Chain of command is a weird argument. If you don’t believe in war, then don’t work for a defense contractor. Engineers are a super-powerful enabling force.
In my most recent startup we had many hard days, but I would often say “hey, at least we aren’t designing tactical nukes, we’re helping people get jobs”
Engineers can and should take responsibility for what they work on.
Yes, evil power hungry CEO-types (I’m an eng turned CEO) will work hard and possibly succeed anyway, but that doesn’t mean engineers are absolved of responsibility.
Your proposal seems to me to put socio-economic problems on the back of individuals. Imagine what they would have to do. For every line of code they would have you predict all the socio-economic consequences. I rather think such problems should be solved politically.
At the end of the day we need to pay our bills, take care of our kids, and have something on the side for retirement.
If I don’t implement this system, someone else with less foresight or less alternatives will.
I agree with you for clearly evil stuff. But the system we’re talking about seems in a grey zone.
> For every line of code they would have you predict all the socio-economic consequences
This is like saying for every step you take, you would have to predict if it would kill you or not. This is not how humans generally function. You make simplifying assumptions, such as thinking, "If I go for a walk at night in the jungle, would that kill me or not?" and then take action based on the overall planned trip.
The same logic applies to shon's argument: if you write code for a tactical nuke manufacturer, would that contribute to harm in the world? You can then decide whether to work at that company or not, rather than analyzing if the "int count = 0" you just wrote brings the company closer to its (likely) destructive goals.
In my most recent startup we had many hard days, but I would often say “hey, at least we aren’t designing tactical nukes, we’re helping people get jobs”
Engineers can and should take responsibility for what they work on.
Yes, evil power hungry CEO-types (I’m an eng turned CEO) will work hard and possibly succeed anyway, but that doesn’t mean engineers are absolved of responsibility.