I get the sense that if it pays really well and is for a large company it’s not often judged, in fact it’s amazing, but if it’s for a smaller company with a less clear business model then it seems shady?
How do we sure that up? In our technical morality brains?
My mind didn't even think to ask it as I was reading the GPs comment and thinking about that small company as scummy.
It's easier to assign blame and judge morals the smaller the group is, all the way down to an individual. You can put a face to the crime.
E.g. paying property taxes for schools vs. federal tax dollars allocated to defense spending. School levies can get particularly heated and draw lots of activism on both sides while the same doesn't seem to hold for defense spending. [this is USA specific]
OK, I'm just going to come out and say it: I'd do it as well. And I cound my blessings often (not every day, though I should) that I don't need to, and unless the world changes massively and high-level experienced software devs are no longer needed, I'll never need to.
If you had ended up being charged for spamming, hacking into bot catchers, breaking data protection laws (like GDPR if you live in EU), would you accept that as a acceptable consequence and still have done it to get money for the family? Or would you think that is unfair?
This crossroad is for me the line where social support networks should exist. If people find crime to be the only solution in a situation and the legal repercussions to be a fair trade then it is cheaper and more humane to fix the original situation. Your wife's country of birth should support her while she is unable to work because of the pregnancy, and the child should be supported similarly as long they are a child.
I would have setup a way not to be caught.
It would be criminal, (this was pre-gdpr it definitely would be now), but I would have done it still.
She was supported to an extent, but we knew once she had our son, we wouldn't be able to keep up with necessities. We needed to start buying things then and there.
Well yes there was some risk involved. but gamblers fallacy and all that.
This is not an accusation — I don't claim to know your individual situation. Yet I suspect that in many cases where people say "I'm doing this to feed my family", there is actually a larger component of preserving pride and reluctance to ask for help.
The irony is that this is part of what dehumanizes the system and perpetuates the cycle.
So I worked on online web dev jobs for some seriously shady characters.
I made between 10 and 15 sites that they would buy databases and mass mail users in various industries to try and get them to sign up for really shitty programs. (One for example was a roofing company promising 100's of clients).
The amount of work I did on the back end to track everything about the users, fingerprint them and send a report about where in the multipage process they were up to and what they had filled in (but not submitted!) was crazy.
My point being, I hated every single moment of that. But I needed to get money for my family.
If I had it had a good offer that required spamming forums and bypassing bot catchers, I would have done that too.
Sometimes you are in a position where you have to weigh your family's needs vs the general good.
One last point, or reiteration. I hated every. Single. Moment. And I am ashamed that I was in that position by my own fault (not picking a more secure job). I won't blame anyone else for it and I agree I did a bad thing. But if I was in that situtation again, I would do it again.