Many years ago I was asked about adding a feature to our website, which was a shopping portal for eyeglasses, that would bring up a popup when the user tried to leave the site. I immediately said I would not do it. I didn't get let go but the look the manager gave me was one of shocked disbelief, I imagine it was strike one. I quit not long after. The manager was from a big corporation (Luxottica) that had bought us recently. It seems relatively normal that the kind of people who achieve positions of power at large companies just have no respect for other humans. It makes me sad sometimes.
I work in e-commerce and this kind of thing is totally standard. You get salespeople trying to sell you this and much worse regularly.
I was once pitched the exact dark pattern as in the OP - covert email collection. I was gobsmacked. I wrote about it at the time thus:
> Towards the end of the slide deck, Dom excitedly explained how if a user enters an email address in any form field anywhere on the website, then regardless of whether the form is submitted, that email address will be captured by IntegriMart and paired up with a browser fingerprint for that user. This, presumably, allows us to “continue to build a dialogue” with that user.
I was curious how that works, so I clicked into the ouibounce repo and read the README. I still don't get how it works, but I enjoyed how they flirt with self awareness:
> it's very easy to create something spammy-looking.
...and then they list "good" uses that are... all spammy.
These actions can be used to infer possible intent to leave: scroll up (to reveal address bar on mobile), move mouse toward top of viewport (to move mouse toward address bar), swipe down (to reveal address bar on mobile), loss of UI focus, probably others.
I hate these patterns, and they are 100% appropriately described as dark. I and the other devs spent months at one place arguing with a PM about how janky and broken the third-party intent-to-leave detector they injected using Google Tag Manager without dev involvement made our app feel. (GTM was the product that convinced me Google gave up on not being evil)
Okay, so it's all indirect? I usually just ctrl-w, and beyond the browser native dialog that sites can use to ask if you want to confirm saving your work or something, I wasn't aware of any way to intercept that or do anything about it.
Left out of this post is a form or CTA that follows me on scroll, it doesn't make me feel like it's easier to find the form, it makes me feel like I'm being hounded to give my information.
Not to play devil's advocate here, but as an employee if you refuse to do something your manager tells you to do that is both within your job description and not illegal then you are in the wrong in terms of your duties as an employee.
The feature you describe is annoying (I think it's fair to say that everyone hates these pop-ups) but rather innocuous and certainly not unlawful so there isn't any reasonable ground to refuse to do it if you're employed as a web dev.
The concept of professional ethics exists as is well established in other fields such as medicine, engineering, legal work, and journalism. Why should software development be regarded to take place in an ethical void?
Granted, if you refuse to do something your boss tells you to do because it violates your concept of professional and personal ethics, they may decline to continue employing you. And you might not have a legal basis to challenge your termination if what they asked you to do is legal. But walking away from a job may be the best option in some situations.
Conversely, if you work for a company that lists it's "values" as something like "Being customer-focused", it's easy to find ground upon which to push back on things that go against the company's supposed values.
Software engineering is largely think-work. Some of it is creatively coming up with ways to solve novel technical problems, but an often understated part is thinking about how your implementations will affect your users, and optimizing for solving your users problems.
Quite the opposite. If a middle manager tells you to do something you think harms the company or it's customers and you don't push back as a knowledge worker you're not doing your job.
Ultimately you may need to comply if the decision is made, but they literally hire us for our judgement and ability to work independently for the companies objectives.
> Ultimately you may need to comply if the decision is made
Yes, you 'need' to comply because you're an employee. That's all there is to it and I'm very surprised by the emotional reactions to my simple statement of fact. It's odd.
A software dev is not hired for their judgement on company strategy or marketing. It's never a good idea to tell others how to do their jobs.
I would also say that pushing back and refusing are two very different things. If you think something is not good for the company you may say it constructively (though be careful).
In the end, "disagree and commit" or quit are the two professional options.
There's a principal-agent problem here. The owners of the company don't care about a random manager's feelings. The manager certainly does, however, so much of what any particular manager will require is more about making the manager feel better than about making profits. Other employees are correct to disagree with such misuse of resources.
Something being legal has nothing to do with it being ethical. Many terrible things used to be entirely legal. Some still are. Having said that, this kind of thing puts your job on the line. Standing your ground on ethics will always come with a price.
I specifically wrote 'legal' because that is in principle a valid ground to refuse to obey your employer's instruction. 'Unethical' as in 'I don't agree with it' is not.
My reply was also specifically to a comment about a pop-up window when a visitor leaves a web page. It's over the top to bring ethics into this and I feel the term is being completely diluted into meaninglessness these days and too often used as an excuse to choose to do only whatever one agrees with, which both unprofessional and, frankly, childish.
Again, I'm very surprised that my comments are being so badly received when they are simple statements of fact and reality of the employment relationship. Maybe many readers are still quite inexperienced...
