alt Hacker NewsSometimes it feels like hiring ethics folks is almost all downside for companies. I genuinely don’t understand why they keep doing it.
It seems like the pattern is almost always the same: the ethics team exists quietly in the background, and the only time anyone hears about them is when they either publicly leave the company or start a campaign against it.
So what exactly is the business case? Is it actually worth maintaining an ethics function just to be able to say you have one, when the only time it becomes visible is when it goes against the company publicly? And if this outcome is so predictable, why do companies keep hiring these people in the first place?
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there's probably a box to check on the "be attractive to investors" form and then you can also put the ethics department in HR docs as an escalation path to make emo employees feel better. I bet the ethics people get told how important they are when hired and the team is stood up but then get upset when they're continually bypassed and quit. I bet the bait/switch hurts a lot.
> what exactly is the business case?
Ethics is also a containment vessel internally.
With an Ethics dept, concerned employees can rest easy knowing someone else is responsible, or if they raise concerns, they have someone to route and advocate their concerns, rather than adding noise to the chain of command. If the dept. ends up ineffective after some years, employees can blame the department, or have renewed hope when personnel turn over. So (slow) turnover is good from this perspective.