I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes. Are they heading home to family and kids after destroying the remnants of the turkish democracy and tell themselves "twas a good day"?
Can we please stop spouting this quote all over the place (especially when it isn't even applicable)?
You can believe that the folks working at FinFisher understand very well exactly what they are doing. Their salary, however, has simply caused them to ignore it.
I totally agree that this quote is almost too economic for its own good and that as a consequence, overexposure has brought it to the threshold of fatal banality.
However, OP didn't misapply it in this case. Rather, it looks like you may be making the very same point with plain language that the quote makes with sarcastic irony.
The eye-rolling banality is _exactly_ what I was aiming for.
"People prioritise greed over ethical behaviour, news at 11..."
The fact that people seem bemused by this in 2019, when it was banal and commonplace enough to be "sound bite worthy" back in the the 1940s, is where I was coming from. I have no doubt a scholar of classical language could trump me with an equally appropriate Latin or ancient Greek quote with a similar complaint.
People gonna peep. Given a choice between piles of money, and not fucking some other people over, those piles of money win _way_ way too often.
I just don't think they care, and they're under the assumption nobody else cares too.
I work for a news publisher in Sweden, and when we got acquired by a larger one the CTO of that company held a huge speech about why working for a news companty was so much more rewarding than working for Spotify. You get to make sure democracy functions, keeping the power in check. Sure, we can't pay you as much as Spotify, and it will not look as good on your cv, but at least you can go home and get a good night's rest knowing you did good. After the speech, minutes later, it was announced to us that this would probably be last time we saw him since he was going to start working for an online gambling business. Kind of took the air out of that whole spiel.
That's sort of hilarious! Makes you wonder, who wrote it, did he laugh at you poor sods on the inside for maybe having "morals" and other inferior things ripe for exploiting with "free" people like him. Or whatever else went on inside that head. If anything in particular.
How do people justify working for any controversial company or authority? If there's one thing humans are good at it's rationalizing bad behavior as good or at least acceptable behavior.
Is Germany an authoritarian regime when it tries to silence journalists and charge them with treason when they expose mass surveillance covering communications, Facebook and Twitter chats etc...??
Kind of funny how your link demonstrates a reasonably functioning justice system while you try using it to paint Germany as authoritarian regime.
The case was dropped and the prosecutor forced to retired. Sure, would have been better to never have happened, but I don't see any system ever not having some shitty humans.
Its about someone else forced into retirement after doing something unacceptable.
I have a hard time considering it an authoritarian regime as long as those "bad apples" have to feel the consequences. Even if there are way more of them than I'd like.
In case people here didn't notice... germany, like
other countries as well, has recently experienced a surge in alt-right populism. The AfD does get unpleasantly many votes, especially in some regions, but so far it seems to get handled reasonably well by the other parties. I personally are more worried about politics in the US reaching some breaking point.
This is only tangential, but I'm a bit disappointed that there's no Glassdoor page for FinFisher. Would've been interesting to see some insight into the company from that direction. Like, is it a decent place to work? Decent benefits? Pay? Anything? I actually can't find any open positions being advertised anywhere either, so I wonder where they're hiring.
In Germany (where I live), the job market for software developers is not that you can arbitrarily choose for whom you want to work; you have to take the job that you can get (and I know quite some people (in Germany) who work in software development who would love to find a better job).
So I personally believe that these people simply could not find a better job with less moral dilemmas.
I live in Germany too, and my experience is quiet contrary to yours. Of course you won't always work for a company that "saves the planet", but surely people care about good morals when looking for a job, and some companies even adjust to that.
A lot of my former and current colleagues quit jobs just because the companies they were working for were always prioritizing profit over morals, or they declined well paid jobs because they just didn't like the companies general business strategy.
Don't get me wrong though: of course you can't be super picky and always get a dream, green, social improvement focused job. That's not how it works.
Still: I would never want to work for a company that provides surveillance services for shady regimes.
a) Take the one job you've been offered right now, in your location, doing evil things
b) You and your extended family starve and die
Sorry, I'm just not buying it. What actually happens is that people decide that it's convenient to ignore the moral issues for a bit more comfort; basically, they "don't care".
There does exist some vanishingly small fraction of people on the boundary of homelessness for which they literally have to do everything to survive. I don't believe that this is a large group in Germany and I doubt anyone intelligent and healthy enough to be a professional software developer is in that group.
If you want to maximize earnings, go for it. You're only lying to yourself if you pretend it's the only option, though.
