When you go to work, you don't give up your moral agency.

The shareholders have the most to lose, not the least.

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan's $100 million stake in your company (for example) is worth a lot more than all of those jobs put together. That's why they have all the power.

Perhaps. If they did fire you for refusing to follow unethical (or illegal) orders, there might be judicial remedies. As we can see with this article and the HN threads for this story, reporting the problem to the public may open up other options and may deter future unethical behavior

> not pay my mortgage, not feed my kids

That's why unions and other parts of a social safety net are for. Do you want management to continue utilizing this power they have over you? Or are you willing to join with your peers and push back? If enough people across the software industry show their power by joining in a direct action (e.g. a strike) to tell management that unethical orders are not acceptable, future managers will have to reconsider if the gains from an unethical plan outweigh the risk of triggering another strike.

Also, while your mortgage[1] may be a problem, feeding your kids after suddenly losing your job is what government welfare problems are for. Yes, it can be humiliating to use - I know from personal experience - but it should only be a temporary situation until you can find another job.

> End up in a divorce.

Really? For standing up against unethical behavior? Is a few months of penny-pinching sufficient reason for a divorce?

> Ruin my entire life.

The only way your life would be ruined is if you let it be ruined. Yes, losing your job sucks but it could be a lot worse.

By following the unethical orders, you are conditioning management to believe they can get away with more unethical orders in the future. The longer this is allowed to continue, the harder it will be to correct. We already see this effect in how widespread and normalized unethical behavior has become across the industry.

So yes, you might be forced into a bad situation if you fight back against unethical orders. It may require a significant sacrifice. Do you want to pay that cost now, or do you want to wait for the difficulty and cost to go up as management gains even more power?

[1] If you don't have the savings to cover a couple months while you look for another job, then you probably shouldn't have bought that house.

You can get paid and live comfortably till your family is magically at the back of the que because you've been "mis-tagged" in a system.

Like it or not, right now the people awake in any way to the danger are people who write code day in and day out. That means you, who knows how an if statement, or a filter of a join can screw results.

Also... who is a manager, exactly? Is it the guy who does the strangling's boss? His boss? His boss? Where does the buck stop?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_by_firing_squad#Blan...

The problem with always deferring culpability upwards is that it usually leads to no culpability.

Indeed. What you allege is called cowardice, and it is most definitely not an excuse.

Then again, bullies do not prey on those who stand up to them. Those who attempt to rationalise their pusillanimity attract them like flies though.

Please do yourself and everyone else a favour, stop blaming other people for your own weaknesses, and start to act in a way that can be an example and an inspiration to your kids. If nothing else, you owe it to them.

No Sir, it isn't. I was a manager for years, then a contractor, and nowadays run my own show. Never once did I acquiesce to a request that I had the slightest concern about. Not to falsify data, not to take operational shortcuts, not to infringe the privacy of employees (my own or my client's) or third parties.

When such things are brought up, I do three things: 1. Say no. 2. Tell the other party that it is not a good idea: at worst will get them into a lot of trouble, at best they will lose any trust and respect they may have or hope to have one day. 3. Ask them what the real problem is, and try to help them find a real solution. It's surprising how often people go for the worst idea first without even considering other options.

In all fairness, I do come from a regulated profession background (two of them, actually), where if I screw up I respond with my licence, but I also learned the ropes at a company that were very strict with this sort of thing.

Well you can get a code monkey job somewhere else. That is one option.

The code monkeys are the ones who actually have the code to blow up the world and are the last line of defense when it comes to this.

Ethics precisely means you say no to the managerial class because you are a professional