Blog Posts

Question: From the readings, what is your opinion of Chelsea/Bradley Manning’s decision to leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks and her subsequent sentencing? Is what she did ethical or did she violate her duty? Should she have been protected under the Whistleblower protection laws? Is she a revolutionary hero or a traitor?

 

I think what Chelsea Manning’s leak of classified information was unethical and wrong.  For one, I think any actions taken which compromise the safety of soldiers overseas, or national security in general, are disgusting and should be met with extreme punishment.  Since soldiers who take on a security clearance do so with the trust that they will defend the secrets of our nation, this leak was a clear violation of her duties. Also, while some may argue that there were not any direct deaths as a result of her leaks, that does not change the fact that deaths were a possibility that she was aware of when she leaked the documents.  There is no way of knowing at the time what kind of effect the leaks would have, and even though Manning only had intentions of increasing military accountability, it was clear that she did not take due precaution in assessing the volatility of the information she was releasing.  The fact that Lamo, someone who had leaked documents in the past, recognized the recklessness of these leaks and described it as vacuuming up as much classified information as possible and throwing it in the air, should be a good indicator of how careless this leaking was.   Additionally, I have faith in the court system to be impartial in matters like this and to make an honest determination of whether or not the leaks endangered American lives.  Since the courts ruled that Manning did in fact put soldiers’ lives at risk, I believe that this is true and she should be viewed as a traitor to the country.  Further, Manning’s actions after the leak made her decisions seem much less honorable to me.  The way she seemed to brag about the leak to Lamo, talking about lip-syncing music while committing one of the the largest data breach in military history, shows again that she was not fully thinking through the repercussions of her actions.  Also the fact that she reached out to Lamo for no other reason than the tell him that she was the leaker suggests that she may have been interested in achieving some sort of personal recognition for her acts, which I find disgusting.

Since it seems there is overwhelming evidence of the leaks compromising national security, I do not think Manning should be protected by the whistleblowers act because the act does not protect whistleblowers under these circumstances, nor should it.  I understand that Manning leaked the documents without the intention to harm national security in any way, but as the courts stated she had enough training to realize that her leaks likely would present a threat to national security. I also do not agree with Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence.  Like I said above, I believe that people who willingly take actions which compromise national security should be met with extreme punishment.  Reducing Manning’s sentence by such a significant margin sends the wrong message that the United States sympathizes with these kinds of actions.

 

 

Question: From the readings and in your opinion, is the lack of diversity a problem in the technology industry or is the gender gap overblown? Is it something that needs to be addressed or is it just a (possibly unfortunate) reality?

 

I do not believe the lack of diversity in technology is a significant problem. As far as the recent movements to increase diversity in tech fields, I feel that this is motivated by the fact that a lot of big tech companies are at the center of attention for a lot of people solely because of how important their products are and how big the companies are (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.).  With this level of public interest, these companies must work harder to make the public happy, and lately people have been calling for more diversity hires without fully understanding why such a gap exists.  I understand that as a white male in the technology field, it may be hard for me to understand exactly where women/minorities are coming from when they say they feel excluded from the tech field, but after doing some of the readings it seems to me that the lack of diversity is something which may just be a part of reality.  I think the real reason there is a gender gap in technology is that women simply are not as attracted to the tech field as men.  Whether this lack of interest is innate or a product of society is hard to pin down, but it certainly does seem that the data points to the fact that men typically display a greater interest in tech than women, and that the two genders choose their career fields accordingly.  As such, I do not think it is necessary to coerce women into tech roles that they are simply not interested in.  There are also claims of privilege in the tech world, that white/Asian men typically face less boundaries than women or minorities because people naturally assume that they are adept with technology.  Obviously it is wrong to assume someone’s ability in any field based on their race/gender.  While I do not deny that this bias likely exists in a lot of people to some extent, I do not think the answer to eliminating such a bias is to try and persuade more women into tech roles that they may not necessarily want. Instead, people should work on how they interact with people that don’t fit the “tech” stereotype.  This really comes down to an individual basis, and I do not believe it is something that companies can force to happen.  There are simply too many people out there (professors, teachers, parents) who are able to perpetuate the bias.  Instead, I think the only way for a gender/race bias to be combatted is for the people close to an individual who has shown interest in tech to be open-minded and treat them as being just as capable as any other person with the same experience.

