or any other example of something you don't like) is morally right unless he feels safe in doing so.
- nmfisher 9mo ago
  For what it's worth, I personally have a lot of respect for people who do this (or at the very least, people who forego higher salaries to avoid working for companies they find morally objectionable).
hahahacorn 9mo ago
Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting. I’m glad for the antitrust litigation. It’s very obvious that this was a collusion effort that was self serving to each party involved, as a means of overcoming a negative (for them) prisoners dilemma type situation. The fact that it depressed wage growth was a welcomed side effect. But framing that as the intended outcome as a way of discrediting original author is telling. I don’t know if you’ve understood corporations to be rather simple profit seeking entities, whose behavior can be modeled and regulated to ideal societal outcomes accordingly. What military action is GitHub involved with.
- voxl 9mo ago
  Perceiving corpos as "simple profit seeking entities" is some of the most naive Milton Friedman crap. Corporations operate as an amalgamation of the desires of a group of powerful enough influencers, of which your rank and file investor is NOT making a meaningful contribution. Milton Friedman has done more harm to capitalism than Marx has done to socialism.
  - hahahacorn 9mo ago
    Friedman abstracted away feedback loops between corpos and the social/regulatory environment they operate in. We agree that that is beyond fucking useless. I didn’t make that same naive assumption when describing corpos as simple profit seeking entities, you just misunderstood what I was saying.
- swiftcoder 9mo ago
  > Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting. How exactly would you frame major corporations colluding to suppress wages? > What military action is GitHub involved with. GitHub has been part of Microsoft for the better part of a decade now, and Microsoft is pretty broadly involved with the military (across a wide swathe of countries)
therobots927 9mo ago
I couldn’t agree more. I also work in tech but I’m incredibly cynical which makes it difficult to see the authors post as anything but a combination of self promotion / self soothing.
asadotzler 9mo ago
I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley, 100% of it working on making OSS happen, and 90% of it for a non-profit, while my peers from the early days almost all moved on to Big Tech by 2005-2010, most for 2x+ what I was making and a few for outrageously more than that. But I couldn't do it. The lure was attractive and I spent uncountable hours over about a decade debating whether to bite, but in the end I knew I couldn't feel good about myself if I was working for the absolute worst companies in the world. I will leave this world with no meaningful legacy, but that's preferable to exiting knowing that I'd directly helped Big Tech get bigger and even more evil. If I'd had kids, maybe my calculus would have been different. Maybe I'd have been motivated enough for their futures to sacrifice my conscience for them, but I did not, and so all I had to consider was whether or not I'd be able to live with myself, and the answer for me was no. There have always been enough decent, even well paying jobs in software outside of the Big Tech companies, even in Silicon Valley, and so paying my bills and saving for a good retirement didn't require the soul sacrifice. I don't begrudge anyone who bit that lure but I am entirely content to have said no myself.
- koverstreet 9mo ago
  OSS is your legacy! If you write proprietary code, everything you do dies with that company. I certainly don't want my life's work locked away like that. Working on OSS means a better chance to put the engineering first and do something that will last. I did my few years and Silicon Valley too, and when it came to decide between money and code, I chose the code. Haven't regretted a thing.
  - asadotzler 9mo ago
    I hear ya. Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you chose OSS and I fully share your views as expressed here. I think helping make OSS a thing at all, especially in the very early days when my employer was seen as the poster child for its failure, will be the closest thing I have to a legacy. And I got to travel the world teaching about and evangelizing the open source process, tooling, and ethos which was great fun. I even got to play in the big leagues for a while, at the height of our consumer successes, and those years helped solidify some important industry standards that will certainly live on for a while. I'm happy with my contributions, and happy with the comfortable life I achieved all while having a good time doing it. I'm also very happy that I got out a couple years ago before this latest wave of destruction.
