I didn't read that as "this will definitely happen to you", it's more like "these people will always exist, so don't be surprised if it does happen".

That sounds pretty bleak. You SHOULD be surprised if this happens to you.

How exactly does whether or not you are surprised make a difference in anything?

Why should I be surprised? Questionable people exist. People in general are going to ask for questionable activities to be performed regardless of if they realize what they are really asking for.

>You may be overstating that a bit. I've been doing tech for a while, and I can't recall anyone ever asking me to abuse my skills for ill-gotten gain.

A few years ago, a guy contacted me from HN, asking if I wanted to team up on some stuff. He sounded pretty convincing, and like an all-round decent guy.

For some reason, despite his likability, something seemed not quite right. I searched for a few variations on his name and email, and eventually stumbled across various reports of low-level frauds directly attributable to him. Really a very unpleasant individual, targeting the self-employed and taking them for ~$5,000 each.

If I'd spent less time researching, I'm certain two things would have happened:

1. He would've screwed me out of whatever agreement him and I came up with.

2. Whatever I worked on would have been used to defraud people one way or another.

When someone approaches you, it's not always immediately obvious that they're trying to do bad stuff.

EDIT: I'd nearly forgotten, a good few years ago, someone tried outright recruiting me for illegal work after seeing a LOOKING FOR WORK post I'd written here on HN.

Of all things, they asked me to hack some local authority's death records. Bless them, they'd taken the "hacker" part of Hacker News to be a literal news site for illegal hackers.

I have left a senior role when I found out that what they were doing could conceivably be treated as criminal - deciding factor was pretty much speaking to a lawyer and they said "leave now" (NB the lawyer in question being my wife).

They went on to have a decent exit so that decision cost me roughly £1 million - I've never regretted it, I don't really have the temperament for a life of crime.... :-)

Maybe you don't hang out with the kind of crowd that thinks like that, but the number of times, I've been requested to do commit crimes - form classic fraud and insider trading all the way to straight up hacking is insane.

Funny enough, even the semi-technical ones are guilty of such requests too.

Over the course, I've learnt the hard way that saying no upfront is better than dealing with the fallout later

Probably, but you didn't realise.

There are a lot of people interested that simply lack the technical insight to know exactly how to approach you or if what they want is even possible. If you are not the kind to boast about work at the pub, they will simply fail to find an opening that let them know: that their scheme is possible, that you can do it, and that you would do it.

Of course, I comes from a relatively bad area too. It is filled with people that share the spirit of Valley Startup Founders: nothing is ever really idle chat, every conversation is an opportunity and every minute must be productive. Their business model and area of expertise are a lot more shady though.

On that last line you're referring to MLMs, right?

A company I worked for basically told me to make the "opt-out of emails" checkbox not work. Which means whether you opt in to our emails or you don't, you get emails anyway. Most people would just assume they left it checked (even if they did uncheck it). Being the lazy person that I am, I just said "oh, that's just less work for me implementing that functionality"

but I'm sure that's technically breaking some anti-spam law

Deceptive subscription of email addresses to a mailing list will lead to a larger percentage of emails reported as spam. This will in turn increase the chance that Gmail / etc. mailbox provider will take actions to prevent you from contacting users in the future. If the newsletter is an important part of your business, losing it could be devastating.

Sometimes a matter of ethics can be reframed in the context of long-term reputational risk. "X bad incident related to our reputation" can be a lot easier to attach a dollar value to than "being unethical", and that is (in the end) what many engineer-employing companies care most about.

I definitely think thats a more realistic example of the things that might happen. It won't be the shady guy on the street corner, it'll be your boss asking you to do just one little thing.

While working in billing IT at a CLEC, I was asked to produce a phone bill for the CEO, with a printed physical address that didn't correspond to where he actually lived. I assumed (and still do) that it had something to do with a school district scam: he wanted his kids to attend a good school, without paying extra tuition. It was easy enough to do, and I don't feel there's much about the funding of USA public education that's worth defending anyway, but I can see how it could possibly have led to a series of increasingly immoral/illegal escalations.

Same here. The only thing I can think of is that I've been contacted by a client to log in to a locked machine. He knew that I could theoretically log in to the machine with an account of a former employer. The intent wasn't criminal or illegal, but it didn't feel right, so I didn't do it.

I've been asked to do something unethical twice. Both times I was able to talk the boss into something ethical instead. In one case, the alternative was better, so I can't really be sure I convinced them on the ethical merits, but the other one definitely revolved around ethics.

I've also told every company that has hired me, during the interview, that I refuse to do anything unethical. Of course they didn't bat an eye at it, but I wonder how many would have been surprised that I actually meant it and would stand up for it.

I remember it happening as a kid, but mostly being asked by other kids who want me to hack into a ex's email account - nothing (so far!) of the sort of thing that would get me dragged into a shadowy underworld.

Except that the law is so complicated, the company might have itself asked you unlawful things unknowingly.

I agree, but I don't think the OP was trying to include (practically) unknowable laws in his main point.