Perhaps that manager had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported...

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

Disclaimer: I have no moral right to preach this.

Maybe that the engineer or the manager (or both) are not that old and still paying of their student loans and other debt babies.

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/ ]

We should still blame the engineer, but they shouldn't shoulder the majority of the blame.

Maybe if all engineers quit with the first immoral request by the management, it would actually pave way for more morally ignorant engineers to replace them. We only see what has happened, not what has not happened. What if the iOS engineers do in fact have moral values and have declined some of the management's more immoral requests many times, but this particular request seemed the lesser of two devils? Maybe those engineers don't quit exactly because they want to hinder such actions by the management.

Thanks for making an insightful comment that acknowledges the complexities of the world and tries to take into account the information, events, and possibilities that we don't see. That's quite rare. It's more much common to assume that everything we know about the situation is sufficient to pass judgment.

> it would actually pave way for more morally ignorant engineers to replace them

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.

well hypotheticals without a concrete example are not much use, I'm left to speculate that they told the engineer either we shoot and eat this baby, or you hide the flag and they heroically hid the flag.

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)

I’ve in past jobs occasionally objected to being assigned a task on ethical grounds. My manager never had a problem with it. There were 10 people on the team so he’d just reassign it to one of the other nine who had no problem with the task.

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.

> I agree. We shouldn't blame the engineer but the managers asking for this in the first place and knowing they can get away with any sort of "small pressures" they put on their employees.

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

Not "managers" but the AAPL board. China will ban all iPhone sales in a heartbeat, sending the stock xx% down. Go ahead and keep the Taiwan flag there then...

I put the blame on both. We have a responsibility to exercise ethical discretion in our work, and we have the power to do so. If you get fired for refusing to remove the Taiwanese flag from iOS, then take to your blog, set a fire under Apple's ass, and wait for the interview offers to roll in.

Isn’t it likely that would be an NDA violation?

Maybe, but for my part I'd break it in a heartbeat and let them sue me. Perhaps the right answer is a tech workers union.

Sadly I believe that the job offers will be limited as moat companies like obidient employers more, than independent ones who cause discomfort. You would have to have good skills to compensate. (or the willingness to move to taiwan)