electric.marf.space

I think I'm annoyed by the amount of social media hot takery that amounts to "programmers don't think about the social ramifications of the things they build."

My observation is that many programmers don't, but many programmers think a lot harder about the implications of their own systems than the users _and_ critics.

In my experience, all of social science, philosophy, _and_ computer science select for willingness to be recruited into systems -- that is, they select against the ability to make and engage with serious criticism of systems.

Most large organizations made of people that I have been in only have a handful of people who are able to do this, and they're central and load bearing. The selection process inevitably awards power and reach to the people who least deserve it, but they're deeply dependent on their marginalized, non-neurotypical subordinates.

Anyway, seeing the worst social sciences-adjacent people criticizing the best computer science-adjacent people just annoys me. Maybe stop picking on nerds.

@pyrex When it comes to corporate bullshit, I've been and worked with "the best computer science people" and can tell you exactly what happens when they criticize the system because I've done it.

Depending on your perceived value you're either ignored or given lip service about "We'll take it under advisement and open a jira ticket for the PM to consider", and if you push, fired or outright lied to about what's been changed.

I've talked a few times now about my experience with criticizing an abusive system just to be told by the CEO himself "Our competitors are already planning to do this, so if we don't someone worse might". No they weren't and they never did.

That was a company in which my perceived value was immeasurable. I did similar at a company where I was not so valued and was threatened with termination if I didn't stop "Rocking the boat" and moved out of any position of decision-making almost immediately.

It's not the coders. Not frequently anyway.

@trysdyn @pyrex this is why the semantics of UX is so interesting to me. The profession heavily postures the things you're talking about here which *just aren't compatible with capitalsm*, i.e. caring about the extended effects of whatever it is you're contributing to. I'd say that all positions in a company suffer this dilemma of finding that you're in a lane and it's not gonna go down well when you veer out of it. UX is my interest in this context but imagine being an AI ethisist? The charade!

@fasterandworse @trysdyn

I'm not sure what the right form of resistance is for people who already work for unethical companies.

I have a friend whose company is under a consent order and who is now extremely good at dragging the legal department into unethical things their employer tries to do, which turns those projects into a sludge. If they simply quit, their replacement probably wouldn't do that.

I think directly complaining is probably not the most effective way to resist. At my current job I outright said "I'll quit if you do any of these things" and one of them is "firing a person who I believe is at high risk of being economically exploited," and that worked weirdly well.

@trysdyn @fasterandworse

I suspect unionization is a really good default strategy, and pre-unionization aggressive politicking is a good idea.