Roughly 15 years ago I worked for a large media company that was thinking about moving into the smart energy meter business.
I was late to join the team, but when I did, they'd already bought and branded thousands of meters that were boxed and ready to go in a nearby warehouse. The team had already built a number of APIs exposing controls for these meters as well as various monitoring and reporting interfaces. A UI already existed but it had issues, my job was to come in and fix that and get us ready for release.
We worked hard for a couple of months and whipped this thing into shape. Meanwhile a multi million budget was lined up for the marketing launch. Adverts where drafted, installation technicians where trained and merchandising was branded. All systems go.
It all drove towards a set in stone deadline and we busted our guts to get there... When the day arrived, there we sat. Ready. All features built, no bugs that we knew of. Ready to hit the 'go live' button. Honestly in 30 years working in the industry, that was the only time I think I've ever been in that situation.
Our product owner walks into the room and says, "erm, there's a couple of issues we need to discuss at board level. Hold tight guys I'll be back".
So we sit...
Two days later he returns, "erm, guys... the board aren't sure that this product is on brand. And they are concerned that if it fails it could be bad for reputation. So, we're not launching."
So we sat... for a month... working down our contracts whilst I taught myself Node.js
Once I came to peace with realizing my job is to enable higher ups to do their job a lot of this came into perspective. Still a complete waste, but something somewhere was enabled.
A lot of executives have ego problems where they’re very vulnerable to not having their status reaffirmed. Others understand that everyone in a team has an important function in the whole of the business, that executives’ function is specific but not more important, and they treat each other as equals. We could call it being ego-driven vs mission-driven.
Most executives in big tech are firmly in the ego-driven camp and get high on their own supply of hot air. And they really believe that everyone’s function in the company is to serve them.
Notably, there are some leaders who are very mission-driven and see their people as peers. Usually they are quite known for it, as it’s rare.
It's definitely the other way around where I work. I regularly ask the CTO (my superior) to do things I need to get work done better, and he does. The reverse is much more rare.
Surely there is still a distinction between knowing that people use your product to do bad things & knowing that specific people are doing specific bad things and continuing to allow it.
The problem is that the cost to argue this legal distinction in a civil court could be in the $500,000 - $1,000,000 range. Fine for Facebook, deadly for your gaming or crypto forum provider.
