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> Enough is enough.

What I don't like about this post is too much emotion, not much action.

> If you’re a Google engineer who is still working on AMP, you are a disgrace to your field.

Really? Career shaming? That's very low of the author to do. Why are they a disgrace?

8 comments

Silicon Valley is a really nice club with zero consequences for those that have been screwing up the internet and online privacy for decades. Therefore I don't think it's appropriate to now complain that somebody's calling these people a disgrace to their field.

Recently we learned on HN of the revolving door between Mozilla and Facebook, straight from the mouths of former Mozilla/current Facebook employees. They were even proud of helping the people that were recently let go by Mozilla with jobs at Facebook, as if it were totally normal to switch from privacy and open web defender to privacy and open web villain. I mean it is totally normal apparently.

And really, I think that the moment of shame those people will feel at being called a disgrace, if they're even capable of feeling that any more will go away latest at the time that their fat paycheck hits their bank accounts. To be fair, they probably don't even read HN, Drew's blog or give a crap about any of this.

Speaking of Web Browsers, I won't be surprised if FB introduces their own browser, this could potentially be so much more dystopian than Chrome it's scary that's a possibility. Chrome is already de facto mandated by some government agencies across the globe by virtue of that their authentication doesn't work in other browsers (not even Chromium in some cases).

In a way they already have:

https://www.stateofdigital.com/facebook-browser-biggest-brow...

This kind of revolving door depresses me, and makes me wish that software development had a code of ethics that people would have to swear to uphold.

Going to work for the open web villain is about as bad as the doctors who did the leg work to fuel the opioid epidemic, in terms of harm to society.

if you want to call yourself an engineer; or others to call you an engineer then:

>>I am an Engineer. In my profession, I take deep pride. To it, I owe solemn obligations.

As an engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession. I will always be conscious that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of the Earth's precious wealth.

As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given, without reservation, for the public good. In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give my utmost. <<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer#Oath

So.. who here is a software engineer; a digital electronic engineer; datasystems engineer etc. Can you live up to the obligation?

Sure Silicon Valley bad, but it's pointless to shame them if they don't care, especially if their employer is bankrolling them.

I mean, Google bankrolled Mozilla for years, nobody questioned or even opposed it, yet Mozilla criticises them on privacy, and now look what happened.

But what do we do? I would like to take action against this, but this post doesn't really do anything about this. I fear that we will see more posts like this screaming into the blog post void and nothing comes of it, since you said they don't even read HN or Drew's blog.

> especially if their employer is bankrolling them

That's the problem! These are developers who don't care about the ecosystem. Drew is entirely right, they should be ashamed of what they've done, and use any and all influence to end this experiment.

Someone actively sits down and codes all the things that make the world a worse place, and they often do it after and despite all of the arguments for why it is bad; maybe you disagree that AMP is a problem--I, honestly, haven't made a decision there yet--but to be very blunt about it: we tend to attribute too many things to organizations and companies when there should be a list of very concrete names of engineers working at companies like Apple or Google that actively continue to work on technologies like DRM to lock people out of devices and tracking to centralize data... and we should remember it was only due to their willingness to work on these projects that these projects get done.

I believe the word you're looking for is quisling.

I used to really be happy about computers - they made people's lives better. But business interests have really changed how computers work and I truly hope we can get them to work for us again.

We live in an unethical economy. Do you expect everyone to be able to live off founding an ethical startup?

Economy itself isn't unethical, the corruption is. Unethical business practices and unethical corporate cultures is what allows our societies to rotten from inside. Tax evasions for the biggest conglomerates of the World, media cheering and rooting for anti-competitive behaviors and we don't even have to mention the shady political ties that make all other abuses possible.

This, and if all the devs shun a particular company as large as Facebook, it will just increase the salary offer until someone take it.

There's always a price for someone to bend their ethics.

> There's always a price for someone to bend their ethics.

That doesn't make it any more OK for you (ie, any specific developer) to bend your ethics.

Also, increasing the cost for unethical practices will at least discourage some corporations from engaging in them.

I assumed it came from a previous essay. Asserting that engineers should take responsibility for their actions in spite of their job. If your employer is doing something immoral or wrong, and you don't do something. You're part of the problem, and share in their guilt.

I don't understand this assumption that "x shaming" is inherently a negative thing. Shame is an essential social emotion. I don't see what's wrong with shaming people for unethical or immoral choices they choose to make.

Do you want to call people out or change their behavior?

Public shaming may be successful at the former but often fails at the latter. If anything it often causes people to reinforce a position they might have otherwise conceded. The other negative effects of shaming are well discussed in the Jon Ronson book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.

If you work on AMP, for example, it’s easy to dismiss Drew’s rant as that of a fanatic. Many people don’t think their work is unethical or immoral.

It’s much harder to dismiss a reasoned argument that acknowledges the benefits of AMP and gives examples of the deleterious effects of AMP.

Because AMP isn't objectively unethical or immoral.

Really? Shaming shaming? That's very low of you to do.

In all seriousness I think it's fair to judge people by their actions and tell them in simple terms that you don't approve of them. Not just fair; I think it's fundamental to society that we are able and willing to do so, and that the recipients are able to feel shame as a result. This curbs antisocial behavior.

Drew has a lot of action. His Open Source code repo hosting service https://sourcehut.org does not use any Javascript at frontend, and sourcehut webpages load a lot faster than GitHub and GitLab.

https://drewdevault.com/2018/06/05/Should-you-move-to-sr.ht....

https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/

Problem here is, that Chromium and Firefox based browsers use a huge amount of RAM, and keep increasing amount of features and code. Also, new versions of Chrome etc have broken features that did previously work fine.

Then, web developers are adding even more code to webpages, causing web to just feel a lot slower:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21835417

It would be nice if:

- webpages would use less code at frontend

- so web browsers would use less memory

- with less features in browsers, there would be less code to audit for security

- with less code in browsers, compiling browser would require less time

I agree with Drew about a lot of things, but he's career shamed before and it never sat right with me, even if he has a maybe valid point.

I remember he said something very similar about people working for FAANG.

> Why are they a disgrace

Other than the fact that they work for Google, I assume?