So true. It's truly sad that some people can hold tight to their cynicism even as they build up their technical skills
These people might feel spite and anger towards the western world for the extreme lavish excess that developers enjoy. It's not hard to imagine a world where developers can learn some skills but are locked out participating like we do, and thus decide to weaponize those skills against us for whatever profit they can.
I kind of feel like your comment is like saying "Being poor isn't an excuse for stealing bread", and while completely and totally true, it really works hard to miss the point.
Just like keying your neighbor car because he could afford nice one is not acceptable whatever you feel like.
What is happening in NPM is not a car being keyed. There is a profit motive for doing this.
Perhaps you could say "Stealing 1 gallon of gas from your rich neighbors car to feed your starving children makes you an asshole", that's an analogy that seems to fit what is happening here, and an opinion I would disagree with.
IF you steal gas from neighbors car to feed starving children does not make you an asshole.
If you do it in a way to minimize damage.
If you come over and mess his whole car up in the process just because "he is rich" - that makes one an asshole.
The same with spamming NPM, OK I can understand they feel the need to earn money - but they are messing up something useful for others in bad way. They probably could still put effort to do many other things that would bring profit and would not mess up thing that many people will start loosing trust.
Ever common amongst people who have never seen or felt the consequences of abject poverty
Trust me if you are struggling to make ends meet, you don’t have time for these kind of childish revenge.
Only reason you see developers from some developing countries developing spam related products is because it pays bills. When your livelihood depends upon such products, it is hard to do the right thing. Just like so many people in the west working for very questionable companies.
sure but once you start making ends meet you might think, now I can take some time to screw over other people! It really depends how pissed off you are.
Although if you were really that pissed off I doubt this is the way you would go.
Maybe not natively, but they may be working in the US or Western Europe, making upwards 50% of a Google/Facebook salary, if not working at Google/Facebook indeed.
Plenty of companies pay a decent salary for mediocre work, and will take the less morally sound developer, because the sound one isn't willing to work with their legacy code or less moral product (e.g., oil industry, financial services). Making good money in tech != good morals.
Finally, being physically in the US/Western Europe doesn't necessarily imply that you don't think that russia deserves to be treated better.
I will add that this mentality does not exactly build up their societies to fix the problem. When I moved from Africa to the first world, the high level of trust and conscientious behaviour by everybody blew my mind.
My point being that wholesome behaviour and net worth are linked in a virtuous cycle.
Oh, let me tell you my “lived experience” of spite and anger that I once felt towards western developers.
So, it was late 1990s and our sales guys got hold of a presentation paper that competitor guys gave to a customer that both our companies were trying to win. I never read such a collection of blatant lies in my life! And I came from a one-Party country where newspapers were… uhm notorious for their lying. But not like this! Specifically a feature that I’ve spent more than half a year on, and which we were proudly shipping - was marked as not existent. Imagine somebody trying to scratch half a year of your life, and a rather intense half a year to that - out of existence. With black, lying ink.
And I clearly remember sitting and thinking: why are they doing this? The competitor was a well-established company, long time in business, probably employed citizens, provided them with pension funds and other perks - why don’t they compete with us, mostly new emigrants on a work visas - why can’t they compete on _merits_? They have everything to just sit, work and compete - why lie?
Yes, I was feeling spite and anger, true.
But, about 20 years later, just around that your famous President inauguration - this exact competitor went bankrupt. The stopping point for a buyer was - they did not want to fund pensions 100%. It was like watching Karma working right and clear in this material world - a rare moment, no?
As they lure people into Telegram channels in hope to scam them, I assume that the conversion is low and this is not very profitable and they do this because of lack of skills.
For one, tech salaries outside of the developed world have been going up at a higher rate than in it for the past 20 years or so - the pandemic and proliferation of remote work only accelerated this process.
As for spite and anger: a tech worker in a poor country is easily within the top 10% (if not 5%) earners there and is usually too financially secure for such nonsense.
The whole crypto debacle showed that scammers are largely evenly distributed around the world - it's just the type and scale of scam that differs.