Developers are not a homogeneous, interchangeable collective of identical twins.
Amid a population of millions of developers, a marginal fraction will always be jobless and hungry, enough to compromise in favor of their own survival.
But why only question the ethics of developers, who may contribute to projects so compartmentalized, that they do not know what their dual-use module might contribute to?
There are industrial designers, marketing executives, product specialists and project managers in the loop. Faceless investors demand profits from commoditized businesses, without questioning how profits are generated.
When non-essential technology is created by an amoral collective, ethics are left unreconciled by default.
No one can account for the fact that someone from Seattle didn't have the resources to take on the job she desperately fought for.
You know what I wanna be? A movie star!
Pay me more than other entry level movie stars because I can't afford to become one on my own, please. I don't want to work at the Starbucks down the street. I want to move to Hollywood, but can't afford it, so pay me more money now to make me the star I know I am going to become once I have the money.
Yeah, I'm kind of inclined to agree, excepting for indirect compensation that might not appear as part of taxable salary.
Considering how much expensing for (airline) food and (corporate rate) hotels enters the picture, there's probably a substantial additional cost lurking behind that salary.
Travel is a choice. That decision is made by the individual. Some people absolutely love being away from their families, believe it or not, and love to travel besides. You adopt that reality simply by taking the job. There's no accounting for that. It's a reality that confronts the individual alone.
But, the 10 or 300 souls on the plane are absolutely a good reason to pay pilots a little bit more.
But then again, teachers should be paid more for working with children. And airplane mechanics are every bit as important as the pilots.
So I guess it comes down to how much passengers care about whether their plane crashes, and how much they'll spend to gamble on getting somewhere faster than by boat or train or bus. Passengers don't have to fly, do they?
Amid a population of millions of developers, a marginal fraction will always be jobless and hungry, enough to compromise in favor of their own survival.
But why only question the ethics of developers, who may contribute to projects so compartmentalized, that they do not know what their dual-use module might contribute to?
There are industrial designers, marketing executives, product specialists and project managers in the loop. Faceless investors demand profits from commoditized businesses, without questioning how profits are generated.
When non-essential technology is created by an amoral collective, ethics are left unreconciled by default.
Please question that, instead.