I'm not waiting for anything. I'm simply recognizing that "encouraging" engineers to be heroes is the lazy way out and is not a real solution to anything. This is a political problem, it can only be met by an appropriately collective effort.
> Let's face it, there are other programming jobs out there.
OK, let's run with that for a moment. Where else would you have expected the VW whistleblowers to get jobs? Not every engineering job is a fungible web dev position. Those skills are useful for that one industry only, and that worker would have to uproot his family and move to get a less-desirable position.
No matter how you shake it, leaving a job is a major life decision for most people not in Silicon Valley, yes, even most engineers. And even in the fungible sectors like finance and the web, word gets around.
I have wondered if a distributed whistleblowing network ala Wikileaks but focused on putting public pressure on the most egregious offenders would be a worthwhile thing to build. Essentially we'd run outreach campaigns for high-impact sectors that use lots of software engineers and encourage them to spill the beans, which would end up into a select group of news reporters / lawyers who are positioned to take action.
I have a feeling that's not quite the right approach, but I think with a bit of refinement we could come up with something better.
Maybe, maybe not. This is speculation, unless you've done a study to sample a statistically significant portion of the population. I agree, your speculation sounds reasonable. But neither of us knows, and both of us have certain biases that this speculation confirms - and therefore it should be mistrusted until confirmed.
Frankly, I think there is a bigger problem than job security itself. It's that the whistle will be ignored by the general population. Even if you are willing to sacrifice to do what is right, it may not matter because no-one wants to believe, or the spin is so good that no-one believes it anyway.
> I have wondered if a distributed whistleblowing network ala Wikileaks but focused on putting public pressure on the most egregious offenders would be a worthwhile thing to build.
Perhaps WikiLeaks could be rebuilt. But I think we should try to learn something from v. 1.0 which became politicized very quickly. I think the takeaway is you want someone who is very trusted within our community to run it. An entrepreneur with a good track record of being honest, and perhaps also has a law degree.
> Let's face it, there are other programming jobs out there.
OK, let's run with that for a moment. Where else would you have expected the VW whistleblowers to get jobs? Not every engineering job is a fungible web dev position. Those skills are useful for that one industry only, and that worker would have to uproot his family and move to get a less-desirable position.
No matter how you shake it, leaving a job is a major life decision for most people not in Silicon Valley, yes, even most engineers. And even in the fungible sectors like finance and the web, word gets around.
I have wondered if a distributed whistleblowing network ala Wikileaks but focused on putting public pressure on the most egregious offenders would be a worthwhile thing to build. Essentially we'd run outreach campaigns for high-impact sectors that use lots of software engineers and encourage them to spill the beans, which would end up into a select group of news reporters / lawyers who are positioned to take action.
I have a feeling that's not quite the right approach, but I think with a bit of refinement we could come up with something better.