Ethics, Politics Pit Tech Employees Against Their Bosses

[Guest]

Controversial relationship with ICE makes Microsoft the latest company to anger its own employees by working for the U.S. government.

Ethics, Politics Pit Tech Employees Against Their Bosses : Read more

 

[fredfinks]

My mined data identifies as a separated illegal immigrant child. ICE ICE baby

 

[USAFRet]

The latest company?
So having MS reps and advisors on military installations all over the world, US and other, for over 2 decades...that hasn't done it?
The billions of dollars they made from selling the military Windows and Office was OK?

Only now?

 

[fredfinks]

The latest company?
So having MS reps and advisors on military installations all over the world, US and other, for over 2 decades...that hasn't done it?
The billions of dollars they made from selling the military Windows and Office was OK?

Only now?

The latest software versions are high in gluten and support the patriarchy.
This is the age where teaching mathematics is considered to 'perpetuate white privilege'. (im not joking. this is the nonsense coming out of universities)

 

[kingbob17]

This is dumb

 

[mihen]

There is a lot of misinformation on child separations right now. It's actually kind of amazing the media blitz of misinformation on the subject.
a) Asylum seekers do not make up a significant proportion of those in this situation. It's just easier to sell asylum seekers than illegal immigrants.
b) Politicians want access to these children for photo-ops for mid-term elections.
c) People illegally crossing the border are now being charged criminally. It would not make sense to keep children with their parents if their parents are in jail. Just as when someone in the US is charged with a crime and their children no longer have a legal guardian, they are placed into protective custody. Criminal charges are actually pretty common in other countries when crossing the border illegally.
d) When people give their opinion on the subject a whole slew of immigration related content is interspersed in the conversation. From DACA to Refugees.

 

[kingbob17]

As the other commenters have pointed out: this child-parent policy has been in place since the Obama years and no one seemed to bat an eye (there is video of Hilary supporting such policies from 2014). The IG report must have had some stuff in it the MSM didn't want people knowing. It's so obvious that this whole thing is a manufactured scandal (again, been going on for years). I am disappointed in Scharon for being so uninformed.

Shame on Tom's hardware. Also, I have good money on them removing the comment section soon since they don't want the idiot masses to have their propaganda tainted.

 

[Guest]

What you get is a bunch of far left employees who lives revolve around their political activism, as its practically their religion, constantly demanding that people who don't agree with them be fired, and the company not interact with them.

Twitter is the biggest cause of this as it has created this echo chamber for this new religion of progressive politics. These people must be seen being virtuous by their fellows. They must be seen as being the most extreme.

Google is a good example of this. They force employees to take diversity classes that have no scientifically proven benefit to assuage their progressive religion. Yet Google's actual diversity numbers have barely changed in 4 years, because none of this progressive religion stuff actually works! But an employee who points that out is of course being a heretic and must be purged! Which is of course why Damore lost his job after trying to explain to them why their system wasn't working.

This new religion is wide spread in tech, and demands people convert or hide. I would be amazed if my post here is not deleted for heresy. Most tech sites, ArsTechnica, Tech Crunch, Kotaku... are all dominated by members of the progressive religion and engage in widespread censorship to ensure an echo chamber. It will be interesting to find out if Toms is too.

 

[ravewulf]

Well, at least /some/ people care about protesting fascist governments

 

[Tanyac]

Let's be clear; the wealthy do not suffer from conscience, ethircs, morality or remorse. They're in it for the bucks, and they don't care who they destroy along the way. And war is big money, whether the people want it or not.

But suggesting to the hard workers that they should think very seriously about whether they stand up for ethics and moral behavior based on the likelihood of finding another job is just plain wrong. There need to be protections for whistle blowers and those that stand up against "profit at the cost of the people" - Not punishment!

 

[alextheblue]

This new religion is wide spread in tech, and demands people convert or hide. I would be amazed if my post here is not deleted for heresy. Most tech sites, ArsTechnica, Tech Crunch, Kotaku... are all dominated by members of the progressive religion and engage in widespread censorship to ensure an echo chamber. It will be interesting to find out if Toms is too.

Tom's at least doesn't engage in the kind of active suppression of "wrongthink" like some of those others, who work fervently to scrub anyone who speaks against doctrine. So basically your post is safe.

