Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me.

Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off" to anyone who wants me to do things I find immoral. Furthering the needs of a power hungry regime looking to assert dominance over others? Nope. I spend all my day working to further democracy and freedom, not to enable free thought and self-determination to be squashed.

Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.

Perhaps that engineer 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...

I'd probably have made the same decision as you (I'm fortunate to have a safety net), but many people don't have that luxury.

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.

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.