[tobmlt]

I want to express sympathies in a particular way:

When I had a job I didn’t want, in a city i didn’t want, no kids, no wife, and prospects abounding, it was easy to speak truth to power. I did it, and I was right technically, businesswise, and morally. What a win...(?)

Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago.

All that to say, this poor kid... I can only imagine the incentive structures that led him to choose this route, but I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it, and it ticks me off.

[shrimpx]

Tragically, a non-trivial number of Ph.D. students commit suicide. It's natural to gradually put all your eggs in the imagined Ph.D. outcome (e.g., an idealized notion of a professorship) with increasing depth as the years wear on. After multiple years and a huge emotional and intellectual commitment, if you start to see the cracks in the structure, and you cannot reconcile the newly perceived reality with your model and goal, it can be absolutely devastating.

[jessaustin]

An experience I had as an undergrad of walking around a not-yet-bleached spot on the sidewalk in front of Pierce played some role in my not going to grad school.

[andrepd]

Bleached? In what sense?

[webmaven]

A concrete surface (such as a sidewalk) needs to be cleaned with a bleaching agent in order to remove bodily fluid stains, which can otherwise persist for years.

[andrepd]

Oh...

[jessaustin]

They put up a barrier and some "biohazard" signs around the spot, until they had a chance to clean the concrete thoroughly. It would be unseemly for students to trod on the remains of their recently deceased schoolmate.

[atoav]

Totally understandably so. However I think that it is also a matter of perception: If we view it as a matter of living the dream while some intrusion might endanger that dream, surely minimizing the damage done to the dream is a logical consequence. But what if the intrusion stops making your job a dream job?

I was in a similar situation where a superior demanded that I breach the trust our users had in the privacy of our service. This would not only have been illegal, but there was no way to make use of that data without revealing that we broke that trust. Additionally it made no sense, because the info my superior hoped to gain through this wouldn't have been readable from the data anyways.

My superior was a typical authotarian male: Saying no to him is something he took very personal. This was my dream job, but breaking privacy rules goes against anything I stand for (which no longer would make it my dream job), so I did what needed to be done and stood up. I explained carefully what he needs to know before making that decision and why I wouldn't do it that way, all the time making sure there is a way out for him where he can keep his face.

Guess what, I didn't need to breach that trust and the superior ultimately was thankful that I stopped him from running into this. But it left a very bitter taste in my mouth that the guy even considered this as a possibility.

[rlonn]

In my experience, people who try to intimidate others into unethical acts are pretty much rotten at the core. They either lack morals, or empathy, or both. Chances are your superior did some damage control when expressing gratitude towards you later on.

[darkerside]

It sounds like he didn't understand what he was asking for and was thankful for you informing him. Seems like a reasonable case, although maybe there's something about the initial demand that made it more of an intimidation tactic?

[feralimal]

"I was right technically, businesswise, and morally."

... and in third place, morality. And now lost in the distance.

I'm not a Christian, but this is worth considering by everyone:

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? Or what will a man give as an exchange for his soul?"

[techbio]

If you interpret a grammar (in this case, a list of dimensions for evaluating one's choices) in the terms of another grammar (in your interpretation, the ranking order of horse race or other competition) you impose a structure on the conclusion and what logically follows, that is orthogonal or irrelevant to the original statement.

There is no reason I see that placing morals last in that list places it below the technical or business dimensions, and assuming good intentions would seem to require that they were ordered that way because morality is in fact the bottom line or last word, rather than tacked on as some also ran, in itself requiring technical and business success to be actualized, while in fact standing as the higher goal.

The most charitably I can view your response is that you discount technique and business due to some prevalence of corruption in them but do not likewise discount moralism.

What shall it profit a man to lose the whole world? Immorality itself often follows failures to thrive, ie cheating to get an edge in one way or another.

[moksly]

There is an old punk saying. The guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to.

[coldtea]

>"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?

It will profit them, well, the whole world. Duh!

(Yeah, I know what the Christian sentiment means. But it requires the belief, if not in soul, in some trancedental good, for people to care about "loss of soul" over "gaining the world". Which, alas, we don't have as much...)

[sojournerc]

There's a secular interpretation too.

What good is all the money in the world if you don't respect/ recognize yourself after you get it.

[coldtea]

Well, there's the even more secural interpretation "who said I don't respect/recognize myself? Those 'morals' are just ideals and don't exist, meanwhile I have the world".

[loveistheanswer]

That would be a great rationalization for a narcissist to use while wreaking havok on other people's lives with no remorse.

[AwaAwa]

I think that was the point of the 'more' secular interpretation?

