<story><title>Mozilla Wants Young People to Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Tech Jobs</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxenxx/mozilla-wants-young-people-to-consider-ethical-issues-before-taking-jobs-in-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>herbstein</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just starting my 6th (and last) semester of my bachelor degree. During the semester we are exploring the ethics and morality of the modern computing evolution. The exploration includes the difference between publishers and editors, going back to basics of the &amp;quot;what and why&amp;quot; of privacy, and how companies exploit our (lack of) privacy to gain further growth.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s a course a lot of my classmates have expressed disdain for. To them it sounds more like a &amp;quot;gender-studies course&amp;quot; (their words) than a course for &amp;quot;super serious no-bullshit smart people&amp;quot; (my interpretation). I&amp;#x27;m hoping the readings will have them reconsider and realize how important considering the ethical implications of their programs.&lt;p&gt;As an example: a friend and a classmate works for $bigcorp. He had an idea for an employee engagement system. The idea was that every employee had a digital avatar that follows them around on the premises. So (as an example) when they go to the coffee machine their avatar high-fives the avatar of another person who&amp;#x27;s also getting coffee. This, as you can imagine, requires tracking the movement of employees to a fairly high degree. The project got two months into development before the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; person heard about it, raised a fuzz, and got the project cancelled.&lt;p&gt;Neither my friend nor my other classmates see the problem with the precise tracking of the every move of every employee - that scares me a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_bxg1</author><text>I took one of those courses; it wasn&amp;#x27;t intellectually stimulating and it felt like a condescending, corporate-mandated seminar. Even the professor was just going through the motions. But it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be that way, that&amp;#x27;s just how it tends to play out.&lt;p&gt;What we need are not &amp;quot;ethics in tech&amp;quot; courses, but for people &lt;i&gt;in&lt;/i&gt; tech to get more exposure to general &lt;i&gt;humanities&lt;/i&gt; education. Require everyone getting a degree at your university - computer science majors included - to read and discuss classic literature, history, and philosophy. Exercise the parts of their brain that deal with questions whose answers can&amp;#x27;t be reduced to code. Ethics cannot be covered by a pamphlet of tech-specific rules; to act ethically, a person needs perspective on human nature and on what it means to be a member of society.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mozilla Wants Young People to Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Tech Jobs</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxenxx/mozilla-wants-young-people-to-consider-ethical-issues-before-taking-jobs-in-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>herbstein</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just starting my 6th (and last) semester of my bachelor degree. During the semester we are exploring the ethics and morality of the modern computing evolution. The exploration includes the difference between publishers and editors, going back to basics of the &amp;quot;what and why&amp;quot; of privacy, and how companies exploit our (lack of) privacy to gain further growth.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s a course a lot of my classmates have expressed disdain for. To them it sounds more like a &amp;quot;gender-studies course&amp;quot; (their words) than a course for &amp;quot;super serious no-bullshit smart people&amp;quot; (my interpretation). I&amp;#x27;m hoping the readings will have them reconsider and realize how important considering the ethical implications of their programs.&lt;p&gt;As an example: a friend and a classmate works for $bigcorp. He had an idea for an employee engagement system. The idea was that every employee had a digital avatar that follows them around on the premises. So (as an example) when they go to the coffee machine their avatar high-fives the avatar of another person who&amp;#x27;s also getting coffee. This, as you can imagine, requires tracking the movement of employees to a fairly high degree. The project got two months into development before the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; person heard about it, raised a fuzz, and got the project cancelled.&lt;p&gt;Neither my friend nor my other classmates see the problem with the precise tracking of the every move of every employee - that scares me a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>luckydata</author><text>They don&amp;#x27;t see the problem because they haven&amp;#x27;t experienced the consequences of bad corporate environments. Some things you gotta experience on your own to truly appreciate. Everyone should have a really bad job at least once in their life.</text></comment>