[fdye]

So I guess "Whistle-blower" is appropriate here, but marketing a "batch" processing system as "real-time" seems to be a bit of a nothing-burger in my mind. I think the more telling thing is he seems to have raised this multiple times to various superiors and not gotten the hint that they weren't concerned. Someone at a VP level (especially at Salesforce) should have enough corporate etiquette to get the hint. Unless he believed this would literally be hurting/killing people (and I find the hospital/care marketing laughable) it doesn't seem appropriate to not accept "I heard your concerns but we will still be launching on X." He is certainly not financially liable for an overzealous marketing department. I've certainly raised concerns from a technical perspective to be shot down in launch meetings, particularly around marketing claims. However, at a certain point you do your best and start supporting the team effort.

[justrealist]

> However, at a certain point you do your best and start supporting the team effort.

Yeah, I don't think opting-out is the morally superior option if you know that the competition is lying through their teeth too.

At a point, the only way to improve the world is to make things better than they otherwise would have been. Complaining feels good but at the end of the day doesn't deliver more value to customers, hospital patients, or anyone in-between.

[salawat]

Counterpoint:

If you compromise every ethical principle (because everyone else does), I vontend you are in no better ethical standing than anyone else. Some has to maintain the height of the bar as the "unreasonable person in the room".

Remember, the only thing keeping us from an ideal world is all those filthy pragmatists out there.

[justrealist]

That's not a counterpoint, it's just a self-inflated way of patting yourself on the back while doing nothing.

[ghostzilla]

I was in a similar situation at a startup I worked for, except they are trying to get their software into the control systems in industrial refrigeration facilities. I have brought up repeatedly that their Netflix-style cloud model for control systems had caused multiple incidents and have called for an architecture discussion which other engineers supported but which the management shut down. Soon after they moved to terminate me but they failed to execute on it so I sent them a resignation notice instead and notified the investors and one customer of the issues and let them work out the whole thing.

For all intents and purposes what they tried to do was retaliation, but I think they were legally absolutely in the clear to (try to) terminate my employment. The same seems to be true of the Salesforce guy. The company had the right to fire him, and, outside of any at-employment NDAs he has the right to tell everyone what he saw. That he is suing them makes you wonder if he's doing it for the money rather than the principle.