Comment by bananapub
1 year ago
this is a bizarre take.
you work for the company, not for your abstract imagination of what users want. if you genuinely feel the company isn't aligned with users, then try to change that.
it's not unethical (per se, obviously don't build bombs for them) to please your employer.
In the Military, soldiers have an ethical duty not to follow an order that is illegal. It is called duty to disobey.
In civilian life, you have a duty to disobey if what your employer asks of you will unnecessarily harm people. For example, shipping a broken insecure product that handles PII/PHI/etc is absolutely unethical, and possibly illegal (though often the legal consequences are minor, if not irrelevant). Your bosses will absolutely ask you to do illegal and/or unethical shit, so you always need to be aware of where the line is, both legally and ethically.
It's not always clear where the line is. With AI work, the line has already been crossed several times (things like discrimination in output resulting in innocent people being hurt). Do not do whatever your company asks for. Do push back when you see a problem. Don't ship something that could hurt someone. If you're not sure, ask or find out.
> an ethical duty not to follow an order that is illegal
I'm not sure that has to be said, but yes, don't do illegal stuff.
You then push this question further outside the legal/illegal bounds.
Ethical is not the same as legal. Legal actions can be unethical and ethical actions can be illegal.
The Nuremberg trials established this after WW2: just obeying orders is not sufficient [0]. This is why modern militaries have a duty to disobey.
It's the same in civilian life: you have a personal duty to disobey an instruction that you personally consider to be unethical. You cannot hide behind "I was just obeying the law". You absolutely should break the law if you consider that law to be unethical. It is your personal responsibility to decide this.
So yes, you should do illegal stuff if not doing said illegal stuff would be unethical.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles
2 replies →
I've been in a really stressful position for the past 6 months. Things that I would've walked out over a few years ago are now things that, for various reasons, I kinda have to choke down.
My entire concept of "what is ethical?" has undergone a transformation. It's not about my ideals any longer, or about feelings, or about how gentle or aggressive management acts in negotiations. It's about much deeper things-- like when I'm asked to support something I find distasteful, I need to really investigate whether, in context, it's actually something which violates my conscience. You know what? It almost never does.
These are the two questions that matter most in my view: 1) Am I honestly being required to do something that harms someone worse than the status quo, and 2) Is anyone around me having a medical emergency - including certain serious psychological issues - that I can help with? Aside from those two things, there's a lot of ugly crap that you can still keep trucking through.
Many people, particularly (but not only) younger ones, are oversensitive to things they simply don't like but that aren't actually wrong in any major way. You've got to choose your battles.
That seems like a very narrow-minded view of the role of engineers in society. At the end of the day we aspire to solve problems that make the world better—I'm certainly not going to fault individuals for following the money, but to dismiss the ethical dimension completely is unreasonable in my opinion.
The Company is an imaginary construct. The reality is that there is a group of people with common goals who work together towards those goals. Very often those goals are simply making money by any means possible. Working with them doesn't absolve anyone from responsibility.
> it's not unethical (per se, obviously don't build bombs for them) to please your employer.
What are the ethics of pleasing your managers and/or executives at the expense of your employer?