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Comment by sqldba | Hacker News Reader

Top tech talent generally have no idea how businesses make money. So of course you’d ignore them.

Where's the greater RoI in this case, what shady shit were they doing once they gained access to users email passwords??

Realistically, probably just logging into the email account once to prove ownership. Not dissimilar to how LDAP authentication works.

Is it a worst practice in our industry right now? Yep. Is it nefariously evil, probably not.

The industry standard appears to be "click on a link in an email", I think that's what FB did for me. So the question still remains what the RoI is that makes getting users passwords better. The only answers I can give are very bad, I can't see a legitimate reason to change to do it that way.

I'm not even sure if that is even true about mediocre tech talent, most people have some inkling of how their company makes money or at least how it intends to (some startups may obfuscate this information however, or not actually know).

Tech talent of all sorts generally don't know how the business manages money and what rules might apply to that management however.

on edit: added even, removed extra letter at end.

This.

I studied Electrical Engineering and in my experience, the only thing my classmates cared about was the technical aspects of the field, and often they couldn't see the big picture. Great talents of course, but more like robots, not even capable of understanding the humanitarian aspects of life. Such a waste.

Disclaimer: It's just my experience, not necessarily true for all engineers and engineering schools.

That's one part of it, I'm sure. Another part is that if you pipe up, you risk getting shunned: loss of income, loss of status, loss of being "part of the cool kids". Sure, you can get another job (that pays less) but you'll probably not work at the same cutting edge technology, and when you tell relatives or friends who you work for, their eyes don't light up.

If somebody offered me five to eight times as much as I make today with a huge boost in status and other positive side effects, and all they ask is to quiet down those silly principles, I'm not so sure I'd say no. "You can still do good in 5 years when you've made enough money to be set for life", I'd probably tell myself.

<quote>If somebody offered me five to eight times as much as I make today with a huge boost in status and other positive side effects, and all they ask is to quiet down those silly principles, I'm not so sure I'd say no. "You can still do good in 5 years when you've made enough money to be set for life", I'd probably tell myself. </quote>

The worst thing is, sticking to those principles just means someone else will take the job.

Coming out of university, I had one job offer (it was a bad down market at the time). My principles made me say no. I didn't want to work on guidance systems for military applications, thank you very much. That choice has cost me a great deal in earning potential. Even so, I would find it hard to blame someone for compromising their principles.

Did they not pay any attention during the humanities portion of their education? That's part of why it's there.

Disclaimers: I'm not an engineer, but my CS degree is ABET accredited. I also took a few more Archaeology, Cog Sci, and Philosophy classes than strictly necessary.

Personal data point:

Did a Bachelor's + Master's degree in CS in Europe. Only around 5% of my coursework had (and could!) be outside CS. And you could fill that with things like Game Theory 102 or Copyright Law 101 or something without issue.

This makes sense, as you get your broad education before university. School focusses on a well-rounded education, whereas universities let you specialise. I realise this is a bit of a contrast to the US education system, with majors and minors, etc.

That's more like the typical engineering school format. I went to a Liberal Arts university, nearly half my classes were general humanities and sciences. The rest were in my major (also required an additional 18-21 credits for the ABET accredited degree option).

Another personal data point.

When I was in college I did have to take philosophy 101. It and all of the other core classes such as biology and English were nothing more than annoying hurdles. I do enjoy learning about philosophy and such, but that is not at all what happened while I was trying to get my degree.

Though to be totally honest, to a large extent I considered the entire degree earning process to be little more than an about hurdle to entering the job market. I spent practically zero time reflecting in any of it during the process.

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