

Ask HN: What is the social responsibility of an engineer in tech organizations? - nemild

Given the growth of computing over the last decades, software and hardware engineers (and tech companies generally) have increasingly disproportionate power to have impact.<p>Edward Snowden is one recent (if extreme) example of an engineer wrestling with what their moral code and related responsibilities. Beyond Snowden, many of the tools at the NSA were built by other engineers who likely saw tremendous value to the protections the NSA provided, or at a minimum did not feel comfortable speaking out.<p>There are less obviously pernicious examples that are faced by engineers on HN every day. For example, you design hardware at an Internet of Things company and collect data that will be resold to third parties with little transparency to the consumer. Or (more topically) your company creates a tool to subvert TLS for the purpose of tracking user behavior, so that ads can be served or users tracked.<p>How do you set your own code of conduct&#x2F;moral principles as an engineer for the products you work on (privacy and beyond)? What inspirations have set these moral principles? How and when do you communicate disagreements to your team?
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MichaelCrawford
I am very emphatic that my ethics are of paramount importance.

On the other hand, I'm not having much luck getting a job, or even a
consulting contract, so I'm developing a business that will get its money
through crowdfunding.

Consider that even Snowden wants to come home; he's not asking not to be
prosecuted, only that he gets a fair trial. So he fully expects to go to
prison.

Sometime, my stand on ethics really gets me down. But there are lots of other
times that I do not regret it.