Regarding the events which transpired at Uber, I think they are clearly inappropriate and unprofessional.  I was honestly very shocked that such a large company would allow its management to act in such a sexist way without any sort of reasonable repercussions.  I did not think that modern companies could act in such a way, but clearly they can, and that’s very disappointing to me.  A lot of what transpired at Uber, though, does not seem to have a clear link to diversity in technology, and seems like more of a story involving negligence to sexual harassment, which can happen in any company in any industry.  The one part of the story which seemed to be relevant to the tech field was when Susan Fowler’s manager blocked her transfer request in order to keep a woman on his team.  This was clearly motivated by a desire to have “trophy” women on his team in order to show that he cared about diversity.  Like I said above, though, I think that people just need to recognize that most women are not as interested in tech, and that because of this there will naturally be less women on engineering teams.  This is something that just has to be accepted, and by attempting to directly fight this trend, women engineers can be hurt, as was exemplified by Fowler.

Question: From the readings, what is the controversy surrounding the H-1B Visa program? What are the arguments for and against the expansion of the program? After examining the topic, where do you stand on the issues surrounding the program?

 

The H-1B Visa program allows people from other countries to come to America for work purposes, and has been a highly coveted asset in the tech industry for some time.  However, there is a great deal of controversy surrounding the implications of allowing so many foreigners into America for work.  On the one had, it is argued that H-1B visas allow tech companies to recruit the best talent from anywhere in the World.  Getting this talent means tech companies can make better products, and cut costs, all of which benefits the American consumer.  Additionally, there is a moral component to this issue.  By allowing workers to come from all countries, America lives up to its reputation as being the land of opportunity.  Many of these workers lived difficult lives in their home country, so if they really apply themselves to better their future, shouldn’t America be willing to let them in?

 

On the other side of this issue are concerns that by granting 85,000 H-1B visas every year, the US government is harming the American worker.  Tech companies hiring from overseas typically pay those workers lower wages than they would if they had hired an American.  This can cause a restriction of labor cost growth, which would mean companies retain more profits at the expense of their workers.  Also, every time a H-1B visa worker is hired by a company, they are filling a role that could have otherwise been filled by an American worker.  This can be very troubling for those concerned with unemployment rates, as the lower wage cost essentially gives companies an incentive to hire non-Americans to do work.

 

I personally support the idea of having workers come into the United States to help us grow our tech industry.  I also think it is very important morally to be able to take people out of bad situations in other countries and allow them to come to America.  In response to concerns about job loss I read an interesting point in one of the articles that just because a company hires a foreigner, that does not necessarily mean that the company would’ve hired an American instead, if that worker had not been able to get a visa.  If companies couldn’t hire visa workers, there is a possibility they could outsource the position or find a way to automate it rather than pay higher wages to an American.  In this way, allowing foreign workers can be seen as a way to discourage these practices by allowing companies to hire workers in America.  Additionally, these workers still pay taxes and are contributing to the American economy, so there are still positives for America to hire these workers.  As far as the notion of prioritizing Americans, I personally think that is a bad way to look at things.  For one, America is a nation of immigrants.  Denying workers the right to come here would be a betrayal of one of our most admirable values.  Also, if we prioritized Americans we would be limiting our accessibility to the best possible talent, which would hurt innovation and potentially contribute to an economic downturn.

For our first project, Jack Myers and I wrote a code of ethics for Notre Dame engineering students. Our code had three main components which we believe encapsulates all the necessary attributes to be a successful and ethical engineering student at Notre Dame.  The first category is integrity, and has codes detailing how students should act both inside and outside the classroom to maintain high moral standards.  The next section is community, which details how students can contribute to both the academic community and the more general human community in an ethical and productive way.  Our last section was learning, and it detailed how students should conduct themselves in a learning environment like Notre Dame to maximize their takeaway, and also how they should retain their intellectual curiosity throughout their lifetime.

