We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

We technologists like to pretend we're powerful, that we could bring these giant megacorps to their knees because those fancy suits need us, right?

No. They need an engineer, not any one specific engineer. Companies like Amazon reject many candidates that could probably do the job they applied for, but were rejected because they can afford to be picky. If anything changes at Amazon it not be because of the loss of that guy's engineering skills.

What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians, and that the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital. We need to give up the fantasy that we can change things with individual action, and start looking towards collective, society-level solutions to the problems today.

> “Graveyards are full of indispensable men”.

— Charles de Gaulle.

Wow, that's an awesome quote. I Googled it out of interest, and it wasn't coined by Charles de Gaulle though:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/

This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers.

Maybe if we call it a "guild" (like the screen actors guild) it'll be more palatable to software developers who fancy themselves beyond the need for something as blue-collar as a union.

Ah, that’s a shame. But hardly surprising, most iconic quotes seem to be fake.

"I can make a new major in ten minutes, but a regiment of artillery is difficult to replace"

-- misattributed to Napoleon, on staff promotions

>This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers.

Yes, in part. But it's almost always enabling collective action that benefits the (current) workers (and the union officials).

Do you have a source for that claim?

Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time; pricey cogs for sure, and replacing them may take some time, but they are still cogs.

Indeed, and even the ones where "replacing them may take some time" are only a very small percentage.

>> This is why unions exist: to enable collective action by workers.

> Yes, in part. But it's almost always enabling collective action that benefits the (current) workers (and the union officials).

What's the problem with that? Corporations almost always enable collective action to primarily benefit (current) shareholders (and executive management).

What is an ocean, but a sea of drops? It starts with employees speaking up individually. Raise your voice and be heard. Upper management won't learn moral lessons on their own; they need to hear employees nagging them to be better people.

"the true power in society is held by a relatively small number of people who hold a massive amount of capital" ... so they can direct collective actions (eg. a free enterprise).

So why would your top-down collective action be any different?

> Engineers should begin to understand that they are not some enlightened beings that have somehow grown beyond the need for workplace organization. They are still cogs in the machine that can be replaced at any time

This kind of thinking is exactly why Amazon warehouse workers are fed up.

they did not imply top-down organization.

Union membership up, 1% share down:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...

Or, what if we passed a law that required companies to give a certain percentage of their board seats to elected employee representatives? Then, employees wouldn't just have to hope their voice is heard, they can make management listen.

Companies like Amazon were not always in the position you've described. It took decades to get there. And there would have been numerous opportunities along the way where a single engineer could have had a massive impact.

A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today. 10 or 12 years ago they absolutely could have changed the course of the company.

Almost all collective change is spearheaded by the ideas and leadership of a few individuals.

The corporations are their workers. The suits are only powerful because we collectively chose to listen to them.

They are their workers AND all the other people who aspire to work for them.

So you're saying Amazon is all my fault? :) [ employee #2 ]

Edit: to be a little less terse, in 1996 I quit working for Amazon. There were multiple reasons, some not connected with the company, but a number that were based on my perception of what sort of corporate culture it was going to be have. And yet ... here we are.

Is there anything I could have done in the 14 months I helped build the initial version of amazon to change how things turned out? Is there anything I could have done after that time if I had stayed? Employee #1 had similar misgivings but stayed for 5 years, and was arguably equally ineffective at altering the "nature of the beast".

So sometimes, even though it appears that we do have the power to either (a) withdraw our labor from an organization (b) remain and voice dissent, it ends up doing no good if the actual leadership is following a clearly defined (in their mind) path.

There will always be enablers for the sort of culture that a company like one of the FAANGs want to build.

When you help a dubious firm progress, you further that dubious behaviour.

Techies, and everyone else, included.

Edit, re the enlightening discussion below:

You are complicit in your employer’s behaviour, more-so if you are reasonably able to find another job, but decide against it.

I felt they did.

I think we've only ever seen things work sustainably when every individual adopts a particular set of behaviours, but maybe this is mostly just semantics?

The suits control the purse strings, that's why they are powerful.

If you don't listen, you get shown the door and they'll pay someone who will listen.

