Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse.
I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, you're partly responsible for getting it right.
If your boss makes you write evil crap, quit and get a better job. No need to be all courageous and write an angry blog post, most of us are wimps and that's fine. But that doesn't mean you can't vote with your feet. We need engineers to stop being willing to work anywhere as long as the pay is good and the tech is cool.
I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, you're partly responsible for getting it right.
If your boss makes you write evil crap, quit and get a better job. No need to be all courageous and write an angry blog post, most of us are wimps and that's fine. But that doesn't mean you can't vote with your feet. We need engineers to stop being willing to work anywhere as long as the pay is good and the tech is cool.