> So don't take out a mortgage that you can't afford to pay off.
Are you implying that you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you can't pay off without a job? That makes no sense at all. I'll admit you shouldn't take out a mortgage that you will default on if you're out of work for 1 month, but plenty of people wind up out of work for longer periods of time.
I'm saying that you should aim to not get caught up in a lifestyle in which you significantly increase the chance that you will feel forced to do bad things in the future to maintain it.
I won't give hard figures because really this mortgage example is just one of many. It's a basic principles thing.
Poor people living hand to mouth have no choice. A qualified software developer really does.
If you mortgage yourself to the hilt and have two kids you can barely afford, then you might well say "oh, my responsibility is towards my family now". Some people respect that.
I think it's bullshit. Anyone can increase their lifestyle to meet their income, pile up debts and then claim they just have to do whatever bossman says because otherwise it'll all unravel.
> Anyone can increase their lifestyle to meet their income, pile up debts and then claim they just have to do whatever bossman says because otherwise it'll all unravel.
And anyone can go from doing well to living in their car.
When I was younger, I was doing well for myself. I wasn't in debt, I rented (no mortgage), happily newly married. And then the economy dropped out from under me and I lost everything. My job, all my savings, etc. We had less than a month of (cheap) rent left in the bank. Eventually, my wife and I had to move so she could take a job further away. She was still in grad school and had to travel 90 minutes each way to meet with people at the school. That was because I couldn't find a job that would support us (after over a year of looking). We didn't have to compromise our morals, but we did have to make a decision that sucked for us. Because shitty things happen.
My family and I are back in a good place now. But I recognize that somethings things fall apart no matter how well you plan, and I don't judge people based on the decisions that felt they had to make at such times. I may disagree with their decisions, but I don't believe they are bad people because of them.
If you get a chance, watch The Wave. It's a good example of how sometimes even normal "not bad" people can wind up making bad decisions.
That’s a very high horse you’re riding. Everybody is looking the other way to some extent, there aren’t a lot of companies who live entirely on a moral high ground. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have all done shady things here in the US and internationally, and they still have a lot of employees. Being in tech at all is being a willing participating in your economy in a way that is disenfranchising the poor, nearly everyone globally is conveniently ignoring that. Reflect on your own choices and see if there aren’t in actuality a few things you’re conveniently ignoring.
The choice is not between wanky surveillance defence jobs and going full hippie and living in the forest.
To address the ad hominem: my personal attitude is to use the money I get from software dev for philanthropy. We earn a lot and have a duty to help the world. Noblesse oblige at a smaller scale.
I don't work at FANG because I think advertising is evil. This is a fairly common viewpoint on HN and hardly unique.
I think that’s all very commendable of you. But what is the choice, then? And if there’s a line, then obviously there will be legitimate variation in that line from person to person. If there’s a line at all, it means the bar for passing judgement on others has to be very high and extremely clear cut. And it’s rarely so clear cut that passing judgement is a good idea. Most people are just trying to get by and feed their families. For example, all companies advertise, so not working for a FAANG company doesn’t really escape that one. Paying for advertising is just as bad as taking money for advertising. Paying is what actually perpetuates the system. Total aside, but only two of those companies are primarily driven by ad revenue, Apple, Netflix, and Amazon all make money from products.
Let's say that the lower bound is "working for a spyware company".
I get what you're saying but I think you're just playing devil's advocate.
Yeah, I actually do personally struggle with this. The vast majority of companies do, indeed, sell and produce shit we don't need, often to the detriment of society at large (they may temporarily benefit individuals).
I am concerned with the climate too. I consume products that have embodied CO2 emissions. Because it's literally impossible to not do so in the modern world. That doesn't mean just throwing my hands up and saying "lol fuck it, there is no moral high ground" and buying a Hummer, y'know?
I am free to pass judgement on people who do bad things, and I will continue to do so. I expect people to do the same of me. This is the process by which we evolve as a race. It's big girl time now, there are 7 billion of us and we've collectively attained demi-god status in terms of our ability to affect the fabric of the world around us.
We _need_ to learn a way to put the collective before the individual or we are going to comprehensively fuck ourselves.
I live in the city of FinFisher (Munich), there's a LinkedIn or Xing recruiter call coming through thrice a week. Your statement might be true in Eisenhüttenstadt, but definitely not in the city where they are located.
I would disagree with the final part. Freelancing and actually earning a first-world developer income successfully requires quite a few skills that aren't part of a typical development job.
