> I certainly don't expect the poor engineer that had to implement the cookie changes to refuse and quit his job over it.
There are no poor engineers at Google.
That is, ironically, the point people are making: if you make that much money doing something so (arguably) distasteful, you deserve scorn. It's in the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" family.
Are you really comparing a software developer completing tickets based on requirements to Nazis being told to kill? The fact that you need to draw that comparison tells me you are going overboard.
No, I’m not comparing engineers at Google to prison camp guards.
I’m comparing the argument that the Google engineer is just following orders to the argument that camp guards were just following orders.
I’m not the one who brought up the exact same defense. But if that defence is brought up, Perhaps the person emplying that argument should be asked if they meant to make the comparison indirectly by using the same argument.
Your argument is wrong in every regard that matters and this is in no way comparable to the military.
The contract you sign when you get the job tells you to follow those instructions. And you have laws that say that you can be a whistleblower if they are illegal. Well this may be immoral or unethical but it doesn't strike me as illegal. So your only option is to refuse the implementation and quit your job.
Is the problem solved? No. Then that wasn't a solution and the responsibility wasn't on the engineer's shoulders. When you have a leaking pipe staining the wall don't blame and just repair the wall. Fix the pipe.
You're letting some irrational anger/hate cloud your judgement and it shows. You came up with a comparison with Nazis (!!!) and nothing anywhere close to reasonable opinion on who's really to blame and what the solution is. You're the guy who hates the person in the call center for following those questionable and possibly abusive scripts. Obviously it's on them.
That may be but the comparison is obviously a shock and awe type exaggeration. By virtue of Nazis being people that also did normal things you could bring it up in any discussion. But would you? Would you tell someone encouraging "the troops" that they're no different from Nazi supporters? It's the exaggeration that's the problem here. The same kind of exaggeration you hear when certain politicians scream "you are protecting terrorists and pedophiles!" to argue against encryption.
@braythwayt considered an engineer following orders to implement an unethical (illegal?) "feature" is directly comparable to Nazis following orders to commit genocide. Even in principle. But...
The Nuremberg Principles define War Crimes. It's quite literally what they're for. Do you not understand this massive difference? All laws take magnitude into consideration. Look at the jurisprudence. It's all related to acts far above what's being discussed here. But if you really really want to draw the parallel between a "regular" act and a the kind of crimes that see this principle applied then keep this in mind [0]:
> An individual must be involved at the policy-making level to be culpable for a crime against peace ... the ordinary foot soldier is not expected to make his or her own personal assessment as to the legality of a conflict. Similarly, such an individual cannot be held criminally responsible for fighting in support of an illegal war, assuming that his or her personal war-time conduct is otherwise proper
You're both conveniently ignoring the fact that this defense was attempted mostly by generals, captains, field marshals. Foot soldiers were never on the same footing as the superiors. Not in the execution of their duties, not in taking responsibility.
> At some point they will find an engineer to do it anyway.
And at some point when <future Google mostly comprised of scum> is thoroughly obviously malicious, we can expect/hope/encourage them to lose customers until they collapse.
The rats will move on as well, but at least the more virtuous employees can be elsewhere before the end implosion.
That's just addressing the issue in a really tangential way. You want to fix it, go for the people who come up with the idea. Even a company that employs almost exclusively ethical engineers will still have a few willing to compromise. Go for the head and the body will follow. Change starts at the top.
Most people working at Google don't work on these things. They work on products that genuinely help users. Should they quit just because someone else at the company is doing stupid things? Wouldn't that just leave the idiots in control of the massive resources of the company, unrestrained by internal pressure from good employees?
There are no poor engineers at Google.
That is, ironically, the point people are making: if you make that much money doing something so (arguably) distasteful, you deserve scorn. It's in the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" family.