Whether little or big, has there been a time you've had to put your foot down on an issue, or perhaps you wanted to but didn't feel comfortable?
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Whether little or big, has there been a time you've had to put your foot down on an issue, or perhaps you wanted to but didn't feel comfortable?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Latest comments (58)
Well, as a lead architect ethics is just another part of the big equation that ties everything together. And putting down your foot is basically a daily activity just to keep everyone at bay and prevent zealous stakeholders from turning your product into a monstrosity. Having said that I feel that GDPR has been a particular difficult topic for most of my clients. I've had a lot of difficult meetings around this topic, where both the other party and myself have taken different stands on the topic. On the one hand you want to be fully compliant, treat your user's privacy with the utmost respect and just be a good boy. On the other hand we live in a world where doing all of that will result in a tremendous loss of revenue and your client's clients turning over to the competitor (who of course is Evil, didn't comply and is raking in all the money). Big companies cough Facebook cough Google ahem who I think should act more like a role model, have done the exact opposite in the past, which hasn't helped smaller businesses to take this topic seriously.
Many, many times. I work mostly for startups, and, sometimes, they don't understand that everything has a cost in development. They understand technical debt as something they can repay later, after years of good services. This kind of debt is way different than the financial counterpart.
Our team complained loudly over the handling and display of user data. Fortunately enough, after many discussions, examples of social engineering and showcase of how to abuse the application our view was heard and we are not handling it in a much more responsible way.
Was this complaining made to people from a Western business culture?
I quit my job at Google over Google's lack of ethics. onezero.medium.com/google-workers-...
The whole China thing kind of did raise an eyebrow for me.
I don't think even the West quite knows the level and sheer scale of depredation the PRC quietly perpetrates behind "The Wall."
Yes.
I've really had to scratch my head on this one.
I guess I can say I've wanted to start a fuss about anything related to dev integrity ("wait, we should support all the evergreen browsers if we can. It's a google search away!" "Thats not accessible, and we should really change that contrast") but having had short job runs I veer on the caution of speak once, provide my recommendation, and let the rest be up to management.
Yes I turned down a client when I found out they had been struck off their professional register for selling controlled goods illegally.
I once left a company I was CTO of and had shares in because I believed the direction we were taking was unethical. This was an online gaming/gambling company where ethics were high on the priority list. Unfortunately at some point, they started making gambling products for minors and I had to leave the company. Fortunately, they ended up shutting that part of the company down and are now back to working ethically. I no longer want to work in that market because I've come to the conclusion gambling is an unhealthy market to work in for me.
My immediate reaction, beyond basic incredulity, was a question, "How's that working out for them?"
I'm glad to see you answered that question immediately.
I feel like they really did try to do that by the way, they just got off-track. They strongly invested in customer support and systems that automatically shut a user off if they were losing too much, too quickly to prevent people from going bust. It's still a bandage on a flesh wound, but it was interesting to experience
Consistently, in terms of privacy, security, and maintaining the balance between business-centric models and customer-centric models.
Most often it is in terms of how and what data is shared between ourselves and our integration partners, and what level of trust can be placed in them.
Also because we often deal with real money, there are legal implications that must always be considered that vary from country to country.
Most of the time that falls under my umbrella of oversight, and can sometimes conflict with the business' needs.
GDPR - just making it super clear to clients that they cannot just email anyone they want to. They need to have explicit consent.
This. I was once asked to pull the emails of some people who had registered during a specific event to send them to the organizer of the event (third party). Like... no?
I was particularly disappointed because it happened in a small company that prided itself on its ethical approach to game development.