Ask HN: Ever had a “are we the baddies” moment? - meesterdude
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bkdbkd
Engineer at a large manufacturer late 90's. After a week of rumors. All hands
meeting. Parent company VP on the stage with "Great News for our Location!"
Full enthusiastic pitch. Message: We bought a smaller company in a small town
in the North East, they were profitable, good product, but we can do better.
Will be laying off 200 of the 210 employees. Moving half of their products to
our plant, the other half to the Mexico plant. Later we learned the work
coming to our plant would be done by new workers as the current workers wages
were to high.

I decided to quit whilst standing there listening to him. As he spoke, he was
thrilled, and was telling us how thrilled we should all be for what great news
this was to the company. Distinctly remember thinking, oh! these guys are
evil.

~~~
mpetkevicius
I don't see what the company did wrong here. I don't get the obsession with
jobs: if you get fired, just find another one. I like to think of employees as
service providers (think restaurants) and employers as their clients. Client
has no obligation to buy services from only one provider. You wouldn't
consider a person choosing to go to a cheaper restaurant "evil", would you?

~~~
mattmanser
It depends on your worldview.

If you value community, society and loyalty, then what they did is bad.

If you value profits?/money?/greed?, then perhaps you are right.

Many would feel that reducing the world to no more than the efficacy of fiscal
transactions and it all becomes worth pretty much nothing. There is so much
more to life.

~~~
mpetkevicius
I do value profit and you should too. That's what motivates entrepreneurs to
create new products and make economies thrive.

Speaking of profits/money/greed, would you also despise a person who cancels
their Spotify subscription? Because it's the same situation in reverse –
someone stops paying for somebody else's services. Would you blame such person
for being greedy? Would you moralise them that there is much more to life than
the money they'll save?

------
true_tuna
I was looking for a job after I shut down the data centers I had been
operating (old company got acquired, load shifted to data centers at new
company). I had experience running big distributed databases. There was a job
posting that was almost a perfect match. Running a huge database of the people
and circumstances around illegal migration into the US. Whatever I may or may
not believe about immigration and lawful or unlawful migration I couldn’t
stomach building an efficient system for hunting down down people who come
here looking for work. I figured I should never build something if I don’t
want to be on the receiving end of it. But I guess the “are we the baddies?”
moment cake when I realized that someone else went and build it and in a
democracy I have to take some responsibility for that anyway.

------
badb0i
1\. Asian country, enterprise project. Pitched a deal to someone middle
management. They didn't like it. All kinds of bullshit reasoning. Boss made
some changes, pitched again, and the deal succeeded. Boss later told me that
the system we proposed is too efficient. If it's too efficient, staff can't
ask for bribes to speed it up. In America, I guess they would just upsell it
as a "fast lane".

2\. Worked on a million+ dollar project. Very small team. Found out it was
something undermining democracy. Not illegal, but let's say it violates
privacy. Killer moment was talking to someone on the project who was brought
in to destroy all evidence in case we failed.

3\. Talked to a "consultant" who was giving us information on a certain
project. He stopped contacting us after a while, saying that his iPhone broke.
Told my boss. Boss said, "You're so naive. He wants an iPhone as a bribe."

------
ArtWomb
"Are We The Baddies" is an epicly hilarious Mitchell and Webb comedy skit, for
those who missed the reference. Can be found on YouTube. It's been what, a few
years at least, and I still think about "Business Secrets of the Pharaohs"
constantly ;)

And no, I don't think I've ever had such a crisis of conscious. So thanks OP
for reminding me that on balance I've at least attempted to be a decent human
being ;)

------
zamalek
In tech we create problems that nobody ever had, then solve them, then take
privacy as payment.

~~~
maybebad
Brilliant.

------
fqw3b58w4n6
Yeah. When I realized the animal agriculture industry is institutionalized
animal abuse/torture/exploitation (this is extensively documented and can be
learned about using something called the internet).

