There's a great Warren Buffett quote on this:

"Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy."

Great quote. But I wonder if things are so dark at some of these companies that, for some positions, they actually need to find people who lack integrity.

I doubt any CEO would admit to utilizing people who "lack integrity" but are otherwise ruthlessly effective.

This is actually based on a classification system for military officers first outlined in 1933 by a German general named Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord

Alternately they may own the business and calls the shots as they feel. I've personally found the most brilliant technologists often have very deeply held beliefs about ethical use of tech. If you want a cog to churn out code for your CRUD app, sure go for an amoral person who crank out 1k lines/hour. You want breakthroughs and brilliance, find somebody who thinks deeply enough about tech to have a moral perspective on the work.

>I'm sure that your employer loves your personal feelings interfering with hiring talent.

When I brought up my thoughts around the Uber candidate, I was supported by the people on the panel. One of them confessed that he had regretted not asking the question. It's part of the reason that I love working here.

If a team here built something like "god-mode" and it made the news for those levels of abuse... well, it would very possibly tank the company. It definitely hurt Uber. So it's not just personal, it's business!

is it really off topic to ask about past employment and ethical opinions of the work they did?

companies don’t just hire for talent. they hire for character too.

i don’t think companies expect hiring managers to hire people based on skill alone and put aside any character concerns they have about the hire.

Yeah, heaven forbid anyone pay attention to integrity and ethics when hiring. It's worked out well for wall st!

Exactly why we have interview problems in engineering. I respect engineers for having opinions and ethics and they should lean on them, but to bar one from employment because they were doing their job is wrong, immoral, and potentially illegal.

> because they were doing their job

Where have we heard that one before?

Not to defend the op, since I think they're taking a particularly hard line, but qualifying candidates based on their previous work is just something that happens.

I've personally been disqualified because I've worked at a legal, but "vice" based company - I've seen others not hired because their previous company was too "legacy", even though they did very similar work.

It's not necessarily right, but companies use the signals available for them - even if they're not 100% agreeable to everyone.

I'd like to emphasize the nature of the answer which was a defensive "I was just following orders".

At that point, I was conducting dozens of interviews a year, and I think that sort of question came up... maybe three times? One of those people was from a medical company with a very large and very embarrassing contemporary incident, and the interviewee and I talked about development process problems. In fact, they admitted, it was part of the reason they left! We hired them and I enjoyed working with him.

exactly this... I think there are more factors at play than “Didn’t you think about what you were doing?” such as, maybe they have a family they have to provide for and they actually like the people they work with and what they do it’s just Jim from sales all of the sudden suggests a feature that’s unethical but the company believes it’s the thing to build... at some point, leadership should be blamed, not the engineer who just implemented it so they can go home to their spouse.

In software, there is incredible demand and engineers have a lot of negotiating power. So, we have the power to actually get new jobs easily!

And fine, but then when that horrible thing makes the news and their answer is "i don't care, i was just building the feature", I take that to be an extremely unsatisfactory answer.

And if they work at Facebook with those kind of unsatisfactory answers, they are probably very qualified for a lot of positions, and I don't think they'll be hurting for job offers elsewhere.

After all, they were just following orders.

How would it be illegal?

Doctors are often required to attest their ethics before doing a job.

But engineers are not. There are jurisdictions that this could be framed as discriminatory. Not in the US, but other markets.

I'm not sure why this would be discriminatory (in law or otherwise) for engineers and not for doctors.

Maybe the difference is that (computer-based) engineers are expected to do unethical work in some situations and for some employers, and there is an unwritten code that they can pass the buck and won't be penalised just for "doing their jobs".

What if the job they were "just" doing exists in a legal grey area? Or, more realistically, is flatout illegal?

You wouldn't hire a former prostitute who put themselves through education to better themselves and get a mainstream job?

Is the prostitution on their resume?

Whether what they were doing was "legal grey area" or "flatout illegal" is for the courts to decide, not for a random hiring manager/engineer interviewing that person. If you have a feeling that something could've been "flatout illegal", consider reporting them to the appropriate legal channels.

I, personally, would have done the latter in that scenario, but only if that entry was on their resume and they were proud of it. So no, I wouldn't report someone who personally confessed that many years ago they were dealing or doing sex work of the illegal kind. Though I heavily doubt that someone would be dumb enough to put it on their resume and advertise.