Code for which I still feel ashamed

"I was young and I needed money."
- Sylvester Stallone


If you make a living by writing code, then there is a chance that at some point in your career you will be asked to write code for something dubious, if not frankly amoral.

This happened to me in 2000. And this is my load forever.
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I wrote the first line of code at 6 years old. Although I am not a child prodigy. Then my father helped me a lot. But I already got hooked. I liked it.

At 15, I was already working half-time at my father's consulting company. Sawed sites and kodil small components for business applications on weekends and summer.

I was terribly underpaid. But as my father still likes to say, then I received a free room and table, as well as a fairly valuable working experience.

Later, I managed to help pay for part of my training as a freelancer. I have created several e-commerce sites for some local companies.

At 21 I had a regular job as a programmer at an interactive marketing company in Toronto, Canada.

The company was founded by a doctor of medicine and many of its clients were large pharmaceutical companies.

In Canada, there are strict restrictions on how pharmaceutical companies can advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers.

As a result, these companies create websites that provide general information about any symptoms for which their medications are intended. Then, when the visitor proves that he has a prescription, he can access the patient portal with more detailed information about the medicine.


Home page edfactsanada.com circa 2001, The Internet Archive

One of the projects in which I worked was about a drug for women. The graphics and general style of the site made it clear that the client wanted to specifically target an adolescent girl audience.

One of the features of the site was the survey, where the girls were asked a series of questions and, based on their answers, they were recommended drugs.

Let me remind you that the site was positioned as an independent informational, and not as an advertisement for a specific drug.

When I received the requirements, they contained survey questions and answer choices for each of them.

The only thing missing in the requirements was what to do with the answers at the end of the survey. What rules determine what treatment the survey should recommend?

I discussed this issue with the customer service manager. She wrote to the customer and received the requirements. I continued to code.

Before presenting the site to the customer, my project manager decided to check it out quickly. She tried the survey and then came to me:

“The survey is not working,” she said.

"Oh ... what's broken?" I asked.

“Mmm ... it seems that no matter what I answer, the survey recommends the client's drug as the best treatment. The only exception is if I say that I have an allergy. Or if I say I already accept it. ”

"Yes. This is exactly what was in the TK. Any answers lead to the client’s drug. ”

"Ah ... ok, good."

And she left.

When I first saw these requirements, they disturbed me. I sensed in one place that I was writing code for something that, in principle, was created to deceive young girls. But I drove those thoughts away. I needed the loot to do the work and I did it.

None of what we did was illegal. I was the youngest developer in my team and I earned good money for my age. In the end, I realized that the real purpose of the site was to promote a certain drug. I wrote off this tactic on “marketing”.

The client was extremely pleased with the site. So much so that their representative invited me and the whole team for dinner.

On the day of dinner, shortly before leaving the office, a colleague sent me a link to the news. She was about a young girl who was taking this drug.

She committed suicide.

It turned out that among the side effects of this drug were severe depression and suicidal tendencies.

The colleague who sent me this link did not come to dinner.

But I still went. It was hard and awkward. I did not say a word about the news. Just quietly chewing your steak and squeezing a smile.

The next day I called my 19 year old sister. When I was working on a project, the glade that this drug was prescribed.

When we first talked about this, we thought it was a pure coincidence. But now the tone of our conversation was completely different. I advised her to stop taking the medicine as soon as possible. Fortunately, she listened to me.

For me, there are a million and one ways to rationalize complicity in subsequent suicides and severe depression. Even today, the trial is still ongoing with former patients.

It is easy to prove that I have nothing to do with it. But still, I always felt bad at the thought of that code.

Soon after that dinner, I quit.

As developers, often we are one of the last defenders against potentially dangerous and immoral practices.

We are approaching the time when the programs will be able to control the machine that takes your family to a football training session. There is already an AI that helps doctors diagnose a disease. It is easy to imagine how he will soon recommend recipes.

The more programs continue to capture every aspect of our lives, the more important it will be for us to take a firm stand and make sure that our ethics are always present in our code.

From that day on, I always try to think twice about the impact of my code before I start writing it. I hope that you will do the same.

Translation: Olga Chernopitskaya

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