yea, the world is a weird place. seeing a lot of angry ethical reactions on reddit, i can't help but think: on one side, there are people like this guy in the comments who left marketing a health product due to false claims, or me refusing to code for certain clients based on "personal" ethical judgments and on the other side there are these "crackers" who steal the credit cards of random people and who even hate them.
one thing i want to believe, you can't build a future on crime, or can you?
It sounds like you're considering a life of crime. Probably thinking about how you could be like that botnet guy on Reddit. Getting money without working is a nice thought, after all.
You know, the "ethical reactions" stem from that guy doing evil things. He knows he's being evil but doesn't care. Some people find that appalling.
For him, it's just an easy way to make money, and the fact that he produces no value to society at large is irrelevant. He even gets to work on challenging problems!
In fact, what he's doing is quite similar to working for the financial industry, doing HFT or whatever. It's clearly wrong, and clearly harmful to mankind, but it's easy money, so ethics are thrown out the window.
It is generally easier to make money by scamming/abusing people than by doing something valuable. That doesn't mean you should.
The thing that most people don't realize is that it isn't as easy as most people think or how he makes it sound. It's very similar to building a passive income product. You invest a lot of work up front for an "easy" payout later.
It may only take him an hour or two a day to manage the network but I doubt that's all the time he spends on it. From reading the AMA and my own personal experience I bet this guy spends much of his time researching tools, improving his code, testing AV software, and browsing / contributing to "industry" forums. This isn't even taking into account the time he spent upfront before it made him any money.
It may be something he enjoys but it's not as easy as clicking a few buttons every day and watching the money pile up. It's sad to think that all this time could be spent building a legitimate product instead of something like this.
Do you think anyone in a governmental capacity will take this Reddit and start an investigation? I'd like to think so, but sadly doubt it. There might be a couple of vigilante efforts though.
Your point is well served without the analogy of heft and the financial industry being added. Matter of fact, I assume that it will likely be met with discussion that shifts the focus onto those examples which are irrelevant to the greater topic at hand.
There have been several in depth discussions and posts on both hacker news and reddit which comprehensively make the case for both.
I work in the financial industry and I'm very convinced that my work is not harmful by any stretch of the imagination.
In the past I've left well paid positions out of moral issues, in different industries. For instance, when my algorithms were getting patented, or I was increasingly made to work in .NET.
People have different views. However, stealing CCs and massively screwing over random people... you cannot possibly put that in the same breadth.
> I work in the financial industry and I'm very convinced that my work is not harmful by any stretch of the imagination.
Well duh? Of course you are. It's you working for the financial industry, after all.
We could debate this all day without getting anywhere. It's easy for you to blow smoke up everyone's ass, pretending your work is beneficial because it provides "liquidity" or whatever. You can confuse us laymen with fancy terms we don't understand.
I know these sites. They're rather juvenile but sometimes there's stuff of real value there. There are crooks in finance, and everywhere else, which doesn't mean "finance is bad" by definition.
> You work for an industry whose raison d'être is making money with money. This is vastly different from producing something of value.
There is nothing bad about making money from financial services. If you stretch it a bit, you can call it "making money with money" the same as you can argue that the sole reason for any imaginable job is making money. It's not.
We're already well on our way to getting nowhere with this.
> Not-so-obviously, if I had qualms about my job I wouldn't be doing it. Some people are for sale, I'm not.
So participating in the financial industry driving the Western world's economy off a cliff is fine, but having to work with .NET is where you draw the line?
> I know these sites. They're rather juvenile
These sites discuss (the economic) Reality, and what's going on in it. Trying to discredit them is logical, of course, for someone working for the financial industry.
Here's someone with a more somber take on things, in case it helps: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/ - he's on the same page with the aforementioned two, though.
> There is nothing bad about making money from financial services.
No? Well, what good is there about it? How does it benefit the real economy, where people use their time and skills to produce something of value, which they then exchange for goods and services as necessary?
What is it that grounds the financial industry into the real economy? In other words, in what ways is it not about making money with money?
> If you stretch it a bit, you can call it "making money with money" the same as you can argue that the sole reason for any imaginable job is making money. It's not.
Huh? A job is an arrangement where an employer pays someone a salary in exchange for using his time/skills in a way that benefits the employer (in a monetary sense, ultimately).
For both parties involved, it is about making money. Otherwise we're talking about some kind of charitable operation.
I consider my job not only not to be bad, but GOOD for society. My job helps making a level field and removes the need of extra people working in trying to scalp away from market fluctuations.
I consider my job to be good in the sense that the alternative to be worse. Quite like a free market I consider it to be good, because it's the MUCH better alternative to a CAPTIVE market. Because that's in fact the only alternative. Some manipulative politicians trying to justify their job would tell you the alternative is a "regulated market" - it honestly is not about more or less regulation, it's about better or worse regulation. The freest market is not the least nor the most regulated, it's the best regulated.