Google is a good example of this. They force employees to take diversity classes that have no scientifically proven benefit to assuage their progressive religion. Yet Google's actual diversity numbers have barely changed in 4 years, because none of this progressive religion stuff actually works! But an employee who points that out is of course being a heretic and must be purged! Which is of course why Damore lost his job after trying to explain to them why their system wasn't working.

Poor Damore. He was actually left-leaning but he was an engineer, a numbers guy. What he didn't know was facts are hate speech. He got royally screwed over by Google. A lot of women who are actually in tech came out and defended him but it didn't matter... he went against their driving ideology, and that's a capital offense in Google. If you're a conservative working at Google, you have to stay in the closet.

Also I love how people use the whitewashed term "undocumented". I'm gonna start entering neighbors houses while they're gone. Eat their food, nap on their couch. If they don't like it, I'll just tell them I'm an undocumented resident of this house now.

 

[rwal22]

Wow when did this site become a haven for the right wing tinfoil hat conspiracy club?

 

[ubercake]

Ethics? People who knowingly break laws are unethical.

 

[kingbob17]

RWAL22--
Conspiracy? You mean like "MUH RUSSIA"?
Or the IG report that specifically names FBI agents vowing to stop Trump? I'm having trouble finding what you thing a "conspiracy theory is". Of course you conveniently leave out any "proof" or even name what you think the conspiracy theories are! Typical.

 

[almarcy]

Oh, golly. Money is not Holy Writ? Code is not pure poetry? Technology not only makes very good ball bearings but bombs and bullets? What is this world coming to? Sigh. Hard to see anything clearly in a sandstorm. Earth bocks its trash around. Some watch, and comment. Sigh. Enjoy something more satisfying. A good fart can bring relief from stress

 

[jabliese]

Oh goody, ethics 101:

What if Amazon's recognition software stops a terrorist attack? (This one boggles me the most. Who else but government are you going to sell this software?)

What if Google's AI stops an attack on civilians?

What if Microsoft... nah, can't say anything good about Microsoft. But, seriously folks, do you think ICE would be better off not using computers?

For more interesting discussions, Ethics 101 is available at your local college/university.

 

[redgarl]

If you think tech companies are not going to jump into government contracting, you are out of your mind.

The government wants it, the government is going to get it. It is either going to be big tech companies that can be accountable, or shaddy companies without accountability.

 

[redgarl]

There is a lot of misinformation on child separations right now. It's actually kind of amazing the media blitz of misinformation on the subject.
a) Asylum seekers do not make up a significant proportion of those in this situation. It's just easier to sell asylum seekers than illegal immigrants.
b) Politicians want access to these children for photo-ops for mid-term elections.
c) People illegally crossing the border are now being charged criminally. It would not make sense to keep children with their parents if their parents are in jail. Just as when someone in the US is charged with a crime and their children no longer have a legal guardian, they are placed into protective custody. Criminal charges are actually pretty common in other countries when crossing the border illegally.
d) When people give their opinion on the subject a whole slew of immigration related content is interspersed in the conversation. From DACA to Refugees.

Sorry, it is not the same in Canada... or any other major country in the world... this is the issue.

 

[Pedasc]

As a Canadian I find this whole situation odd and didn't understand it so I did some actual research.

The changes to the laws that allow this actually came in place during Clinton and Bush Jr. presidencies (why do people insist on giving Obama so much credit for these things). It was mostly meant to apply to people who were already criminals outside illegal immigration. The current crisis is related to a policy change that the current White House put in place to detain illegal immigrants in the same manner as other criminals. It is correct that the laws were there and that this was happening before so some outrage can legitimately be levied at the previous governments but this is at a whole new level that hasn't been seen before.

Trump gets a lot of unwarranted bad press but this one is squarely on him and his staff as they can actually fix it at any time with no change to any current law. Instead it is being used as a political sledgehammer to try to force his opponents to cave to demands and to successfully get them to overreact. He wants to polarize everyone as much as possible so he can get the extreme reactions he needs from his opponents.

The immigrants do need to shoulder some blame but to be fair to them thousands have done this before and this never happened to them. They really got no warning because Trump wanted the shock factor to hit as hard as possible.

I do have to say that it is actually working based on the reactions from the press (on both sides), Microsoft employees, as well as the comments here. They are just eating this up with people recording crying children and others equating crossing a border to a physical assault. This makes no sense to me except as a purely political move. A completely amoral one but also brilliant.

