Kicking the Hornet's Nest (Keynote)

Before I was an engineer, I was a philosopher. And as a recovering philosopher I find myself unable to resist questioning assumptions. Lately I’ve found my urges directed at my chosen profession (yes, that would be developer relations), and I’ve begun to wonder…

Is what we’re doing morally defensible? I mean, on one view, your developer relations team is just an over-exploited labor force whose goal is to manipulate developers into giving their boss’s money to your boss, and then we get a t-shirt. That’s unflattering, but it’s also not false.

So, let’s poke at our assumptions, together. Let’s talk about capitalism, and justice, and the advantage of the stronger, and what we owe each other. And let’s see if our actions jive with our intuitions about what’s right and what’s wrong. When we’re done, we’ll be well-armed with useful tools for thinking critically about what we do and why we do it, and answering these hard questions for ourselves.

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