Silicon Valley has always been focused on who can build the most popular and powerful applications in the shortest amount of the time. But as the industry has matured, the engineers writing the code are starting to ask more questions about the long term ramifications of what they’re building. From Kate Conger and Cade Metz in the NYT: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? “Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they built. At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech start-ups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere.” As engineers work to layer their wares with a code of ethics, it’s worth noting the we haven’t done a great job of predicting the impact of our tools. The tech community didn’t set out to destroy privacy, empower dictators, or enable that person you barely knew in junior high to comment on every photo you post. And yet, here we are.

+ Bloomberg: Google Drops Out of Pentagon’s $10 Billion Cloud Competition.