Milgram-Experiment

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram placed an ad in a New Haven newspaper: “We will pay you $4.00 for one hour of your time.” Participants arrived at Yale’s psychology lab, believing they were taking part in a study about memory and learning. They were told they would be the “teacher.” Another participant (actually an actor) would be the “learner.” The teacher’s job: deliver electric shocks to the learner every time they answered a question incorrectly. ...

I once deployed code to production because a VP told me to, even though I knew it would break things. I was a junior engineer. They were a VP of Engineering. They said, “Ship it now. We need this for the demo tomorrow.” I tried to explain: “The tests are failing. The database migration isn’t ready. This will cause data corruption.” They responded: “I understand your concerns, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Trust me. Ship it.” ...