Code I’m Still Ashamed Of
This is tough to read. I&#x27;ve railed and yelled in meeting about ethics and have ultimately discovered that in nearly every case the money talks louder. I remember this company I worked with that had a sign up with a &quot;add me to the newsletter&quot; check box. When leading a ux review it was decided to switch it off by default. One day a friend of mine buzzed me to say she was annoyed at receiving mail even though she specifically made sure that that box was unchecked when signing up. I assumed it was a dev error and checked with the dev team and was told to go check with the CTO. When I did, the CTO said that it was exactly how he wanted it. I wasnt even manager level but I lost it and yelled at the CTO. I was simply told &quot;we need our email signups and dont dare tell me how to do my job&quot;. I tried to look for support elsewhere in the company and all I discovered were at best some hushed mutterings in corners. Even laughs of me being on some kind of moral high horse. It hurt to know that the same people I know who did these things are now working on startups that scoop up massive amounts of people&#x27;s location data. The same people who wrote tiny scripts to collate customer data to give to the sales teams who would give it to clients as part of a sales package even though the terms specifically said we don&#x27;t share personal info. It bothers me that I don&#x27;t even know how to fight it since all it takes is the next dev to come along and say yes to end months of protests against something unethical. I don&#x27;t want regulation and lobbyists pushing their tech onto me as a solution. If anyone has advice, I think this is a great thread to share thoughts.