johnfn 9mo ago
It seems a bit too much to assert that every developer should be fully responsible for every moral slight their company commits. It is entirely possible to make a positive impact on the world from a large organization - in fact for some people it may be the most direct way that they can make such an impact. Saying that he is morally bankrupt is like saying that you are morally bankrupt for continuing to live in the US because the current administration is a dumpster fire. It is financially profitable to live in the US; you basically cash in a 6 figure check (perhaps translate the metaphor by taking the monetary value that a significantly increased quality of life is worth to you) by living here rather than some other, lesser developed country with more morally aligned politics. Why not leave? I submit that the calculus that goes through your head to justify staying is roughly equivalent to the one that goes through his when he thinks about continuing to work at big tech. I also don’t think that either of you are wrong for having some justification.
- coryrc 9mo ago
  Were individual Germans responsible for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime? If they weren't there because they were resisting, then I say yes. And if we go on living our lives without resisting the current government -- especially if you work at Google, with your leader bowing down to Trump and doing his bidding -- then, yes, you are morally culpable. Most people are shitty, so it's not surprising so many are still going along with it. The engines of commerce are still going. The ports are not blockaded and the government buildings are not being burned. We aren't marching on Washington and liberating the buildings. We are culpable. Democratic voters are culpable; their politicians are all about keeping the system going but tweaking it. No, the system is bad. A system that results in trump being elected a second time is prima facie evil and must be torn down. If you have power and aren't working to treat down this system, you are culpable.
  - johnfn 9mo ago
    Do you really think that the actions of GitHub are equivalent to that of the Nazi regime?
    - 9mo ago
qnleigh 9mo ago
Let's not make everything political. Not to take a stance on the issue either way, but I think the author is only referring to the politics involved in building products, not the broader political/moral issue of what the company does with all of the money it earns from those products. I don't see their post as defending or even referring to the latter.
- afavour 9mo ago
  > Let's not make everything political. Everything is political, though. Establishing a barrier for cynicism so it doesn’t have to tackle the tough questions is understandable but it’s not that justifiable.
  - qnleigh 9mo ago
    I think a more charitable reading of this post doesn't defend the moral aspects you're referring to, but is about much more pedestrian things like office politics. It kinda makes me sad to see the top comment on a thoughtful piece like this expressing outrage on something the other didn't even take a stance on. I come to Hacker News to avoid this kind of rhetoric.
    - elliotto 9mo ago
      I wrote this comment in a response to his second chapter, where he presents criticism of the political role of the company as cynical, and then later where he presents a perspective on some tech company anti-union behaviour being conspiratorial. I definitely took an uncharitable reading, but man am I tired of being told big tech is neutral. I will continue to be cynical and I will continue to gnash my teeth at anyone who tells me otherwise.
    - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
      > I come to Hacker News to avoid this kind of rhetoric. I think this rhetoric fits seamlessly inline with the hacker ethos, and that's one of my motivators (if not the biggest) to read through HN comments at all. It's exhausting to comprehend at times, but so are any well expressed positions in the complexity of life. Otherwise, I worry that HN will complete its transformation to become just another marketing platform for the wider tech sector, like some seem to already think it is.