[greenonions]

That's not an interpretation, that's just pointing out that people who do not have a strong conception of themselves or have self-imposed limits on their behavior according to their moral system have no reason not to blindly pursue enhancing their material wealth.

[8note]

They don't have a reason to pursue that material wealth either

[Clubber]

>But it requires the belief, if not in soul, in some trancedental good

The soul is your conscience, you're comfortability with yourself. The judge is your peers, family and ultimately yourself.

[coldtea]

Well, the soul (as in "ultimately yourself") might not give a fuck about morality and goodness, and judge you on failing or not to get what you want. What then?

As for family and friends, people find that those like you just fine if:

(a) you can fake being good succesfully (while still being bad and doing bad things for your benefit - common with politicians, CEO doing "charity" with corruption and cruelty on the side, etc.)

(b) you win material wealth and so they depend on kissing your ass

(c) they are actually treated well and kindly by you (while you're still fine to fuck over everybody else for profit - king of like in mob - their families don't dislike them because they're mobs)

[shoemakersteve]

>What then?

Then you're a sociopath.

[bobthechef]

Losing your soul to acquire something less valuable defeats the point of acquiring the inferior good in the first place. Every sin, every immoral act, is such an act of self-betrayal and spiritual self-mutilation. It is an act that is so profoundly nonsensical, stupid, and absurd that it boggles the mind. But given what we might call the human condition, the moral life is made difficult, especially because we have a tendency to rebel against the truth and because we are cowards. But it is the only road to true happiness.

So here's your city of gold and your garden of delights, but only if you desecrate and destroy yourself, cripple your mind, poison your heart, and blind yourself first. Oh, and here's the cherry on top: when you lay in your self-made gutter, let all these riches taste to you like ash.

[lotsofpulp]

> I'm not a Christian, but this is worth considering by everyone:

>"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? Or what will a man give as an exchange for his soul?"

This would only affect people who assume “they” have an immortal component, i.e. a soul.

[M277]

Even if you don't subscribe to that belief, you still have something to lose -- conscience.

Conscience doesn't really die overnight (and this is from my experience of living in a corrupt society), it's a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. The beginning is "Come on, everyone is doing it" and you can guess the end.

[webmaven]

> Even if you don't subscribe to that belief, you still have something to lose -- conscience.

Integrity also works as an asset that can be lost to corruption. And for those that aren't inclined to put much stock in that sort of inner-life intangible, consider reputation as an outward facing stand-in.

[coldtea]

>Conscience doesn't really die overnight

Well, some are ruthless and competitive without coscience even as kids, and continue so...

[M277]

Yes, but do they really start out like that, or is it a gradual descent? There's usually a catalyst that starts it in kids. Parents demanding success at all cost / rampant cheating around them (or just being surrounded by ruthless kids) / a very competitive rat race that turns out to be pretty dirty / the parents themselves are without conscience / etc.

[Thiez]

I think children tend to be pretty cruel when given the chance, many of whom grow up to be decent people. While there are certainly bad people out there who were already rotten as children, I don't subscribe to the theory that people are born perfect and then somehow experience moral decay as they grow older.

[novia]

You can look at it metaphorically. Whatever that thing is that people are talking about when they say, "have a heart!!", that's the soul. It's supposed to be your innermost self. If your innermost self becomes unethical or immoral as a habit, that's, "losing your soul."

[DyslexicAtheist]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

[gher-shyu3i]

> and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago.

The prevalent "cancel culture" today makes this even more difficult. If you don't go by the groupthink, you lose your livelihood and can't support your family anymore.

[bachmeier]

> I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with the way you've ended your comment. This lets the people responsible off the hook. The guilty party is an individual (and perhaps several individuals). Academia, peer review, conferences, and organizations didn't cause this. The professor was responsible. He wasn't just a cog in the system.

[sn41]

The incentive structures in academia make it easier to opt to cheat. A furious mediocrity is considered more desirable than thoughtful work : Thoughtful work is not "high impact", high "h-index" or whatever, but stuff that makes you enlightened, and makes you smile and go "oh yeah! now I see it".

But academic administrators do not understand that, because they have never had that experience, and have no idea why some professors go very quiet when an obscure faculty member speaks up to make a point in a quiet voice - that is because that quiet person has earned genuine respect from the other faculty present.

Quality is rare, quality has pauses and takes breathers.

[krageon]

Given that Academia is a toxic cesspit of vipers at every level, I'd hesitate a little more to attribute it to individuals. Something about the environment brings out the worst in people and that's worth scrutinising.

