Until people actually go to jail for like 30 years and until fines far exceed any profits, companies will continue to indulge in this type of behaviour.
The rewards are just too good and the downsides too easy to live with.
Or even having their massive bonuses clawed back. Ignoring the motivations of the company for a second, employees at places like GS are clearly incentivized to push the limits. Personally collect big bonuses now, let the company as a whole pay fines in several years. Not a good dynamic
If you steal a slice of pizza 3 times you can go to prison for a very long time. If you steal billions over years and years and wreck the economy while doing so, you won't face any personal consequences.
This is not true in the majority of the United States unless you already had felony convictions unrelated to your pizza caper. The misdemeanor petty theft only gets upgraded to a felony if you have a pattern of behavior, and that upgraded felony would only be your first strike.
I wonder what people here would say if non-tech folks started talking like this about the tech industry. For example, how many stories have we heard about data leaks involving complete incompetence or negligence by the company involved? How many of them have ended up in jail or even with a fine?
We do occasionally talk like that. Various security failures like credit card dumps are often attributed to the absolute lack of consequences for not giving a shit about security.
Similar things happen in the tech world. Ashley Madison had a feature that you could pay to have your data deleted from their database. Except they never deleted the data for those that paid. That is outright fraud as well.
When their user data eventually leaked, it resulted in countless lives and relationships ruined and at least a handful of suicides. While civil lawsuits have been filed, I haven't seen any talk of criminal charges.
People need their totems and need for them to be simplistic and singular to classify them as black or white. No thought given to things like government MANDATING increased numbers of subprime loans to facilitate a populist agenda, nor the guilt of the vast majority choosing to live beyond their means knowingly. Instead, they want a boogey man everyone can point their blame towards. The degree of that folly will be apparent over the years to come
Dude, you aren't actually comparing the two are you. Do you actually believe that tanking the global economy comes anywhere close to what you described? May I ask where you work? No one not working on/with ties to Wall Street would have this opinion.
I don't work anywhere close or on anything similar to Wall Street. But I do have a degree in econ and know that what "tanked the global economy" is a lot more complicated than Goldman Sachs lying to investors. But whatever, let's just lynch the bankers and their big bonuses and pretend that our industry is without flaws.
In every other industry that gives out the title of "engineer", you're taking on a weighty burden to be the guy that signs off and assumes the liability. Software engineers have taken the role, but eschewed the responsibility that traditionally comes with it.
> For example, how many stories have we heard about data leaks involving complete incompetence or negligence by the company involved? How many of them have ended up in jail or even with a fine?
Jail is a bit much for a negligence-caused data leak, but I certainly would welcome large fines against companies with shoddy systems. It might incentivize c-level execs to invest in properly securing their systems and the rest of the organization to take security seriously.
These financial crimes weren't the result of negligence. They were committed by people who knew what they were doing and profited handsomely from it.
That would be good too actually, although I can't recall any IT failure causing 100 000 of people to consider their life has been ruined by it. But still, we are responsible.
You are intentionally misrepresenting things to further your own point. There are countless leaks worse than "dog pictures or email addresses" and you can't blame "crashing the global economy for personal gain" on any single person, company, or action.
wow, pretty amazing - i wish i could get away with stuff like this!
obama should have listed this as his top failure. they have actually proven that they are smarter than each and everyone of us - in acquiring money by any means and getting away with it. very impressive in a twisted way.
The rewards are just too good and the downsides too easy to live with.