Wow, I’m realizing what an unpopular opinion this is on HN! Yes, as a software developer you should absolutely be accountable for the ethical concerns around what that protobuf you’re moving around from one API layer to the other is used for. You’re not a code monkey. Ask, and refuse if it’s unacceptable. I have quit jobs where the ultimate purpose of what I was building was evil.
EDIT:
Forum the original OP:
> Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be.
They are accountable to themselves and their own conscience before both their bosses and their users. I understand this is an uncomfortable line of thinking if your employer asks for ethically questionable project work, but I’d argue that if this is the case for you, it warrants career introspection.
There is a gigantic difference between building an unethical software product and abusing an ethical software product for unethical purposes. The developer is not the user. Do you not understand that?
Sure, same as the LLVM example someone else pointed out. Good points. I’ll qualify my opinion then. To the extent that the engineer can know the ultimate application of their work, he or she should be responsible for ensuring it is being used ethically.
So, the engineer writing a binary search, knowingly working on “Project Orbital Death Ray” or “Voter Suppression 2.1” should know better. I hope we can at least agree on that one.
The engineer writing a linked list or moving around Protobufs for their some open source toolset gets a pass because their project as they understand it is ethically neutral. BUT there will be that engineer who then takes those tools and integrates it into “Project Orbital Death Ray”. That’s maybe where accountability should begin.
Everyone’s talking about the managers taking the blame and yes they’re culpable too. But at the end of the day an actual software developer’s fingers type the code in. If that developer knows what he is working on, he needs to bear the responsibility, too.
EDIT:
Forum the original OP:
> Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be.
They are accountable to themselves and their own conscience before both their bosses and their users. I understand this is an uncomfortable line of thinking if your employer asks for ethically questionable project work, but I’d argue that if this is the case for you, it warrants career introspection.