[rmk]

The whole point of the blog post is that the University Department is supporting the (allegedly guilty) Professor to the hilt.

There are countless such scandals, including an epidemic of Title IX sexual assault "investigations", where universities are repeatedly shown to be supporting the wrongdoer.

Academia is definitely f'ed up. In this case, the family of the person who committed suicide don't have any recourse: it's up to the university department to give a semblance of justice, which they have apparently failed to do.

[woofie11]

I went to MIT. MIT has procedures involving NDAs and non-disparage agreements to cover up academic fraud. Academic fraud widespread, at least in the departments I worked with, and the Institute can apply *a lot* of pressure to get people to shut up. Except for anonymous web forums, I did.

I'm sorry, but this isn't letting the individuals off the hook, any more than accusing the KKK of being racist isn't letting a particular KKK member off the hook, or a mafia of engaging in extortion letting any particular member off-the-hook.

There are no effective, enforceable structures for stopping academic fraud. Most people who've engaged in it did not become persona non grata, let alone been fired; most continue to hold tenured academic jobs. Worst-case outcomes are a multiyear slap-on-the-wrist of some kind. That, combined with intense competition, led some people to cheat. Eventually, when it turned out to work okay, it became a culture of cheating.

Yes, the individuals involved should be punished, but much more important are:

1) Procedures for getting crooks out of the academy

2) Reducing competition, so there aren't the intense incentives to cheat

3) Implementing transparency. Why do universities get to use taxpayer dollars (grant / tuition overhead) and charitable contributions to cover up this stuff? Governance should be transparent and open. Data should be transparent and open whenever possible. NDAs and non-disparage agreements should be off-bounds.

4) Big money should be out. Yes, I know how much the typical professor gets paid, but the million-dollar salaries for presidents, Nobel laureates, and similar high-ranked positions distort things.

5) Related to the prior, conflict-of-interest provisions should be just a couple orders of magnitude more enforceable. The industry<->academia and especially startup<->academia pipelines help ground things and prevent things from getting detached, but if you're doing research to start a startup to make a few million dollars, that tends to apply extreme pressure to bake data.

6) Hiring and promotion structures shouldn't be so impact-focused. The easiest way to have impact is to tell politically-popular lies. P-hunt for data that shows liberals are smarter than conservatives, atheists are more open-minded than evangelicals, racism is wholesale, wokeness is the way to solve it, and so on. On this list, the really most harmful is when you reach correct conclusions from false data (much more so, even, than false conclusions from false data).

... and so on. This should happen wholesale, across academia, to be eligible for federal grants or tuition subsidies.

[bobthechef]

Any worldly institution that operates this way will implode. Establishment academia has lost a great deal of clout, deservedly so. It's going to collapse sooner or later because people aren't intoxicated by the mirage of establishment academia like they used to be. Eventually, new schools and institutions will emerge that will better conform with human nature and human needs that will replace these obsolete and failed institutions of today. The example of the Benedictines is probably especially meaningful. When the Roman Empire fell, it was the Benedictines that preserved what they could and around which new communities formed that hunkered down for the long winter. European civilization then sprang from these Benedictine communities. And frankly, not just academia is collapsing, though academic rot is often one canary in a coal mine for other manifestations of cultural and social rot and itself a symptom of rot higher up the chain.

[rdtwo]

Maybe it will happen but it will likely take a couple human lifetimes to get there

[woofie11]

Yeah. It ain't happening. I thought Harvard would take some flack when people noticed 43 percent of white students admitted are legacy, athletes, or related to donors or staff. That blew over in a week. Varsity Blues did nothing either.

Liberals will have faith in elite schools. Conservatives will have faith in churches. Liberals will distrust religious organizations, and conservatives will distrust the academy. We're polarized enough that scandals probably won't change that.

MIT had a huge Epstein cover-up. They did an investigation, threw everyone who came forward under a bus, and did nothing to faculty who partied with ladies on Epstein's island. If you'd like references:

* MIT's factfinding report mentions no faculty visits to the island

* Epstein's web page has a ton of photos of himself with top MIT faculty on the island. Those are the tip of an iceberg -- he didn't bother posting photos with lower-tier faculty, many of whom partied there too.

* News reports indicate Epstein coerced one of the girls to offer herself to Minsky.

By all accounts, Minsky declined and behaved with all propriety (he was there with his wife), but he was far from the only one on the island, and at least rumors suggest others weren't as proper. Are rumors true? That's kind of the point of a fact-finding report.

This became super-visible within some MIT communities, and I kinda expected MIT to implode. It didn't even merit a news story. MIT just shut down internal mailing lists where this was being discussed.

