The Case for Sabotage
collectiveactionintech.substack.comThis article is a guide to making yourself unemployable. People talk.
The actual way to do this is how engineering guilds do it. “We cannot in good faith sign off on this building, we do not believe it’s safe.”
They’ve been highly ethical over a long time. As a result anyone who wants shifty engineering work has to go to dark places.
A software engineers’ guild could do the same. It could publish a code of ethics, which members then act collectively in accordance with. Guild labor - the best educated folks who have indemnity insurance etc. - won’t be able to be used to build things outside the code. For example if the whole guild refused to build engagement-jacking machinery like personalized feeds, it’d drive up the cost (and risk!) of getting them built, & impact the business case.
It only works if things are done transparently; if the code of ethics is too fringe or it changes too much, or people self-sabotage by attempting sabotage, the guild will fail to acquire market power and fail.
The problem with guilds is that they preserve the interests of who is already inside at the detriment of everybody else. They range from cool kids clubs to straight up mafia behavior. There's no solidarity in guilds.
Classic to review: [https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...]
This sucks. Everyone who upvoted it sucks too.
cry about it, scab
I'll laugh at you in prison.