conception 9mo ago

Evergreen: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair

bdangubic 9mo ago
except they do understand it of course but choose not to accept it :)

stanfordkid 9mo ago

The dude works for GitHub. I don’t doubt there is some rotten code on there, but what you’re saying seems like a stretch and exactly what he’s describing.

rrdharan 9mo ago
GitHub is owned by Microsoft which covers most of what GP is alluding to…
makeitdouble 9mo ago
It's been almost 8 years now since the Microsoft acquisition, should it still be seen as an independent culture ?
- stavros 9mo ago
  Jesus, what is up with time? I thought this was max two years ago, and the "8" was unpleasantly surprising to read.
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
    I would have guessed covid was earlier, at least. Getting older is worse than travelling near light speed dammmit.
rainonmoon 9mo ago
Microsoft is currently a target of BDS, which calls it "perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza." This isn't about some hobbyist's wonky code. https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft
enraged_camel 9mo ago
Yeah, that was bizarre to read. I thought “wait, Sean works for Palantir?!”

ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago

I chose to spend most of my career at a company that did stuff I found morally acceptable (inspiring, even). I made probably half what I could have made at places that were more dodgy. I have found that mentioning that, elicits scorn and derision from many in tech. Eh. Whatevs. I'm OK with it (but it appears a lot of others aren't, which mystifies me).

the_cat_kittles 9mo ago
its because it hurts peoples feelings to confront the truth
shikshake 9mo ago
Your comment really resonates with me, I’m in a similar position though much more junior. My colleagues in tech can’t fathom that I actively choose to stay where I am and make 50% of their salary. I’ve found talking about ethics and moral responsibility with people working in big tech is futile and frustrating. Almost everyone takes it as a personal attack though I never hold anyone else to my moral standards.
- strken 9mo ago
  Is that surprising? Big tech selects for people with few ties to a real life community (because they're willing to move to the Bay Area/NY/Seattle/etc.), no particular moral objections to the work, and enough brainpower to rationalise anything. Also, religion and philosophy are alike in that some people have a rich inner life that they are not willing to share with most of the world. Your acquaintance who works for a defence contractor is not going to explain why he believes propping up the Pax Americana (or helping ICE deport migrants, or working for a social media company, or any other example of something you don't like) is morally right unless he feels safe in doing so.
nmfisher 9mo ago
For what it's worth, I personally have a lot of respect for people who do this (or at the very least, people who forego higher salaries to avoid working for companies they find morally objectionable).

hahahacorn 9mo ago

Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting. I’m glad for the antitrust litigation. It’s very obvious that this was a collusion effort that was self serving to each party involved, as a means of overcoming a negative (for them) prisoners dilemma type situation. The fact that it depressed wage growth was a welcomed side effect. But framing that as the intended outcome as a way of discrediting original author is telling. I don’t know if you’ve understood corporations to be rather simple profit seeking entities, whose behavior can be modeled and regulated to ideal societal outcomes accordingly. What military action is GitHub involved with.

voxl 9mo ago
Perceiving corpos as "simple profit seeking entities" is some of the most naive Milton Friedman crap. Corporations operate as an amalgamation of the desires of a group of powerful enough influencers, of which your rank and file investor is NOT making a meaningful contribution. Milton Friedman has done more harm to capitalism than Marx has done to socialism.
- hahahacorn 9mo ago
  Friedman abstracted away feedback loops between corpos and the social/regulatory environment they operate in. We agree that that is beyond fucking useless. I didn’t make that same naive assumption when describing corpos as simple profit seeking entities, you just misunderstood what I was saying.
swiftcoder 9mo ago
> Framing an agreement between companies to not poach each others top talent as a means to “crush their employees” is very discrediting. How exactly would you frame major corporations colluding to suppress wages? > What military action is GitHub involved with. GitHub has been part of Microsoft for the better part of a decade now, and Microsoft is pretty broadly involved with the military (across a wide swathe of countries)

therobots927 9mo ago

I couldn’t agree more. I also work in tech but I’m incredibly cynical which makes it difficult to see the authors post as anything but a combination of self promotion / self soothing.

asadotzler 9mo ago

I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley, 100% of it working on making OSS happen, and 90% of it for a non-profit, while my peers from the early days almost all moved on to Big Tech by 2005-2010, most for 2x+ what I was making and a few for outrageously more than that. But I couldn't do it. The lure was attractive and I spent uncountable hours over about a decade debating whether to bite, but in the end I knew I couldn't feel good about myself if I was working for the absolute worst companies in the world. I will leave this world with no meaningful legacy, but that's preferable to exiting knowing that I'd directly helped Big Tech get bigger and even more evil. If I'd had kids, maybe my calculus would have been different. Maybe I'd have been motivated enough for their futures to sacrifice my conscience for them, but I did not, and so all I had to consider was whether or not I'd be able to live with myself, and the answer for me was no. There have always been enough decent, even well paying jobs in software outside of the Big Tech companies, even in Silicon Valley, and so paying my bills and saving for a good retirement didn't require the soul sacrifice. I don't begrudge anyone who bit that lure but I am entirely content to have said no myself.