Go vegan, be cruelty-free. For the animals, for the planet, for yourself.

~~~
kw71
I live in an agricultural area, have worked on industrial farms and hatcheries
installing and maintaining computers and machinery, and keep livestock in my
backyard.

The videos you see are extremely one-sided and manipulative. You cannot do
anything right by these people. I am personally against, for instance,
debeaking, and the production of foie gras is horrible on a Holocaust level.
But for example I saw one recently that criticized the use of nipple drinkers
that guarantee clean water for the birds instead of letting them drink water
from the ground that's contaminated by feces. Another campaign I was exposed
to this year misrepresented a cattle crush as a device that actually crushes
cows, instead of its actual purpose to immobilize an animal while it receives
medical treatment. There are a lot of good points to be made about cruelty in
industrialized farming, but they ruin it with these shock videos and
ridiculous assertions.

These tactics and misrepresentative propaganda, while they may be effective at
fundraising from young and gullible city people, have caused states to pass
laws making it a crime to film undercover at farms, and I believe that this is
a setback for the animal rights movement, on top of some of the proponents'
general dishonesty.

Vegetable farming is not a great thing for the environment either, and
sometimes "organic" production does more harm.

Battery cages bother me and eggs produced differently are ridiculously priced
(a dozen normal eggs costs $1.10 at my walmart today, recently the price has
been below $0.30.) So I started my own flock. Today I have nine happy birds
and am not supporting the battery cage operation, which incidentally was the
subject of a salmonella-related recall this year. I hope to be bringing home
some turkeys from the farm fest in the next county in a couple weeks.

~~~
ThenAsNow
> Vegetable farming is not a great thing for the environment either, and
> sometimes "organic" production does more harm.

Could you explain these points more?

~~~
olliej
Fertilizer run off from organic farms contains just as many nitrates as
metal^h^h^h^h^h^h non-organic farms. Those are the pollutants that cause the
biggest problems in water ways and generally encourage algal blooms that kill
other plants and animals.

Switching to plant based agriculture would require even more fertilizer to be
used as the land area needed limits super effective crop rotation.

Other problems are plants are much less tolerant of different environments
than live stock, so you have to more aggressively farm the limited area. Many
of the ideal areas for growing plants also lack nutrients or even water (CA is
essentially a desert but grows most of the worlds cereals because the weather,
soil are excellent for growing, even if you have to pump the water in from
elsewhere...)

Of course this ignores harmful effects of livestock, and is just meant to
illustrate “not livestock” does not mean “good”.

~~~
Scarblac
Metal farms! Thanks for that one.

------
marssaxman
A few months into my stint at Google, my manager's manager arranged for a
group tour of their datacenter in The Dalles. Walking around this temple of
technology, thinking about all the people whose data these machines were
managing, I had a horrible, stomach-turning feeling of _wrongness_ slowly come
over me. If this is the solution, I thought, we must be asking the wrong
questions: the whole point of personal computing was to give people control
over their own data, to eliminate the need for a technological priesthood like
this one. What am I doing here? I can't be part of this. - And soon I wasn't.

~~~
l33tbro
Interesting. What was your next move after Google?

~~~
marssaxman
Joined a friend's startup; didn't work out. Went back to dev tools (Coverity);
didn't work out. Joined a friend's startup; just got acquired, seems to be
working out well so far ([http://vertex.ai](http://vertex.ai)).

------
richliss
Worked for an "innovation" consultancy that had one of the largest food
companies in the world as a client and it asked that we build an animated
interactive iPad app for doctors in the third world to be able to push their
baby formula.

After randomly googling turns out thousands of African babies had previously
died in the 70's/80's after formula was pushed instead of breast milk as
mother's mixed polluted water with formula when their body would have
protected the baby with breast-feeding.

UN passes laws preventing marketing in certain ways (ie. saying formula is
better than breastmilk) so I decide to read the laws. Turns out big company's
content they're sending us to include in the app (that only appears when
clicked on in a certain way by a doctor) definitely contravenes those UN laws.

I speak to the boss (whose mother was from Africa) who says "every company is
evil so what can you do" after I say that it's not just morally bad but also
the negative PR to our own company could be catastrophic.

It was at that point I decided to make myself unavailable for further work.

------
sildur
Yes. I was behind the second screen application for the Sean Hannity show. I
did not write any content, but my work helped to spread all that
misinformation.

------
WorldMaker
Yes.

I realized that I was having increasing concerns that a previous employer was
on the gray side of US ethics, but more importantly was on the black side of
my personal ethics. The feeling that I was actively enabling (and successfully
making more efficient) something I personally considered wrong to do
contributed additional anxiety and stress I didn't need to what was often
already a high anxiety/stress workplace.

An anxiety attack over snowy weather lead to a lot of soul searching over all
of my anxieties/stress with the job, and directly lead me to very actively
seeking work elsewhere.

I don't entirely regret my time working there, as I worked with some good
people, and made some useful connections, but I'm very glad for my self-
care/mental health that I left just in time before I broke down in less
"silly" ways than yelling about mistakes in snow plowing, and I do sometimes
wonder if I should have left earlier than even that.