Knowing where and how to find leads, how to convert them into prospects and clients, how to negotiate, how to scope out a project, how to appropriately push back against scope creep and how to manage a pipeline of future projects are all important skills if you're freelancing (and not using a "race to the bottom" platform).
> In general, software developers have no problem at all with finding a job (or clients as a freelancer).
I was looking for a job in software development for a very long time (region: quite everywhere in Germany or Austria). As of today, I "only" found a job in a very different sector (which is not a bad job, but it hardly has anything to do with software development). And yes, I know quite some people in Germany who also had lots of difficulties finding a job in software development.
I think I know quite a lot about C and C++ (which means Modern C++ (currently C++17)), but have also worked in a lot of other programming languages (including Python, Java, JavaScript, Erlang (additionally, some further ones for university courses)). Additionally to computer science, I studied mathematics, where I also have a doctorate. I wrote my doctoral thesis about some very tricky questions about geometric structures behind optimization algorithms for discrete optimization problems. In all of these areas (mathematics, computer science, doctorate in mathematics), I either graduated with best possible or second best possible mark.
I also claim to know more about IT security than my CV suggests (I got one job interview for a job in this sector, and afterwards the interviewer told me that I have far too much knowledge in this area to be suitable for the available jobs; "you belong into academia").
The same holds, I believe, for embedded programming, where I also think to know quite a lot. Why am I so sure about it? Because as a hobby, I worked on reverse-engineering the firmware of some quite non-trivial embedded device.
I also think that I have an immense knowledge of arcane details of the instruction encodings of various CPU architectures, but this is merely a hobby of mine and useless for the job market.
--
There exist lots of people who seriously could not understand how I could not find a job as a programmer. For example quite some doctoral classmates (who could find a job in software development) called me a "wandering encyclopedia of the history of computer science".
--
As I said: I found a job in a sector that is very different from software development. Just don't tell me that it is easy to find a job in software development; it isn't, even if you are willing to relocate anywhere in Germany or Austria. And I know quite some people who have the same experience.
If you are talking about think-cell: about 1.5 years ago, I applied, but was rejected after the programming test (even though they liked my CV and had to admit that the C++ code that I sent in was of decent quality).
Let me put it this way: I am more of a deep thinker than a fast thinker and (to put it in mathematical terms) more of a theory maker than a problem solver (i.e. I prefer Alexander Grothendieck over Paul Erdős, even though, of course, both were great mathematicians).
So, I was not capable to solve the hard algorithmic problem that think-cell had in their programming test in the given 9 hours; not for a lack of C++ skills, but for a lack of experience in developing "crazy" data structures and rather being a deep thinker/theory maker instead of a fast thinker/problem solver.
Don't take it the wrong way and don't take it personally, but herein may lie the problem: companies are rarely looking for a deep thinker, but for said problem solver and someone getting shit done. At least, that's what most software development is about. Building things that can be sold.
That is why I wrote "(to put it in mathematical terms)": also Grothendieck and his scholars solved hard problems.
If you compare mathematical style of the mentioned Alexander Grothendieck and Paul Erdős, you will sense that they represent very different styles of doing mathematics. That is what I am referring to.
Solving interview problems is something that can be trained fairly effectively. Investing a few dozen hours into doing that improves your chances in coding interviews a lot. I tanked my first job interview (at Google) because I didn't know how to prepare. The next interviews I did much better.
Solving hard algorithmic problems in a job interview is a very uncommon interview practice in Germany. In all other job interviews that I had, the programming questions were ridiculously easy. UPDATE: I actually got rejected in one job interview because I knew too much about some quite subtle details of the C++ language (claimed reason: I am not "sufficiently pragmatic" as a programmer).
But I actually did solve some really hard algorithmic questions in my doctoral thesis - they are just of a very different kind than the "algorithmic brainteasers" that seem to be common in job interviews in the Silicon Valley.
I'd say for most jobs you are overqualified and people are afraid you would be bored after some time. If I were you I'd apply at an institute like the DFKI, I'm sure they would be glad to have you and provide you with a good challenge.
The things recruiters told you ("not sufficiently pragmatic" or that you belong in academia)... they didn't tell you this to talk down to you but to give you hints.
> The things recruiters told you ("not sufficiently pragmatic" or that you belong in academia)... they didn't tell you this to talk down to you but to give you hints.
I would have loved to stay in academia.