 

I think our code did a very good job at addressing a number of common situations that engineering students often find themselves in, and detailing how to deal with those situations ethically.  While we tried to include more general guidelines, the majority of our code revolves around issues faced in the classroom. I think it could be improved by adding more general guidelines for how to conduct oneself at college in general, without focusing on coursework.  The reason we chose not to include more general guidelines is that there are so many different experiences students have at college, and Jack and I felt that by setting guidelines for only things we’ve experienced outside the classroom, we would potentially alienate readers who did not have similar experiences.  However, we were confident that many people could relate to what we have experienced in the classroom, and that is why we chose to focus on that.

 

I think codes of ethics are very useful.  Like I alluded to above, they are not holistic and do not address every situation an individual may find themselves in.  However, they do provide a basic moral framework. People may be able to use the code to deduce what to do in a situation, even if it is not expressly talked about within a certain code.  I also enjoyed this exercise from a personal standpoint because it made me reflect on my time at Notre Dame, and how ethically I was both inside and outside the classroom.  Reflection is very important for personal growth, so because of that, I thought writing the code was very beneficial to me.

Question: What has your job (or internship) interview process been like? What surprises you? What frustrates you? What excites you? How did you prepare? How did you perform?

What is your overall impression of the general interview process? Is it efficent? Is it effective? Is it humane? Is it ethical?

 

Since I am not a computer science major, I have not had experience with the whiteboard interviews discussed in our readings.  Although I have not had the same experience, I can relate to the feeling of frustration surrounding whiteboard interviews and the apparent obsession some companies have with memorizing useless information.  One interview I had asked me what MOSFET stood for, no other questions on how they are used or how they work, just simply asking if I knew the acronym.  Although I answered the question correctly (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor), I could not help but feel some surprise that my interviewer really though that knowing this acronym was a good indicator of how well I’d do at my job.  In this way I share the frustration of those who have felt that their whiteboard interviews did not adequately represent them.  Especially in engineering, I’ve come to realize that most job skills are learned on the fly rather than in school, and that it is much more important to be an adaptive and ambitious learner than have a lot of knowledge coming out of college.  For this reason I get most excited when interviewers ask me questions about myself, what motivates me, and try to determine if I would fit in with their work culture.  In these types of interviews I feel I do the best because I consider myself to be a great teammate on any project, and I believe my ambition and eagerness comes out when employers try to find out about the real me.  For these kinds of questions I do not need much preparation because my answers come from the heart, instead I spend most of my interview preparation reviewing basic electrical engineering principles in case they ask more technical questions, and I also do company research to demonstrate my interest in the company.

 

I think the interview process for many companies is very sound.  Although there are factors such as the confirmation bias which supposedly dictates the success of an interview in the first five minutes, these sort of things are also indicative of how people at the company will view a prospective employee if he/she is hired.  If an interviewee cannot impress an interviewer at the start of the interview, how will he/she be able to impress a client that he/she is meeting for the first time?  As far as ethicality, I believe the interview process is both ethical and humane.  At the end of the day the person who is perched to be the most qualified will get the job.  Whether a company’s criteria for determining the superior candidate is flawed or not does not change the fact that there is always good faith.  In every interview I’ve been in I’ve always been treated respectfully and humanely, and I cannot imagine any other companies acted differently towards potential hires.  I also think the general structure of the interview process is fairly efficient.  When presented with a pool of maybe 30 or more applicants, an initial first round interview is often necessary to weed out the good from the bad.  After that there is a second round where the best of the best are interviewed to find the perfect match.  I personally cannot think of any way this could be made more efficient other than simplifying the process to a single round, which would likely make it difficult or impossible to find the one candidate who is truly best for the job.

Question: From the readings and from your experience, what exactly is a hacker? That is, what are the key characteristics of the hacker archetype? Do you identify with these attributes? That is, would you consider yourself a hacker? What is your reaction to this characterization?

 

