Comment by nstart

This is tough to read. I'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 "add me to the newsletter" 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 "we need our email signups and dont dare tell me how to do my job". 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'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't share personal info. It bothers me that I don'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'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.