If you're not paying, you're the product.

Until we outlaw a way to make money, expecting people to morally not use it to is extremely naive. Something a 5 year old would expect in fact.

There is a reason why we have police, courts and jails after all.

If you are paying, you might still be the product. Companies have plenty incentive to double dip and extract profit from multiple directions.

This is a sign of immaturity of the field in my mind and how management forms and enforces low standards. Developers need to have some leverage to push back from these arguments. Just my 2 cents.

I think we have power. If you can't get people to build a product because they don't think it is ethical, then you can't build the product. That is the leverage developers have.

Of course, this works best in an economy where there are a surplus of jobs.

Swimming with Sharks by Joris Luyendijk (about the finance industry in London) argues that amoral actors develop and thrive in environments where they get a “bonus” for good performance but fear no “malus” if their choices backfire. Organizationally, you see banks with separate, impotent, internal risk and compliance departments, while their “front offices” get literal cash bonuses for successful short term gambles. No rational actor sees any benefit to fighting for change: there’s no lasting result but personal ruin.

Developers have the power to refuse bad actions, especially like you say in a job-rich environment. But unless software developers experience risk consequences for developing something bad, some number of them will not obey their conscience.

While I fully agree with you I think the key part is what you say at the end.

> some number of them will not obey their conscience.

Let's just hope that as time progresses that more will follow their conscience. I honestly think that as our other needs are being taken care of that people are able to act more on their own personal ethics. It is substantially easier to be ethical when you can put food on the table.

Very well put.

I’m still concerned, though... addition to basic security, some people will compromise ethics for status. In particular, an observation JL made in the book is that people staying in the finance industry despite reservations were often parents buying their kids a fancy education.

Abolish Harvard to fix Facebook? Less Eton, more ethics?

You don't get to a 100M+ net worth by following the virtuous advice of your parents.

Literally no one needs a hundred million dollars

That statement is a thesis paper waiting to happen.