 

[shpankey]

It's not Trump's, it was Session's policy.

 

[majorlag]

If your a environmentalist, do you work for a logging company and complain, no you get a different job. It is not the employer responsibility to make your feel warm and fuzzy about your aligned philosophies.

Reminds me of where we would be if it were not religion stiffing technology in the days of ol. Now it is the precious snowflakes stiffing technology.

A business number one goal, is to make money, otherwise you can not run a business and keep going. Does that give them a free pass to break the law, NO, but most of these issues are one's personal political views that are trying to be forced upon others, again if you don't support the businesses way of thinking, then go else ware.

Microsoft, first off these people coming into the country illegally, have broke the law. If parents of children both break the law, then kids get sent to the state, this has been the law for anyone living here in the US. Don't break the law, problem solved.

Amazon, so we all want to be protected and not have another 9-11, but we don't want to have the tools to help protect us, I am not sure how to tell you this, but facial recognition is already being used, Amazon just has better or equivalent tech, so again they are a business and wish to make money, how is this a bad thing. You cannot innovate or make technology better if you never use it.

Google, again drones are already here, are already being used, so should we make them more efficient so that only the bad guys are removed, or should we just go back to the old days of just dropping a nuke and take out everyone. Scalpel not chainsaw.

Tomshardware, and every other tech news site, this politicization of technology news is getting out of hand. Why is it all of a sudden OK to push politics and ones personal opinion on others? Do your job and I don't know, give us unbiased news about technology. One thing this current administration has taught me, honest Journalism is dead. Some one has a political motive behind every story, even when it should be about technology and about facts about said technology, and not about hot topic issues that are blown apart and conveniently blamed on one guy, when those topics have been around for a very long time. The world's problem scapegoated to one person does not help society.

Lets get back to why everyone came here, Technology NEWS without all the political OPINIONS. And of course let the people debate the never-ending fun of Red vs Green vs Blue.

 

[elbert]

Seems to me the same applies to unfit Amercian's committing crimes with their children present. Child services as im sure you can find some bad pics to start outrage over that program. Seems the only thing for these companies to do is fined more loyal employees. Without question they have damage the companies chances of getting future DOD contracts for revealing these programs.

 

[canadianvice]

"How would you feel if your company..."

The simple, sad reality of things is that morality is completely based on expediency. Life doesn't give a damn if you're a good person or a bad one, at the end it's all about the final score. Good people get the back of their skulls blown out, bad people get to flee a genocide they created and live out their lives in comfort in an allied country.

It's indifferent. As is business - if it's not illegal, it's not off the table, and if you want any degree of success working for someone else, you have to quash any quaint notions of morality - it's not rewarded by anything but abstract humanism, and you can't eat that.

"Bad" people step on "good" people to get what they want, because if you have scruple you can be certain someone without is more than happy to come along and exploit that.

Sorry. I just can't stand articles that preach a certain code of conduct. Morality is relative. If it's not illegal, it's on the table - and if you want to pursue principle in a naive ignorance of that fact, go for it. Just understand it won't get you very far when it starts to conflict with someone else's pocketbook.

Plus, most of the moralists and ethical types are just gross hypocrites; an unfortunate symptom thereof being their inability to recognize it. It's actually rather impressive how quickly "good" people will sell out when it's their livelihood at stake - and it often doesn't take more than minimum wage to encourage them! At the end of the day, other people are fully expendable, and I honestly much prefer a person willing to admit that over donning a frock while there's collections to be had.

"Animals are simple. A croc wants to eat you. People are hard - some pretend to be your friend first." - Steve Irwin
Morality isn't any different, loathe as some are to admit it.

 

[undoubling]

BOTH of these "named" companies are LONG-TIME US Government contractors. BOTH of them are "guilty" of providing QUALITY services to our nation. These "employees" KNEW FULL-WELL about these FACTS before they EVER accepted employment. At this point, ALL of these "so-called" "concerned employees" should take themselves (and their faux "outrage") out of this "now toxic" (to them) environment (and LEAVE their paychecks behind)!! If they're so "concerned" about the well-being of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS----------go ahead and JOIN THEM-----because THAT'S EXACTLY WHERE THESE PHONIES BELONG!!!!

