[insightcheck]

To the contrary, I think paulcole made a great point. It doesn’t need to be weapons. A programmer who makes a social media feed more addictive isn’t necessarily moral. But a salesperson/marketer can promote something generally seen as good, or at least far more good than the example programmer.

Ad campaigns can remind people to vote, encourage people to quit smoking, or convince people to avoid drunken driving. A marketer is behind for the design and distribution of these public advocacy campaigns.

[serverholic]

No it's not a great point. It's a point made to distract from the real issue. It's a debate tactic.

If you read the conversation carefully I'm trying to discuss the fundamental nature of the professions, not the specific products they are building or selling. That was something paulcole brought up.

The fundamental nature of sales and marketing is manipulating people for personal gain. You could be selling hugs or whatever warm and fuzzy product you can imagine, but at the end of the day the sales person's job is to be the best people manipulator they can be.

And I've seen it countless times through my career. I've met many sales people, I've sat in on sales calls, and I've heard them discussing their trade. It's honestly disgusting.

On the other hand, the fundamental nature of engineering is building things. It's bringing something new into the world. It couldn't be more different from sales and marketing.

[insightcheck]

It sounds like this is a difference in personal values. You can certainly assess the morality of one’s work based on its methods, but it’s also valid to assess the morality based on outcomes.

On outcomes: You framed building things and creating new things as inherently good, but entire fields of the philosophy of science question whether technological progress is inherently good. Is AI-generated art necessarily good if it causes artists to lose jobs? Are ad trackers necessarily good if it increases engagement at the loss of privacy? Are hackers/crackers seen as more noble than salespeople, as they create new exploits that make hospitals pay ransom, and expose people’s information? If a new chemical weapon or bioweapon is created, are its developers inherently noble for creating something new? Even Einstein expressed deep regret for his role in developing the atomic bomb (and Feynman went into a depression) after its usage.

On methods: most methods start as morally neutral. A person training to be a soldier may or may not end up doing immoral things, depending on what they do in their career. Research scientists may or may not do moral things (though nowadays most abide by research ethics, in the past and likely the present, many studies have caused far more suffering than their benefits). Lawyers can go on to defend fundamental rights, or end up filing frivolous lawsuits or chasing ambulances. Developers can create something genuinely useful, or cause people to lose jobs or get killed due to bugs.

To be charitable to your point: yes, I intuitively have a deep sense of respect for the discipline required to become a good software developer and create something new. But it’s completely separate from a moral respect and moral judgement: I have to know what that developer is actually creating, and how that will impact real people.

[serverholic]

You can use the utilitarian argument to justify anything. According to your logic hugging people isn't good or bad because technically you can hug someone to death. Engineering is a form of human expression and human expression is generally good, even if it can be used for evil.

A sick society corrupts good things and incentivizes bad things. Yeah sure, a sales person can sell hugs and use their money to donate to charity but that doesn't change the fact that their job exists because our society creates perverse incentives and I definitely judge people who are naturally drawn to these positions.

Most people would be happy if sales people were no longer needed in society. They are a necessary evil.

I think the soldier comparison is interesting. At least with soldiers there is plausible deniability because being a soldier doesn't automatically mean murder. It's not like soldiers have a daily murder quota. However, the same isn't true for sales. Sales people have sales quotas. Their entire job is shoving products down peoples throats.

[kingboss]

They are also the reason why you have a job. Without sales you have nothing. Without marketing you don't know what to build. Building stuff that no one wants is useless.

[serverholic]

You’re free to justify it however you want.