That's pretty much what Gandhi felt too, before he got kicked off the train.

For those interested his story is a pretty interesting example of a weird bumbling nerd who annoyed most people, transitioning into a sort GodFather of Collective Action. How he built such a large network of backers is as interesting as the tools he used and what results he produced.

That's really not a useful distinction though.

If you drive or ride in any sort of vehicle that uses gasoline, then you're helping big oil get away with the deepwater horizon oil spill. ... Or even if you purchase any good or service that was transported by a vehicle that uses gasoline.

By using gas you're normalizing a system that accepts oil extraction as necessary which furthers the dubious behavior of the people responsible for deepwater.

Also by not using gas or any good or service that uses gas then you're making yourself look crazy which also furthers the dubious behaviors of big oil.

So now that everyone is evil; it really doesn't matter if anyone is evil. Might as well catch fish and drown them with oil by hand. Either way dubious behavior is furthered, so why not.

You're going to need a lot more nuance and practicality to make a meaningful statement in this realm.

Side note: Tim Bray isn't merely one technologist. I suspect his public writings about working at AWS, and his implicit endorsement, have helped AWS to attract some top talent.

Certainly, when I was considering going there, people pointed me to his writings, and overall the writings increased my positive impression of the idea of developing AWS, beyond my already positive impression from using it.

This also suggests one way in which we each could, perhaps should, make an individual difference: when we're working at an organization, we're implicitly endorsing and representing it to other prospective hires. We should hope that our presence there would make others want to work there more.

> what if we passed a law that

You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine.

Yeah passing a law sounds like it'll solve the problem real quick. /s

> What would actually make the world a better place is if we recognized that we're really just well paid technicians

I couldn't agree more. It's quite tiresome to constantly hear about techbros somewhere "solving problems", "changing the world", achieving "disruption" yadda yadda yadda. You're building apps and websites, that's just about it. It just sounds unprofessional to describe yourself any differently. What's wrong with just being properly on-task as a well-oiled cog in some huge collective machinery?

>> what if we passed a law that

> You want to pass a law with the current pro-big-company politicians in power? Like the laws that companies ignore on a regular basis because the enforcement arm of has been dismembered? Even in cases where it hasn't been, the cost of complying with the law is often more expensive than breaking it and eating the fine.

There are a lot of problems to be solved, as your list shows. Cynicism-fueled paralysis isn't going to fix any of them. Neither will fixating on a few easy but known-ineffective methods of change (e.g. petitioning the local lord, er, company management to voluntarily do the right thing, even though the king, er, shareholders have other ideas).

The way hard problems are typically solved in a democracy is someone organizes a political movement that pushes for a platform of laws to solve them. Oftentimes those laws are more radical than what eventually gets passed, but that's bargaining.

You'll never get what you want if you make all your concessions even before you make your first offer.

> A single engineer at Facebook will not make a difference today

making a difference or not is a false dichotomy.

Every single candidate refusing to work for fb makes a difference of size one.

You still don't get it? The "purse" is just a social construct.

This makes a very good point. This is a systemic problem. Our political and economic system facilitates monopolies. This gives certain individuals a disproportionate amount of power over society.

The people who tend to get power are far from being the most qualified to shape society. People who are good at taking tend to be bad at giving. Shaping society in a good way requires an altruistic (not opportunistic) mindset. Opportunists will constantly see a way to profit and will not be able to resist the temptation. Their personal interests will always get mixed up in their philanthropy so it will never be truly effective. The faith which winners place in the virtues of capitalism is part of the problem.

Ultimately, profit is the product of exploitation. Most successful people will refuse to acknowledge this and that is why they tend to not be effective at shaping a healthy society.

It’s not binary. There are degrees.

Filling your car with petrol and choosing to stay with a dubious firm are at opposite ends.

The difference, to me, is your ability to avoid the complicity.

It’s hard, for most, not to drive in their petrol-based car.

But for many techies, it’s not hard to choose a different tech firm.

Or as I put it sometimes "OK, so someone was really good at making and selling razor blades. Now tell me why that person should have any additional role in making economic and political decisions?"

(obviously, razor blades are not a particularly current example :)

I agree there is a spectrum. I'm not sure what evidence there is, or even what metrics you would use to decide that these two are at opposite ends.

