This is more speculative, but I think public markets don't really react adversely to visionary CEOs / founders putting principles over growth, so it's not like they would make all their paid-in-equity engineers take a pay cut for their principles either.
p.s. I know the market seems to like Apple’s perspective on privacy, but unless we can examine an altrnate universe where iPhones aren’t selling like hotcakes, it’s tough to know whether the market values the eithics involved, or just thinks it’s a fine strategy.
If the latter, the market doesnkt really value their values, but rther their ability to make money. Which is mot the same thing.
> With only seven million iPhones sold in China during the second quarter of 2018, Apple's market share in the country dropped by 12.5 percent year on year to 6.7 percent, according to a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC)
Apple have some very particular values in China though, storing iCloud data and encryption keys on state-owned servers. But the trend to decline started a long before that recent Apple decision.
> If you head over to Xiaomi China’s official store (via XDA-Developers) you’ll see three new bundles unsubtly named the XS, XS Max, and XR sets. Included in each bundle is a new Xiaomi phone — either the Mi Mix 2S, Mi 8, or Mi 8 SE, respectively — a Xiaomi Notebook, a Mi Band 3, and a Bluetooth earpiece/earphones, all for the same price as their namesake iPhones.
They are leaving a ton of money on the table taking their privacy stance right now.
That said, about this:
> and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable
It looks completely backwards. Environments that fix systemic problems are overwhelmingly on the side of not blaming individuals and looking only at the system. You are probably thinking about goal misalignment problems, and yet, just going after the individuals is still counterproductive if the system won't support the ones that do the right thing.
> It looks completely backwards. Environments that fix systemic problems are overwhelmingly on the side of not blaming individuals and looking only at the system.
That's a fascinating exchange. I find myself siding more with you than with braythwayt, but still uncertain because the idea is new to me. Is there a good writeup of arguments for both sides?
1. Individuals have values and ethics that they'll make a reasonable effort to comply with. Society recognizes this and rewards and punishes individuals for the ethical bent of the projects they are clearly responsible for.
2. As the size and complexity of a project grows responsibility becomes diffuse until there's no single individual to hold responsible for any given decision. Once this happens the informal, personalized ethical safeguards begin to break down.
3. Once the informal individual scale safeguards have dissolved they usually can't be rebuilt. Instead they need to be replaced with formal safeguard mechanisms that operate at the project scale.
What really confuses the discussion is that a well working system that deals with ethical failures does necessarily hold people personally accountable. But you can't fix it by focusing on the "holding people accountable" part, it never works. You have to focus on the "system" part.
Maybe when one person speaks up, others will be emboldened.
But if you say, “Ontario made this stupid decision,” I can’t tell you, “I didn’t vote for this, I can’t change it, I’m not responsible.”
I have to tell you, “It sucks, and as a citizen I bear some of the responsibility, and here’s what I’m doing in the hopes of fixing it.”
My only argument is that people who stay have some accountability. Accountability doesn’t mean they are automatically bad people, but it does mean we can ask them, “What are you doing about it?” And they don’t get to shrug and say, “Nothing I can do, so my conscience is clear.”
If my words are right, they could be written with gold engraving on vellum and scattered from my ivory tower, and they would still be right.
If my words are wrong, it doesn’t matter who I am or where I sit, explain how they are wrong.
If you take the engineer off the hook because “they can’t change things,” you know what inevitably happens? You discover that the product and eng managers can’t change things either. In theory, maybe, but in practice they are given accountability for revenue and growth targets, so what choice do they have?
Let’s move up the ladder. Can we blame the directors and ELT. No, the markets hold them accountable for growth, and every company plays dirty, so what choice do THEY have?
Pretty soon everyone is shrugging, and now you understand how SYSTEMIC problems persist: Nobody is held personally accountable because no one person can make change without sacrifice, and sometimes not even then, it would take mass walkouts or protests , and each person is but a drop in the bucket.
This mechanism of not holding people accountable because they don’t have sufficient authority or power to make unilateral change is how all systemic injustices persist. Racism, sexism, class distinctions, corruption in government, predatory corporations, all of them.
They persist because individuals say, “What can I do? Nothing, so I might as well go along with it.” And if everyone accepts this...
The next thing you know, they’re writing software to assist opressive regimes oppress their citizens.