> These sites discuss (the economic) Reality, and what's going on in it. Trying to discredit them is logical, of course, for someone working for the financial industry.
You've very conveniently cherry-picked my criticism about them. I like these sites and they're rather good. However, their style is indeed juvenile. That's the way they're redacted, the public they cater to the most and very likely the personality of the main contributors.
They also seem to be quite libertarian-leaning. Like myself. Which is totally besides the point, anyway.
> For both parties involved, it is about making money. Otherwise we're talking about some kind of charitable operation.
But you're missing the point that it's not ONLY about that. Thankfully, most of us don't work just for mere subsistence and are in the position to choose one work over another based in more than pay.
This point is related to the post because I'd actually take this job over most other jobs taking a significant pay cut. I've worked in telecom, microchip design, even videogames, and this is my favourite job so far. I'd take it over any of my previous jobs on equal pay and they weren't bad jobs for the most part. I'd even take a pay cut. That's how much I like my job and how positive for society I think it is. My sister is a doctor, I think my job is more positive for society than even that, it affects way more people.
Funny fact. A lot of people in finance seems to believe that they are making things more efficient and removing people. And yet the finance industry as a whole continues to grow rapidly relative to the rest of the economy. Also their share of profits relative to companies in the "real" economy is at historic highs.
I submit that you're doing the exact opposite of what you think you are. When you make financial manipulation require fewer highly paid people, you increase profit margins. The primary effect of this is to increase the volume of such activity.
Oh, absolutely. However what the software industry enables more of is often stuff that I think is good.
For instance I have 2 contracts right now. One will help people find a college program that they want, and the other will help people find a job that they want. These are causes whose value proposition is pretty clear to me. I don't need to justify my work on the basis of, "I'm getting rid of people who do what I do." Rather I can say, "I'm helping good things happen for people."
Thus I don't see a problem in the fact that my successes create more demand for people like me.
On the one hand, I'm helping people preserving their pension funds by detecting risky situations early. These people don't want highly speculative markets or high profits, they don't want their savings protected from the money printing machine among other things.
I'm also helping decide producers what should they be doing next, to meet demand and so people don't suffer shortages. I don't work for a bucket shop or a commodity hoarding fund. I help supply meet demand and more people have their needs met and better met than otherwise thanks to people like me. There would be a lot more poverty in the world without this industry. In fact, there was a lot more poverty in the world as a direct result of the lack of this level of commerce in the past. It's not our duty to stop the poorest regions of the world from over-breeding, though, which is the main reason for poverty nowadays (including pockets of poverty in wealthy nations).
> I consider my job not only not to be bad, but GOOD for society.
Really now? Wow. Wasn't expecting that. Tell me, again, how exactly is it good for society?
> My job helps making a level field and removes the need of extra people working in trying to scalp away from market fluctuations.
This smells like a rationalization of HFT. Is that what you do? It is quite popular among the HN folks after all.
> I consider my job to be good in the sense that the alternative to be worse.
That's quite an achievement in the art of Rationalization. In a similar vein, I guess shooting someone in the head is better than torturing them to death.
> Quite like a free market I consider it to be good, because it's the MUCH better alternative to a CAPTIVE market.
Umm.. so your job's goodness is comparable to a free market being good by way of being better than a captive one? Care to elaborate?
> Because that's in fact the only alternative.
A captive market is the only alternative to a free market.. or your job? What's the point here?
> The freest market is not the least nor the most regulated, it's the best regulated.
This seems to make sense, but how is it related to what you do?
> You've very conveniently cherry-picked my criticism about them.
Well, your only criticism of those sites was that they're "rather juvenile", which didn't leave much room for cherry-picking. But of course, "cherry-picking" is a common accusation on HN.
> That's the way they're redacted, the public they cater to the most and very likely the personality of the main contributors.
Redacted how?
> But you're missing the point that it's not ONLY about that.
Actually, I didn't miss that detail in what you said. I just wanted to see if you'd "go there". You didn't disappoint.
You see, a job not being only about money is just as blindingly obvious as the fact that not every single goddamn black guy is a better dancer than your average white guy.
> This point is related to the post because I'd actually take this job over most other jobs taking a significant pay cut.
Glad you cleared that up, I was starting to wonder. But what else would you say, especially at this point? Of course you're going to make that claim, because for you, this has been all about rationalizing what you do right from the start.
> My sister is a doctor, I think my job is more positive for society than even that, it affects way more people.
That's quite an audacious load of bullshit right there.
Yes, your job has far-reaching potential consequences, including - but not limited to - collapsing economies and countries along with them, causing massive loss of wealth for us little folks, social unrest, chaos on the streets, people killing each other for food, power-grabs by totalitarian forces, and so on.
Before you start foaming at the mouth, note the word "potential" there.
one thing i want to believe, you can't build a future on crime, or can you?