Ability to reasonably avoid the complicity.

Obviously what’s reasonable is up for debate.

I’d say leaving one firm for another firm, in a decent job market is definitely doable.

Not using your car, on the other hand, for lots of people, isn’t reasonable.

That's why you have to learn to live for your own "selfish" good as opposed to giving yourself to your company. You use them like they use you. That's why I have worked for an assortment of companies that HN would turn their noses up to. I would never work with an "evil"company per se, but companies that don't do "life changing" or "socially aware" software is perfectly okay with me. Software is just a tool in my tool box to live the life that I want to live. Let go of the rat race and find out who you are. A yacht, a sports-car, a superb algorithm, a vapid partner on your arm, will never make you happy or feel like you're living your best life. Don't let work become your life. Otherwise you'll just be a burnt out programmer, salesperson, businessperson, or whatever, it's not a field that's doing it to you, it's yourself.

The problem is you are a cog, and most likely no better than your replacement cog, so other than your own moral high ground you aren't accomplishing anything. Personally I won't work somewhere that I find goes against my values. However I don't picture myself as the next MLK either.

I always hear people saying this but the person saying is 99% unlikely to have done so themselves.

I think that someone in your position could shift a dial a few degrees. And the resulting consequences, compounded over time, would be absolutely staggering. I'm guessing you did shift a few dials while working there, and probably in a good direction.

It seems like you are painting a picture where Amazon was destined from the beginning to be dealing with the issues it is now. Were there no other possible futures? Were there not individuals who had a massive impact?

I'm related to someone who runs very fairly large warehousing operations across north america. His decisions have certainly been influenced by employees. Hell, I think I've changed his mind on an issue or two over dinner conversations.

At my last job, I called out the CEO for having a PAC and pushing politics in the office. At my position before that, I called out the head of HR for illegally trying to instruct employees to not discuss salaries.

What have you done?

The point is that Bezos had a clear idea in his mind what kind of company he wanted to build, and there have always been enablers of that sort of vision, especially when the motivation of getting stinking rich is on the table.

I am sure that along the way there have been people inside the company who have shifted its direction towards "better" when viewed from the perspective of society as a whole and the majority of its employees, but those shifts are tiny compared to the momentum of Bezos' conception maintained by suites of VPs etc.

And remember, Bezos et al. almost certainly believe that they are doing the right thing. He might be richest man in the world, but he thinks he got that way by doing something good. He's not so stupid as to imagine the company has no downsides, but I am absolutely certain that he is absolutely certain that Amazon is a net positive for the world.

You accomplish a small thing, but a socially valuable thing.

You communicate that you do not approve of the behaviour and will not help. By staying, you accomplish the opposite.

It's a small voice. But a society valuable voice. Society is a number of small voices.

The reason MLKs need to exist is because fewer people raise their voice.

There’s a tendency to take something like this as lecture on humility or delusion, but it’s also a bit of a warning.

How do con artists work? They let you think you have the upper hand while you are being taken to the cleaners. If you think of it this way it’s not just the sort of hubris that gets one into “trouble”, it’s the sort that gets one exploited.

> It’s hard, for most, not to drive in their petrol-based car.

It is hard and probably not possible for some. But you still have some agency: you can use a bicycle or public transit when possible, buy a more fuel efficient car, etc. You’ll still use gas but less overall. Not as drastic as not using a drop of oil anymore but still something.

When the vast majority of ultra-successful companies engage in undesirable practices, we must accept that those practices experience evolutionary positive selection. They are advantageous in the current environment. This is a structural problem, rather than a problem with any specific company.

More distressingly, this means that any work at a funky, independent, ethical company is merely laying the foundation for future unethicality, like Y2K Google.

The industry is known for contempt of the law, tax evasion, and oppression of the poor and minorities because this is what our society is known for.

Fantasies of personal power abound as we engage in cultural wars with our fellow citizens on personally important, but nationally and structurally irrelevant topics. We feel strongly about gender/animal/gun/vaccination/religious rights and engage in passionate debates and demonstrations as wealth, power, and freedom is gradually and inexorably stolen from all of us.