I think the hacker archetype is something which has evolved over the years as computers have become more and more a part of our everyday lives.  At its core, though, many could argue that the hacker mindset existed long before computers.  Examples such as John Draper using special tones to make free long distance calls, or African tribes learning to fight through “dances” exemplify that hacking is much more a mindset than something which is done on a computer.  My characterization of a hacker before reading these articles was likely the same as that of many other people, unsociable tech nerds who sat at a computer for hours trying to use code to steal money or inconvenience someone.  This personality was partly reflected in the “conscience of a hacker” manifesto, where the author claims all hackers are alike, that they would rather sit alone at a computer than interact with classmates, that they see themselves as smarter than those around them and feel some resentment towards non-hackers because of this.  However, through the other readings I came to realize that this only represents a small faction of hackers, and they are not “all alike” as the author would have it.  I have come to realize that at its core, having is about breaking down barriers, overcoming obstacles put in place by an authority to control or make money off people.  Hackers are also driven by an extreme passion for what they do.  They are curious about the world around them, and choose to explore that curiosity to find out what makes something tick.  I also do not think that hackers and yuppies are incompatible, as one article claimed.  Hackers are not required to have a disdain for authority, but rather just need to realize that things should not be taken on face value, that everything should be explored and tinkered with, just as John Draper was driven by a curiosity on how the telephone industry worked, yuppies are driven by a curiosity in how business works, what makes a stock price raise or what makes a consumer pick product X over product Y.  In this sense, hackers and yuppies don’t seem too different at all.

 

I do not know if I would go so far as to consider myself a hacker.  I think I certainly have a lot of curiosity about the world around me, but I also find that in many cases I choose to do things conveniently rather than devote myself to “hacking” certain processes.  While a hacker may take time to find the most efficient walk to class I would simply take the route I am most familiar with.  In many ways I accept the ways of the world, and this is something that I believe hackers refuse to do.

Question: What is your interpretation of the Parable of the Talents? How does it apply to your life and your computing skills and talents?

 

The Parable of the Talents is an extremely interesting passage from the Book of Matthew the has a great number of implications on how everyday life should be lived.  The first thing I found interesting when reading this passage is that the master did not give his servants an equal number of talents, but rather distributed them based on who he likely perceived as the most trustworthy or intelligent.  Life is unfortunately not fair.  Some people start out life at a disadvantage to others, be it through wealth, social status, or even coding ability, no two people are equal.  While you may not have any influence on where you start off, your work ethic determines where you finish.  Although the two talent servant was not given as many talents as the one who received five, he still worked equally hard in investing his masters money, and was able to double his talents, just as the five talent servant doubled his.  While he may not have earned the same profit, he still had the same percentage increase as the servant who was given more than him, and both were able to earn the master’s gratitude.  Likewise, in school and in the future, I may not always be the smartest person in the room.  Although I will not be doing very much coding as an electrical engineer, this still applies to the skills and knowledge I will have going into the job market.  Just because I may not have as much knowledge as those around me, that does not mean I will not be able to succeed in my work.  Just as the two talent servant was able to do well with limited resources, I know that through hard work I will also be able to earn praise and achieve success.

 

Another important part of this parable is that it stresses accountability, since the servant who chose to do nothing with his talents was condemned by his master.  This accountability is especially important for programmers, as the article by Andy J. Ko emphasized.  People put their trust in their technology; we use it to store important documents, plan our finances, and communicate with the world.  The common theme behind all of these interactions is that they are facilitated by a programmer.  If computer scientists lacked accountability, the internet would be a scary and dangerous place.  It is important for programmers to be able to stand by their code, and to always be ready to answer to their own masters.

 

Answering to your own master also demonstrates an ability to see the greater picture.  The servants in this parable were not working for their own benefit, but were instead working for a higher authority.  This is something that every single professional worker must come to terms with.  Instead of thinking selfishly on how to get yourself ahead, people should be working to please that higher authority, whether it be a boss, stockholders, or customers.  Knowing that I am working to please a higher authority will motivate me in the professional world to do as good as possible, which will in turn give me further opportunities to do right by that authority.

My name is Sam Blanchet, I am a senior Electrical Engineering student from Wyomissing Pennsylvania.  I have always been interested in technology, and this interest inspired me to take study electrical engineering in college.  I enjoy that my major reaches into many different fields within the technology industry, and gives me the capability to work a variety of different jobs in different industries after graduation.  Outside of school I enjoy hanging out with my friends, playing interhall sports, and watching tv.  I originally took this class because I have already learned a lot of technical skills through my major, but I have not seen very much on how those skills are applied in the real world.  This is a very exciting time for computer science, and I thought it would be extremely interesting to see the other side on how some of these exciting advances need to be monitored to assure they are brought into existence in an ethical way.  Hopefully by the end of this class I’ll have gained skills that will help me in my future professional career to deal with technology ethically.