 

[jimmysmitty]

There is a lot of misinformation on child separations right now. It's actually kind of amazing the media blitz of misinformation on the subject.
a) Asylum seekers do not make up a significant proportion of those in this situation. It's just easier to sell asylum seekers than illegal immigrants.
b) Politicians want access to these children for photo-ops for mid-term elections.
c) People illegally crossing the border are now being charged criminally. It would not make sense to keep children with their parents if their parents are in jail. Just as when someone in the US is charged with a crime and their children no longer have a legal guardian, they are placed into protective custody. Criminal charges are actually pretty common in other countries when crossing the border illegally.
d) When people give their opinion on the subject a whole slew of immigration related content is interspersed in the conversation. From DACA to Refugees.

It is all just misinformation and the MSM loves to use it to spread their narrative, left or right. How many stories did the MSM run with by only using a specific sound byte or image without context? Remember when Trump threw the hat of a kid away at the White House Easter event? Oh wait he threw it back to him.

The MSM pushes it and the extremest shout it back. The amount of misinformed people today is insane.

As the other commenters have pointed out: this child-parent policy has been in place since the Obama years and no one seemed to bat an eye (there is video of Hilary supporting such policies from 2014). The IG report must have had some stuff in it the MSM didn't want people knowing. It's so obvious that this whole thing is a manufactured scandal (again, been going on for years). I am disappointed in Scharon for being so uninformed.

Shame on Tom's hardware. Also, I have good money on them removing the comment section soon since they don't want the idiot masses to have their propaganda tainted.

It has actually been in place since 2002. It was signed in by George H. W. Bush and passed by a Democratically controlled Congress. It basically states that illegal immigrants that have been charged with a crime will be separated. However illegally entering the country is a crime.

This is nothing new. However since Trump is president it is new and only he has ever done this.

What you get is a bunch of far left employees who lives revolve around their political activism, as its practically their religion, constantly demanding that people who don't agree with them be fired, and the company not interact with them.

Twitter is the biggest cause of this as it has created this echo chamber for this new religion of progressive politics. These people must be seen being virtuous by their fellows. They must be seen as being the most extreme.

Google is a good example of this. They force employees to take diversity classes that have no scientifically proven benefit to assuage their progressive religion. Yet Google's actual diversity numbers have barely changed in 4 years, because none of this progressive religion stuff actually works! But an employee who points that out is of course being a heretic and must be purged! Which is of course why Damore lost his job after trying to explain to them why their system wasn't working.

This new religion is wide spread in tech, and demands people convert or hide. I would be amazed if my post here is not deleted for heresy. Most tech sites, ArsTechnica, Tech Crunch, Kotaku... are all dominated by members of the progressive religion and engage in widespread censorship to ensure an echo chamber. It will be interesting to find out if Toms is too.

Its from the pressure of social media that this environment has been created. Look at Jordan Peterson. An extremely intelligent person who has studied psychology for years and when he speaks up about speach laws he is in turn branded a nazi/racist etc. I am glad he hasn't quit though as I rather enjoy listening to him.

This has infested everything though. Look at gaming journalism. Sites and publications that were probably started by people whom enjoyed games are now far left spouting ideologues.

I watched a video on YouTube from a guy named Rags about VALVe no longer moderating the games content and rather allowing consumer to accept it. It was insane to listen to what the gaming publications were saying. To make it better, one author who was saying VALVe should moderate what content they sell not more than a month prior stated violent video games were fine and it was up to the user to judge what was right for them and/or their family. But hey when its possible for a consumer to pick a game "I" don't agree with its not OK. All because there might be a game that possibly offends someone. Such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Such an offensive game.....

Well, at least /some/ people care about protesting fascist governments

What fascist government? I see none in the US.

Let's be clear; the wealthy do not suffer from conscience, ethircs, morality or remorse. They're in it for the bucks, and they don't care who they destroy along the way. And war is big money, whether the people want it or not.

But suggesting to the hard workers that they should think very seriously about whether they stand up for ethics and moral behavior based on the likelihood of finding another job is just plain wrong. There need to be protections for whistle blowers and those that stand up against "profit at the cost of the people" - Not punishment!

Conform or die. That's what they want. They want an echo chamber not an equal exchange of ideas where one they don't agree with might win.