I believe the applicable phrase here is "courage of your convictions."

I've been fired twice for refusing to do things that I thought were unethical. Neither time did I have a safety net ready. But my life still continued.

A few years ago I stood up to a middle manager over privacy issues in a feature request. It went far enough to get HR and the legal department involved. It took half a year, but I won.

Bully managers count on people being afraid to lose their jobs. If more people stood up to them, they'd be afraid to make stupid requests in the first place.

Did you mean safety net as in another job lined up or substantial personal savings? Having a safety net generally means that your situation might be tough but you're okay if you quit/lose your job.

Getting deported because of your H1B would be an example of "doesn't have a safety net". The definition has gray area (such as if your family in your birth country is rich), but as a rule of thumb if deportation is the likely outcome, then you don't have a safety net.

IF you are an immigrant family, this is a trolley problem. Regardless of the courage of your convictions, you are making a choice for not just yourself, but your spouse and kids. It's not purely your own choice.

I had neither. I took menial temp jobs and short-term manual labor jobs for a while until I could get something full-time in my field. Took about six months the first time, and nine months the second time.

Getting deported because of your H1B would be an example of "doesn't have a safety net".

Is it? It's not like if you lose your job when you're on an H1B they send you to the suicide booth. You just end up back in your old country, but with a much better resume. Yes, life is harder than it was in the United States, but you start again.

That's what people do — they get back up when they're knocked down. I've done it four times now. Losing an H1B is not the end of someone's life.

Well, depends on what you're going back to. Say it's China, and you morally disagree with a lot more of the Chinese tech industry's politics than you do the US's. Is it worth taking the one particular stand here to lose the long game?

Obviously I'm specifically crafting counterexamples, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not purely a matter of courage of conviction.

In your case, good for you - you went further than most would. I would not have held that particular line. If that was the choice I would have to make, I would start to look for a new job at that moment, not to quit.

Bring forced to move to a different community is always bad. The fact that states often force you to do it is a big reason I am an anarchist.

But seriously, moral is the thing that applies not only when it's convenient.

Disclaimer: I have no moral right to preach this.

Though I'd go with the ability to add or remove emojis or restrict them was a facility engineered for more moral motives and was a point and click level of solution that those with access could do such a change with ease.

Or

It was upper management...

Either way - I do not expect an announcement from Apple saying "Zach in engineering did it, his bad, sorry for that", or indeed anything at all as that would fuel this and unless it is still trending as an issue after a few weeks, then they might. But in general, such things PR wise, blow over and Apple like most have found that not fueling it with any response unless it is exactly what the populus want to hear, it is best to say nothing. At least, that is how many such comparable matters play out with such large corporations throughout history, though they have improved.

EDIT[ s/hold/old/ ]

All the more reason why they (the replacement) should be blamed. Obviously, those who might have refused to comply and were replaced made a moral stand and deserve commendation, not blame.

> Maybe those engineers don't quit exactly because they want to hinder such actions by the management.

Perhaps. There are a lot of hypothetical scenarios we could construct that might absolve the implementor of blame but this is possible in any scenario where we're not privy to the internal process that culminates in a corporate decision.

But until I get a confirmation on this unselfish act I'm gonna go with probably didn't think much about it and took the next ticket on his list.

Which hey. I'm not on a high enough horse here to berate the guy, but not on a low enough horse to speculate how noble he must be in secret. (excuse the gender specific pronouns)

There is no unified code of ethics that all software developers must abide by, so getting unethical work done is just a matter of moving the work to the next developer in line.

If we blame anyone, it should be the CEOs, board members, and large shareholders.

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?location=china-CHNC&page...

Is it reasonable to believe Apple might have signed that task to a team sympathetic to the One-China policy, or just generally someone who was happy to do it?

Why do people think there was some sort of circumstance that caused the engineer to compromise on their morals?

Talleyrand

So not as clear cut that they can all just pack up and go walkabout.

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