------
ArchTypical
I have, on more than one occasion, resigned saying "I don't do this kind of
work". Nothing more and nothing less, mostly because I'm usually deep enough
to see what's happening at the implementation level I rarely get in that
(unethical or distasteful) situation without knowing.

------
rasz
Worked Hardware support for huge EU supplier. Client returned expensive(Intel
manufactured) piece of defective gear, I diagnose(dead) and send it up the
chain, comes back with "it might of fell off the back of a truck, oops" !?! we
are official Intel Partner and everything WTF ?!? Sales dude and regional
manager come down to see the note with their own eyes, make a call to HQ, log
into accounting, check clients turnover and merrily pronounce out loud "will
cost more he makes us in a year, fuck him". I am being ordered to lie about
Intel laboratory detecting user caused damage and refusing RMA. I told client
both versions, no more bonus for the remainder of a year, whole upper floor
(sales) treated me like a traitor.

------
partisan
I had a couple of experiences like that when I worked at one company.

The first was while writing an application that would automate away internal
and vendor provided positions. I never did get over the feeling that the work
was destroying lives, but read on for why it didn’t matter.

A few years later, we were purchased by a much larger competitor who promptly
laid off everyone except the IT department. One of their acts was to
decommission the application and outsource the work to manual labor.

While working for the larger company, a behemoth in the industry, and having
watched several companies purchased and dismantled, and working on projects
that ingested the remnants of those companies, I had the realization that in
fact, storm troopers DO have benefits. They are paid, they get vacation,
health insurance, and maybe even retirement benefits And it explains why the
hallways on the Death Star were so full of people.

I stayed long enough to learn the lesson above and then left to engage in
entrepreneurial ventures since, ultimately, no matter how well you do your
job, or because of how well you do your job, someone can come in and buy your
company and leave you floating in space like so much debris.

------
thiago_fm
Yeah. I work with digitalization. At least they are just closing the positions
instead of firing them. (Europe way)

Some would argue that it is a good thing even. But the amount of real jobs in
the economy overall is just getting smaller. It isn't the company's fault
though, as it has to do that in order to stay operationally viable.

I do not feel so bad, most of the people here in this thread have very
terrible stories. I feel kind of blessed.

------
TurboHaskal
I was working for one of the biggest community portals for the given country.
After certain non trivial event, I was asked to implement shadow banning and
the possibility for editors to alter the number of likes for user comments.
Gave some bullshit technical reason in order to avoid doing what I felt was
unethical, although I believe it ended up being implemented once I left.

------
itronitron
A close call for some of my colleagues >> they were asked by a group within
one of their clients to add some data into a system which would have likely
run up against a law. They said no, and I'm sure that they sleep better at
night now than they would have otherwise.

------
cm2012
When they refused to even give metrocards to our unpaid interns who worked
hard (fashion industry).

When the boss tried to sleazily get one of our clothing models to go out with
him (he was married with kids).

When they always tried to not pay out on contracts if they could get away with
it.

I didn't stay there long.

------
perilunar
No, but I did have a "how in the hell did I end up in advertising?" moment.

------
FesterCluck
Worked for a prison services company. Enough said.

------
maybebad
This is a throwaway account.

Tl;dr You are only a "baddie" if you know that your occupational role is
complacently illegal, harmful to the consumer, and you choose to not doing
anything about it (to quit or report, for instance). Otherwise, it is just a
personal moral dilemma, with the ethical bar set by you, the individual
employee.

Businesses often operate against the personal desires and ethics of their
employees, but I have found this can be necessary for the success of the
business. And it is fully in the right of that business to operate
successfully, no matter how morally selfish it may seem.

1\. I worked for a company that had a great consumer product that fulfilled a
clever need. They mistreated employees and contractors alike, had a lot of
turnover, but delivered the end product with great success and glowing
consumer reviews. The company in this sense was the bad actor, but only toward
those it relied upon to function. It replaced people that were unwilling to
participate, and management never blinked an eye.

(Known equivalent: Amazon shipping centers. You love your 2-day prime
shipping, and you won't boycott even considering the conditions of those that
get you your plastic melon ballers. Amazon is doing fine). I eventually quit
my position, told friends not to apply, and still watch the company succeed to
this day.

2\. I worked for a company that had great ideals, strong and morally devout
leadership, and fulfilled a meaningful purpose. They accepted a government
contract to which I was assigned that caused great moral turmoil among the
other SV tech institutions it had contracted. The end product was effective,
but also morally gray, in that the intended purpose protected American
soldiers on the ground, but the eventual uses were undeniably dystopian.
Employees revolted, but their objections were mostly bark and no bite.

