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Comment by Pesthuf | Hacker News Reader

I sure hope the dev who was made to implement it kept the paperwork that proves who made them do it.

Otherwise, they’ll find out how loyalty is rewarded nowadays.

Even if they did keep that paperwork, they should be punished alongside the manager who asked them to do it. They knew it was unethical and did it anyway. They should have refused. Risk of being fired is not as big of a problem for a programmer as it is for almost anyone else.

I don't think that's a good way of thinking about it. Just because programmers might have better job security doesn't mean other motivators for not wanting to get fired exist.

Whatever other motivation you have it should not be enough for you to do illegal/highly unethical things.

This is why we need very strong whistleblower protections.

Which also applies to everyone else. The programmer job security just makes that easier in most cases.

Which is not really my point as to why they should be held responsible. The reason is the real world consequences of their actions and the scale and ease of introducing negative consequences by tech creators.

I've got mixed feelings. I would be interested in hearing the whole story first. The "hey, I can program the trains to break if we're not the ones to run maintenance, should I do that?" or the "yeah, I guess I could make the trains break if we're not the ones to run maintenance" are both pretty clearly unethical.

However, the "yeah, sure I can add in a GPS locator module" and the "yeah, I can add analytics that reports when the train is in a maintenance hanger" and the "the catastrophic program halt code module used in cases of extreme failure is located here, but why do you want to know that?" all seem less than unethical.

Theoretically you only need one unethical line of code, so how it got there, I think, is pretty important to know before passing ultimate judgement.

EDIT:

Of course for something like train control software, you really should have a process or at the very least responsible engineers that would notice a middle manager with limited technical skills asking suspicious questions and then pushing up a PR that is self approved.

I would be more than willing to entertain an ethical debate along those lines. Although, like I said, I think it's important to understand the whole story because the specifics really do make a difference.

To be honest, with or without a paper trail, society need less people who do shit like this.

Whoever implemented this, if you read this, you are a very bad person and destructive for society.

I disagree with the framing "You are a bad person" (although I think I understand the sentiment), because it implies they can't change (or understand the error). It seems better to leave it at "You did something very harmful, destructive for society".

I agree. I understand sometimes a person is under enormous pressure to do something they know is not right.

People respond to incentives. That's the entire premise of capitalism.

If you want this to not happen, you need to incentivize refusing to do this more than the existing incentive to do this.

Otherwise, punishment only changes who's in the chair next time.

(Future possible punishment is not a very good disincentive, which is why increased prison sentences don't deter crime.)

I hope they will testify so higher-level managers will be fined and spend some time in prison. And company will be hit with massive contract penalties and fines.

(not expecting this, but would be nice)

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