[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Interviewer: Do you have any questions for us.

Candidate: Will this job require me to violate anyone's privacy.

Hold on, how about this instead.

Candidate: Will this job require me to do anything illegal.

Candidate already knows the answers to these questions. She has no need to ask.

This "the boss made me do it" defense seems to be a recurring comment on HN, perhaps from those with a guilty conscience. But is it really persuasive. It is like asking the reader have empathy for a drug dealer selling fentanyl because "he really needs the money and no one else will hire him".

"I really just want to sell marijuana but the people higher up the chain decided we should sell opiates instead."

[c1ll1an]

This is valid but potentially a slightly different issue, insofar as I don't believe that the work we're doing at Ethyca affects the moral compass of a company. There are certainly many businesses we actively choose not to work with and I won't start a war here but I think that's a vital point - trust and integrity are part of building anything that's safe.

Otherwise how do we know a bridge is structurally sound enough to walk across? We have to trust in the checks/balances, systems and people that work on that infrastructure. The same should apply to any software that affects large numbers of people.

If a company is setting out to do ill, that's a societal failing we should all care about and hope to prevent, but it won't be solved just with technical measures.