The problem, why I left academia is the infamous Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, which gives you an employment ban on temporary contracts in academia after 6+6 years. Since nearly every employment contract in science is temporary, this actually implies a nearly complete employment ban in science after at most 12 years.
I think you can stay longer if your position is paid for by a private party instead of publicly funded. That could very well be the case at an institute. Maybe reach out to them, best a professor and explain your situation.
While I am not currently looking for a job anymore (as I wrote: I found a job in a completely different sector), I nevertheless tried to find out what the company langsys is doing (since it is not unccommon for me to meet other people who have/had very similar problems). Unluckily, the website https://langsys.com/ contains no information.
I‘m sceptical. 20 recruiters on my LinkedIn profile per month would disagree. I‘ve turned in my notice more than once in Germany and literally had a job offer a day later.
True, there are some curious hotspots for software engineers. If you are tied down by family or friends, you might have to accept a significantly lower pay depending on location. Even if larger enterprises are present locally, they mostly pay less if the local market doesn't offer more.
You can do contract work and travel a lot, but that isn't for everyone.
Of course the lower pay is still enough to make a good living, but it certainly isn't anywhere near 6-figure jobs.
I share your opinion, job market in Germany is a tragedy today. I fully understand people writing shady software for VW group at Bosch, they have no alternatives. Kids want nice vacation, payments for the bank must be done every month.
Though I am not software developer, but I get also some recruiter offers every week. I was interested in changing jobs and starting talking to these recruiters. Max offers were at €60k what is a bad joke for Munich. Many offers that start negotiations as employment end as contract for 6 months.
Before writing here, that changing jobs in Germany is easy, talk to these “recruiters”. Get other work contract with negotiated salary ~€100k for Munich every week. I doubt this will happen soon again.
So, whether they'd work on making surveillance for totalitarian states was based on whether they'd make $60/k year or $100/k, and afford stuff "nice vacation" for the kids?
Doesn't sound like a principled stance.
Basically it rounds down to: they would consider a more ethical job, but it's their last priority, well behind a good salary and nice benefits...
(It's understandable of course, just not principled)
>The difference between $100k a year and $60k a year is enormous.
Principles shouldn't depend on that though. Else "Yeah, I'd help kill kids and kittens for $1m" would also be an acceptable answer. $1m is also enormous compared to $100k.
Decent people have made much bigger sacrifices that living with $60K a year for doing the right thing...
Doesn't have to be black and white. In fact, it's anything but. You can get a lesser job, with, as you said, 60K instead of $100K, and still take the principled stance. Black and white would be more like having to either work for the surveillance company selling to authoritarian regimes, or starving.
Losing your perks is not a "black or white" ethical choice.
>And job market would be fair with unlimited opportunities everywhere.
If they can only be good if they have nothing to give up for choosing so, and only when there are "unlimited opportunities" to ensure that choosing the more ethical job doesn't hurt their salary at all, then they shouldn't bother...
It might be a moral dilemma, but mostly it's basic risk mitigation, when you have to work for a company or agency doing illegal or unconstitutional things. In many cases the company will throw you under the bus.
The market is hot if you are a webdev in Berlin but elsewhere in Germany programming is no more in demand than any other technicians job. This may be hard to believe for the SV bubble crowd but this is how it is.
I live also in Germany and I experience the opposite. SW Developera may choose and SW Companies have hire whom they can get. Well things may be different here in Southern Bavaria, as they always are ;)
Sorry, I don't think that is true at all. For one developer there are 5 Job offers. I know multiple people who wrote 14 applications and got 14 offers. Others did not even bother to write any because they got so much offers from headhunters.
>I'm always wondering how the software developers of FinFisher justify working for such shady players like Turkey and other middle east authoritarian regimes.
Never mind those, they work in Germany, which as a country had its hand in 2 world wars, and directly exterminated 10+ million people, and was the home of Stasi, one of the fiercest surveillance agencies until 1989...
That alone, and how totalitarianism can be close at home at any time, should give them pause regarding making surveillance software, never mind what some developing world authoritarian regimes would do with it ...
The StaSi wasn't 2+ generations away though, the SU (and with it the GDR) only collapsed in the late eighties.
I do believe that most people aren't appalled by what was done, they are appalled by what was it done for. "To secure the rule of the party" sounds bad. "To end human suffering" sounds much better, and we tend to have a thing for rationalizing why it's righteous (or at least necessary) to do it this time.