koverstreet 9mo ago
OSS is your legacy! If you write proprietary code, everything you do dies with that company. I certainly don't want my life's work locked away like that. Working on OSS means a better chance to put the engineering first and do something that will last. I did my few years and Silicon Valley too, and when it came to decide between money and code, I chose the code. Haven't regretted a thing.
- asadotzler 9mo ago
  I hear ya. Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you chose OSS and I fully share your views as expressed here. I think helping make OSS a thing at all, especially in the very early days when my employer was seen as the poster child for its failure, will be the closest thing I have to a legacy. And I got to travel the world teaching about and evangelizing the open source process, tooling, and ethos which was great fun. I even got to play in the big leagues for a while, at the height of our consumer successes, and those years helped solidify some important industry standards that will certainly live on for a while. I'm happy with my contributions, and happy with the comfortable life I achieved all while having a good time doing it. I'm also very happy that I got out a couple years ago before this latest wave of destruction.

johnfn 9mo ago

It seems a bit too much to assert that every developer should be fully responsible for every moral slight their company commits. It is entirely possible to make a positive impact on the world from a large organization - in fact for some people it may be the most direct way that they can make such an impact. Saying that he is morally bankrupt is like saying that you are morally bankrupt for continuing to live in the US because the current administration is a dumpster fire. It is financially profitable to live in the US; you basically cash in a 6 figure check (perhaps translate the metaphor by taking the monetary value that a significantly increased quality of life is worth to you) by living here rather than some other, lesser developed country with more morally aligned politics. Why not leave? I submit that the calculus that goes through your head to justify staying is roughly equivalent to the one that goes through his when he thinks about continuing to work at big tech. I also don’t think that either of you are wrong for having some justification.

coryrc 9mo ago
Were individual Germans responsible for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime? If they weren't there because they were resisting, then I say yes. And if we go on living our lives without resisting the current government -- especially if you work at Google, with your leader bowing down to Trump and doing his bidding -- then, yes, you are morally culpable. Most people are shitty, so it's not surprising so many are still going along with it. The engines of commerce are still going. The ports are not blockaded and the government buildings are not being burned. We aren't marching on Washington and liberating the buildings. We are culpable. Democratic voters are culpable; their politicians are all about keeping the system going but tweaking it. No, the system is bad. A system that results in trump being elected a second time is prima facie evil and must be torn down. If you have power and aren't working to treat down this system, you are culpable.
- johnfn 9mo ago
  Do you really think that the actions of GitHub are equivalent to that of the Nazi regime?
  - 9mo ago

qnleigh 9mo ago

Let's not make everything political. Not to take a stance on the issue either way, but I think the author is only referring to the politics involved in building products, not the broader political/moral issue of what the company does with all of the money it earns from those products. I don't see their post as defending or even referring to the latter.

afavour 9mo ago
> Let's not make everything political. Everything is political, though. Establishing a barrier for cynicism so it doesn’t have to tackle the tough questions is understandable but it’s not that justifiable.
- qnleigh 9mo ago
  I think a more charitable reading of this post doesn't defend the moral aspects you're referring to, but is about much more pedestrian things like office politics. It kinda makes me sad to see the top comment on a thoughtful piece like this expressing outrage on something the other didn't even take a stance on. I come to Hacker News to avoid this kind of rhetoric.
  - elliotto 9mo ago
    I wrote this comment in a response to his second chapter, where he presents criticism of the political role of the company as cynical, and then later where he presents a perspective on some tech company anti-union behaviour being conspiratorial. I definitely took an uncharitable reading, but man am I tired of being told big tech is neutral. I will continue to be cynical and I will continue to gnash my teeth at anyone who tells me otherwise.
  - whilenot-dev 9mo ago
    > I come to Hacker News to avoid this kind of rhetoric. I think this rhetoric fits seamlessly inline with the hacker ethos, and that's one of my motivators (if not the biggest) to read through HN comments at all. It's exhausting to comprehend at times, but so are any well expressed positions in the complexity of life. Otherwise, I worry that HN will complete its transformation to become just another marketing platform for the wider tech sector, like some seem to already think it is.