In an ideal world, engineers would be perfectly ethical. But, you know, said hyperbolically, sociopaths can be engineers too. You should not induce from your own values to people in general.
Even apart from people without any values.. most engineers don’t hang out on HN, and don’t care much about global scale politics. They care about things that affect them in a very immediate way - family wellbeing, friends, coworkers, and how to pay the bills. I think many don’t infer how much of an impact their actions actually have, since they are „only spokes in the wheel“.
* Turn up to job. Nice people, good desk, good canteen. Benefits good.
* Work is interesting - working on cutting edge, dynamic web experiences that are changing the way we interact with people.
* Solved a knotty engineering problem today. Was very pleased, boss was impressed.
* Shipped product today. New sprint starts tomorrow. No defects!
The actual implications of any one feature, the borders between personal data and pure engineering problems blur. Your effort is only a small part of hundreds of effort-hours taken to ship and maintain a product. The decisions about where the lines are drawn were taken months or years ago by people who may or may not be at the company and who were also probably just trying to solve the problem that was in front of them.
You, the engineer, are never sat alone in a room with a user story that breaks GDPR for a product that is fully compliant. The future of the product never rests with you and only you.
Your post resonated with me, and it might be the social construct of being part of a large organization that allows these things to happen without any single one individual feeling responsible or in the wrong.
Years ago I remember hearing about the Normalization of Deviance and in many ways that's exactly what we see. Even Facebook's argument of others do the same is in alignment with such normalization. If everyone at jumps in a well, would Facebook to the same?
Even apart from people without any values.. most engineers don’t hang out on HN, and don’t care much about global scale politics. They care about things that affect them in a very immediate way - family wellbeing, friends, coworkers, and how to pay the bills. I think many don’t infer how much of an impact their actions actually have, since they are „only spokes in the wheel“.