(Known equivalent: Google and their recent attempts at government contracting.
Google is doing fine, though not with government contracts. Likely, Google
made a mistake in bowing to the complaints, considering the upset employees
were focused mostly on "government" and not on the "advertising-surveillance"
that funds their current paychecks. However, the success of Google is
dependent on their ability to attract technical talent, which could have been
impacted if they continued after the public backlash). The business may have
succumbed to employees concerned about a certain aspect of their company, but
likely maintained their "ethical" conscience, leading to a successful future
through retention of talent.

3\. I worked for a company that tricked consumers into investing in
inferiority, but marketed itself in a way that investors, employees, and end
users alike had no idea that they were participating in what was certainly a
scam.

(Think Theranos, and their ability to promise a revolutionary product while
delivering smoke. This is the most egregious case of being a "baddie," but it
is likely that many employees truly believed the promises and their hard work
would amount to something great). I left this company feeling the most like a
"baddie," but mostly feeling embarrassed I had been tricked into drinking the
kool-aid. While it was my most pronounced "baddie" moment, I can justify that
once I learned I was the "baddie," I immediately responded with a letter of
resignation.

The ultimate learnings for me, as an individual, from a perspective that
others may not agree with, is that a business carries the ultimate right to
operate for its own benefit. It does not have to consider the implications of
"baddie" business so long as the practices and strategies lead to financial
success. If the business succeeds, consumers are benefitting and proving those
practices to be the means to the end.

The people creating the product should always have the right to not
participate if the business practices confront their own moral stances, even
if that means resignation (termination is also justified if an employee
refuses to participate in an effort that would lead to financial success).
Participating does not make someone a "baddie" as long as they do not
sacrifice their moral threshold.

Many of my friends and colleagues have disagreed with me, deemed me a
"baddie," and made excellent arguments for why this business-first attitude is
detrimental. But I firmly believe that many of the technologies that are used
globally are a result of companies looking past individualism, and building
something that brings gains for that business.

At the end of the day, if a business succeeds, then it is benefitting someone
somewhere, regardless of my personal opinions. I will always say no if I say
something I cannot stomach, but I speak out knowing that my role in the
company is expendable, and I am owed nothing beyond the paycheck I receive for
my contributions.

"Baddie" is subjective. There is very little regulation around moral business
practices (also subjective), and the boundary (again, subjective) is being
pushed every day. I am passionate about this topic because I have questioned
my work roles many times, and I feel that (besides obvious and necessary legal
regulations) the morals of the individual and the ethics of the business
should always have the right to remain free.

~~~
mattnewton
>>At the end of the day, if a business succeeds, then it is benefitting
someone somewhere, regardless of my personal opinions. I will always say no if
I say something I cannot stomach, but I speak out knowing that my role in the
company is expendable, and I am owed nothing beyond the paycheck I receive for
my contributions.

I don’t know how to say this un-offensively, so I’ll just say I think this is
a morally bankrupt position that can be used to justify all kinds of fraud and
crime because there was at least one benefactor. I think to make a utilitarian
justification you need to take into account the negative impact on others too.

I don’t think you are morally bankrupt though, it sounds like you have another
framework for determining what you personally will work on.

~~~
maybebad
You make a great point. I hear this one a lot from those I admire deeply. Two
counterpoints to discuss:

1\. I am convinced that fraud and crime are directly related to exploitation,
and are the result of decisions and actions of people in a position of
control. Those in control know they are committing these bad acts, and
continue to do so, making them "baddies." As someone who was never in a
position of managing control, but who eventually gained insight and
perspective into the underlying business practices, when I recognized the
fraud and crime, I made the decision to quit and report to the legal governing
bodies. My opinion is that it was in the right of the company (and management)
to "go for gold," but they went too far, broke the law, and were appropriately
punished. I don't believe I was bankrupt in that I severed my relationship
immediately upon my discovery of their true nature.

2\. This may be semantics, but my point on companies relying on "benefactors"
was actually more of a capitalism argument, in that a company can succeed
regardless of treatment of employees or practices of skirting the generally-
applicable moral ideals, so long as the end user is benefitting and continues
to patronize the business.

I do appreciate your feedback because I am always doubting myself on certain
projects as to the setting of my threshold for revolt: is it when I feel
someone, somewhere is being exploited, or when I know that the business
practices are actively and knowingly conducted against the current law?

~~~
freewilly1040
People can continue to use businesses that harm them if they have no leverage
or have compromised judgment. Pay day loan operations with extortive interest
rates, opioid manufacturers, casinos. All have some legitimate customers that
derive real benefit, but likely more that are harmed.

