Airbnb, Uber, and the unbonded money transmitter of the month, are all making obscene amount of money breaking the law and investors keep rewarding them.
It's really easy in home construction to make a profit if you hire illegal immigrants, pay them an illegal wage, don't carry insurance, don't pay payroll taxes, and don't pay overtime. If only I could hide all that behind an app, I'd call it a startup and become a billionaire!
It's to the point where I have serious issues with the morals of people working for and investing in such outright abusive companies. You might "just" be a programmer, but you're still earning your paycheck breaking the law and skimming money away from businesses that are legit, protect their customers, and exercise the base level of ethics. But I guess you personally didn't abandon a handicapped person on the side of the road, or deny a trip to a black neighborhood, so you don't feel like you did anything wrong?
I agree with you, but take in account that if these companies didn't exist like this (and I'm not saying this is a valid excuse) a lot of programmers (and other positions) wouldn't exist. A lot of folks here go with the 'I rather work at a startup then a corporate job', but the truth is, if these ventures didn't exist, they wouldn't be able to get a 'normal' job at a boring company, since those actually care about following the law and standards and what not. Most of these 'senior' developers in the new startup flavour of the week wouldn't be considered much above juniors in other industries.
It's really easy in home construction to make a profit if you hire illegal immigrants, pay them an illegal wage, don't carry insurance, don't pay payroll taxes, and don't pay overtime. If only I could hide all that behind an app, I'd call it a startup and become a billionaire!
It's to the point where I have serious issues with the morals of people working for and investing in such outright abusive companies. You might "just" be a programmer, but you're still earning your paycheck breaking the law and skimming money away from businesses that are legit, protect their customers, and exercise the base level of ethics. But I guess you personally didn't abandon a handicapped person on the side of the road, or deny a trip to a black neighborhood, so you don't feel like you did anything wrong?