A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
In the vein of Kumail&#x27;s critique, if it&#x27;s useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences:<p>A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out&#x2F;FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy.<p>I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good.<p>Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges.<p>(Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nemil.com&#x2F;musings&#x2F;software-engineers-and-ethics.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nemil.com&#x2F;musings&#x2F;software-engineers-and-ethics....</a>