Here's the conundrum that players like FinFischer probably encounter:
Not too many years ago, Turkey was a lot less demonized/shady. Imagine you establish a working relationship with them to help them combat "criminals", all is well for a time. Then, over the last few years, the outside perspective of Turkey is that it is an oppressive regime fighting people who are actually (considered by us) "freedom fighters". But the business relationships are still in place, and Turkey still believes it is fighting "criminals".
My point is that the definition of who is in fact "criminal" starts to get really blurry depending on who you are asking and what side they are on, and may vary over time.
China's angry because to them, the protesters in Hong Kong are "destabilizing terrorists" and aiding them is "a hostile act towards China". It's all relative, unfortunately.
Unfortunately not all of us programmers share the same foundation of moral principles, and not all of us programmers are anti-authoritarian left-wing anarchists. There are a fair number of "patriots" among us and no matter how much I dislike this kind of person they are the talent pool from which police, army and shady companies such as Finfisher draw their staff.
For some, the money is also appealing - the shadier the company the more limited the supply of workers (e.g. many could imagine working for the police, less for the military and only very few for Finfisher etc.), so they put up quite a chunk of money... enough to expand their talent pool, at least.
It's also not that that tech is only used to oppress free speech, hunt down dissidents etc. I was tangentially involved in an investigation targeting a child pornography collector/trader and talked a bit with the lead investigator. Their department used a commercial trojan as well, though I don't know whether it was built by FinFisher. "Hey, want to help us take down people that rape children?" doesn't clash with moral principles for most people, I think.
Note, I am only talking about my motivations and experiences. This was about 10 years ago and I left after about 18 months. Today it is likely a completely different place (e.g. only a few names in the suit sound familiar).
Why did I start there?
I already knew a lot of the current employees from previous work and remembered them as competent no nonsense senior developers. The job was pitched to me as working on software used by law enforcement against organized crime, terrorism and child abuser rings. Additionally the VC founded Startup I was currently working for imploded, I was fed up with the BS prevalent in the German VC founded Startup World, and my particular skill set was basically unemployable during that time for most other employers in Munich (mostly Scala and Objective-C). Gamma didn‘t hire people outside of their current employees network.
Why did I stay there?
The work environment was as close to zero bullshit as you can probably get to. During my time there were zero pointless meetings, the total meeting time during the 18 months I stayed there was less than 3h (I actually measured them once I realized how few and short our meetings were), no internal politics I could perceive. Feedback of developers was taken seriously, you had decent offices, good equipment and could focus on getting your work done in a way that since then no other employer came close to providing.
Other (not all) colleagues actually started out on the „hactivist“ , were - as far as I could See - highly competent software developers specializing in IT security without a formal CS or related degree, that probably also made it difficult for them to find other work suitable at that time. Pay was good, not exceptional.
Why did I leave?
I handed in my resignation shortly after Gamma appeared in the news the first time and it became apparent that sales was focusing more on governments that I personally do not consider as a „Rechtsstaat“ and less on fighting organized crime or child abusers.
Of course I could have known earlier/looked harder in the first place (I do not remember potential customers being keep a secret by sales) and to be honest this might be just the reason I tell myself, because after about 9 months or so I started to become excruciatingly bored by my day to day work... so this might have been the true reason and the news reports just the straw the broke the camels back. But I guess I‘ll never know.
Again it is roundabout 10 years since I worked there and this is just an account of my Personal experience, not „the truth about Gamma“
Off-topic: This is an article I would consider spending 1-3 dollars to read. But the only option for me is to subscribe. Therefore I won't be reading it and they won't get my money. I know that on demand paying for articles hasn't been made to work yet. But it still feels like there is a potential here that isn't being serviced.
There is a Dutch company called Blendle[0] that has figured this out pretty well locally, and also has a BETA program running in the United States[1]. Articles are often much cheaper than 1-3 dollars, I don't recall paying more than 1 eur. They also combat clickbait titles and intros by providing a refund when the article turns out lousy.
Just signed up for it. It looks good, but I am seeing a bunch of clickbait. Already had to use the refund feature once.
But the bigger problem is that I generally come to articles through social media or links from friends. Do I have to search for every article to see if they released it on Blendle? Also, a lot of them seem to change titles so that is actually pretty difficult.
Another episode of Streisand[1] is calling and she wants her cease-and-desist letter back or in other words how to geht the most puplic attention to a newspaper article.
"But this time, the company’s antagonists ramped up the pressure. Contained in the complaint were the names of FinFisher employees who the groups say are responsible."