Even if a scandal did do something, the endowments are now astronomical. A mere scandal won't shut anything down.

I believe the only way to do this is to place restrictions on government funding. Institutions which use NDAs, non-disparage agreements, don't respond to FOIA-style requests, don't publish in the open, don't share research data when reasonable (e.g. except for PII), and otherwise shouldn't receive federal funds, shouldn't receive foundation funds, and shouldn't receive alumni donations.

That's hard, but I'm not sure if impossible. Elite schools have a lot of power in government, but things are over-the-top enough that if this isn't brought under control, this isn't getting kept bottled up forever. Brands will suffer.

[sn41]

I agree, mate. I've decided to stop brooding over things less. I do still sniff the toxic sludge at my workplace, but turn away by thinking about technical and intense.

[xenihn]

>Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago.

I'm not at this point yet, but reading this makes me wonder why any employer would ever prefer younger employees with nothing tying them down, for any reasons other than the fact that we cost less. Sure, you'll save money on salary, but odds are that we're going to move on within a year or two if you're not a top-paying company. Even then, there's no guarantee.

Meanwhile, someone who has dependents and a mortgage has more to lose and less leverage.

[sva_]

> makes me wonder why any employer would ever prefer younger employees with nothing tying them down

Probably a lot of reasons, but a major one may be that young people with no family of their own got all day, every day, to think about work-related problems - especially so, if they derive a lot of meaning from their work, as many people do. It's probably also a lot easier to boss them around, especially if said people crave acknowledgement from some authority figure.

[tobmlt]

Oh yes, some (many?) employers do prefer those with more to loose.

Immigration rules tie right into this as well (of course).

[nitrogen]

Oh yes, some (many?) employers do prefer those with more to loose.

Years ago I actually had a hiring manager tell me "all of our guys have families" and later "we're really looking for people who want that stability". Direct discrimination against single people. Fortunately I did not get that job, and ended up much better off elsewhere.

[vinceguidry]

I’m convinced that it’s because younger people are easier to control and less likely to speak up about messed up stuff. So while it would be in the company’s best interest to hire more experienced developers, it’s in the interest of individual managers to prefer younger folks.

[xenihn]

This makes sense. I didn't think about it specifically from a manager's POV, since I'd like to think they're more likely to act in the company's best interests when it's a tiny/small eng org.

[timwaagh]

Having to pay less is pretty major if you are the one doing the paying.

[xenihn]

Sure, but is it cheaper in the long run when you account for attrition, hiring costs (recruiters, engineer hours spent interviewing), and ramp-up? Let's go ahead and assume that things like code quality and technical debt aren't factors here, and that the replacements for regrettable attrition would receive (and accept) offers with comparable TC.

[timwaagh]

That depends on project duration. Most projects did not go on more than a year or two. If that's the case your ramp up would happen once every two years even if everybody stayed forever. If you're reasonably efficient about it, you can hire someone with maybe a few hours of engineer time. If the average engineer stays even a year it's not that much.

[ntsplnkv2]

You don't bother thinking about that. Over time you have a large enough sample size for attrition rate and you hire based off that. it doesn't matter if a few leave, a few will always leave.

[xenihn]

Why not think about it?

[ntsplnkv2]

It costs time and value when you really can't control it.

No matter what there will be attrition for reasons completely outside of a company's control. You find a comfortable attrition rate for your business. if it's too high you deal with it.

[ntsplnkv2]

HN is filled with ultra talented devs getting offers.

It's not that easy to find a new job for 90% of the population.

[AnHonestComment]

It’s a trade off:

Younger workers have less to lose, so tend to leave more — but they’re also less experienced and tend to have lower expectations for the workplace.

Older workers are less likely to leave because it’s disruptive, but they’re also more experienced at the political side of life — and tend to insist on things like reasonable hours, professional management, etc.

My personal stance is that trying to exploit your workers is a losing game — but from the employers who act that way...

There’s some who prefer the lower expectations (eg, Amazon) and some who prefer the more stable crew (eg, ATT).

[lotsofpulp]

> My personal stance is that trying to exploit your workers is a losing game

Maybe in highly paid and creative fields, but for the vast majority of business around the world, I observe exploiting the power imbalance between employer and employee to be very beneficial for the employer.

[phabora]

I don’t understand what kind of sympathy this is supposed to express. Presumably the “kid” was really desperate and didn’t know what else to do. Even if someone from successful picket lane might know better.

Sometimes it’s better to say nothing.

[temp8964]

That guy sent internal email to his students in Chinese. This is crazy.