[noxToken]

> It would also at times require engineers to take a stand and I suspect that that is what drives the willful ignorance.

It's easy to take a stand when you either have a lot of sway or you're a critical component. It's not so easy when you've got people to feed and there are 100 people in line to take your spot.

In an ideal world, engineers and developers alike could really reshape a lot of business practices. For example, developers could say no to creating dark patterns, and engineers could say no to building with substandard parts. Both could say no to unrealistic deadlines that force shoddy workmanship and ugly shortcuts. Too bad that if you won't do it, someone else will gladly do it in your place.

The only way to realistically do it is to put up with it, and then change the culture of the company once you've gotten high enough in the chain. That can take years, and there is no guaranteed payoff. Of course, the other method is to create a union, a coalition of developers, or even an external organization (the EFF, Wikileaks) to back up developers or apply pressure. Doing that is a monumental task in and of itself.

I am not disagreeing with you. In fact, I encourage this behavior. It's hard for a lot of people to do it in practice though.

[mseebach]

> It's not so easy when you've got people to feed and there are 100 people in line to take your spot.

This is true for exactly 0 engineers at Google and Facebook. Every single one of them could easily find another job if they wanted to leave.

I think you guys seriously need to consider the possibility that these people are actually OK with what they're doing and simply have different values and priorities than you do.

[noxToken]

While that is true:

> It's hard for a lot of people to do it in practice though.

The world of development exists outside of the tech giants. There are more people doing dev work outside of those giant companies that are still making an impact.

I don't deny that there can be apathy. Some people show up, do what they're told, and collect money without regards as to what they're doing.

[mseebach]

Well, that may be true, but we're specifically talking about Google and Facebook here.

> I don't deny that there can be apathy

I'm not talking about apathy, I'm talking about actually understanding and being OK with what you're doing. Google and Facebook have just short of 90,000 employees between them (not all of them engineers, of course) - it's extremely misanthropic to assume that they are all either apathetic or consciously doing evil.

A very large number of people understand and are largely perfectly OK with the substance of what Facebook and Google are doing.

[irixusr]

Not if they're on an H1B.

[ben_jones]

It's too late. We have universities pumping out tens of thousands of C.S. graduates every year in the United States alone. Sure they aren't all amazing but it isn't that hard to implement most dark patterns within say, a Django environment. Even in the most important space machine learning is having it's barrier to entry halved every five years and eventually most small machine learning tasks will be done with only minimal training.

[SamBoogieNYC]

A union of developers is a good idea IMO. Developer's are well compensated for their work (generally) - but it's common to hear how their ideas are suppressed.

I've been thinking a lot recently about Xerox PARC - a unique situation where smart people were given a wide degree of latitude, and the result was they came up with some world-changing things.

I understand that businesses have a legitimate right to work toward their end (the bottom line) - but in this rapidly changing world I think responsible people need to step up and say "enough is enough, we make these things, and here's how WE want to make them."

[mseebach]

Never in the history of the world has there been an industry in which it was easier to set out on your own and make things the way YOU want to.

[SamBoogieNYC]

I don't disagree but that's not the point - the point is there is room for improvement, particularly at large organizations (which still have the most impact on the world).

Even at startups - the incentives are such that oftentimes user privacy is compromised. The economic model of ads supporting software is profitable but is it really the way we want to work?

Unfortunately we may be too far down this road. People don't generally want/expect to pay for software. I think this is limiting and troublesome in the long term.

[AstralStorm]

People do pay for software that is worth it and when there are no serious alternatives.

For example, developers do pay for MS toolkit despite alternatives. Certain architects and designers pay for Autodesk software. Or 3D modelling even despite existence of Blender. There are quite a few of music software options that are strictly paid. Higher end video authoring software. Numeric and statistical packages. Electronics design and simulation software. Games... Heck, people still pay for office suites.

What we don't see is people paying for CRUD as much as they used to.

What matters is that the software in question is truly great for doing something, competition is not to big and that the enterprise users ultimately catch on. Of course few start-ups want to tangle with that.