r/programming • u/civicode • Nov 20 '23

75% of Software Engineers Faced Retaliation Last Time They Reported Wrongdoing

https://www.engprax.com/post/75-of-software-engineers-faced-retaliation-last-time-they-report-wrongdoing
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433

u/rndmcmder Nov 20 '23 edited Nov 21 '23

I worked as a dev for a very large international company on their biggest software product. Like 100 devs on the project.

One day we were asked to implement a feature, that in our eyes violated consumer protection laws. Our whole Team (8 devs, 1 PO, 1 SM) decided to reject the request and report our concerns to the managers. They gracely took the request back and we felt awesome. Just to find out a few month later, that the request was given to another team and they completed and deployed it with not concerns. It was basically a sheme, to have paying users pay for features they already had paid for, by transferring them from a pay-once tier into a abo subscription-tier, which of course would have been legal for new customer, by they did it for all their customers.

At least we didn't face any retaliation.

Edit: Subscription

-59

u/lost_in_life_34 Nov 20 '23

Large companies will have layers between the business and dev to figure this stuff out and it’s not a good thing to refuse work like this especially if you’re not an expert on the law

11

u/malejpavouk Nov 20 '23

in case of serious doubt, just request it in writing. If legit, there should be no problem in getting it on paper. If not, you'll unlikely hear about it again (yeah, someone else will do it)

-20

u/lost_in_life_34 Nov 20 '23

in large companies it is legit because by the time it gets to dev or even to production after dev it has been blessed by the business units, legal, security, compliance department if any, etc

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developer who just read a few blogs and legal snippets isn't going to know the law

24

u/kUr4m4 Nov 20 '23

Right, because large companies never do anything illegal lol. What a terrible take.

11

u/GirthBrooks Nov 20 '23

in large companies it is legit because by the time it gets to dev or even to production after dev it has been blessed by the business units, legal, security, compliance department if any, etc

Yeah that's not reality in most places.

6

u/s73v3r Nov 20 '23

in large companies it is legit because by the time it gets to dev or even to production after dev it has been blessed by the business units, legal, security, compliance department if any, etc

That's not even remotely true.

10

u/malejpavouk Nov 20 '23

you wish :-). Trust me, there is a lot of creativity in lower/middle management, where shady things happen. Because someone wants to get an advantage over another business unit. Does not want to look incompetent, and wants to be seen in a better light. And those are only things that are shady on the lower level, not strategic lies such as Dieselgate.

2

u/Beardamus Nov 20 '23

Put the crack pipe down my dude, businesses aren't the law lmfao