At this point there's little to no difference between con, dark pattern and fraud. I'd like to see them prosecuted as such.
It's rare that it's developers who actually come up with these ideas, they're usually just employees implementing someone else's plan.
Unless we're talking early startups--then there's a good chance the developer is responsible.
If i had been assigned to work on that project I would have resigned.
"As a user, if I arrive on a booking page and the live API data shows our cached pricing data is stale, I expect the difference to be acknowledged."
Developer implements animation callout and an approximate, non-technical explanation
Cached pricing data continues to often be stale
I don’t like user stories that are anti-customer and in the developer’s favor unless it’s clear that there’s a path to fairness.
The motivation to a system should be to have as current as possible pricing, not some nightly batch that shows cheaper, unavailable prices and pisses off people when the real price is actually checked.
Part of the legal definition of a salaried professional is that the job entails the use of judgment.
It's probably not a coincidence that engineers and doctors are professionals well known to place their own ethical standards above their customers. It is expected that a doctor refuse to carry out a procedure that puts innocent people at harm.
* No professional code of ethics.
* No professional body that oversees the profession and sets standards.
* No licensing or certification (except maybe in Canada).
I'm sure I'll get a bunch of flack for this, but it's well past time developers stopped indulging in classist self-flattery pretending they're the peers of doctors, lawyers, or accountants.
A programmer is still more like a lawyer in almost every conceivable way than they are like a bricklayer: level of education, social circles, work environment, pay, cultural values, etc.
(This has nothing to do with "self-flattery" unless you think I'm making some sort of value judgment about these different classes, as opposed to just describing them).
In contrast, most software devs will code up whatever evil garbage features their bosses tell them to. They don't even have a concept of malpractice. Very rarely, one might quit, but they have no standing to say "no" to their employers and remain employed.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/internatio...
And that's only the named people. I don't know how many people you know in medicine or in law.
If you're unfamiliar with things being upcoded or out of network doctors substituting in late and then having patients incur massive fees, then maybe it's best to familiarize oneself.
And there are lawyers who specialize in getting the right rich guilty people out. The Razor didn't get the name by chance.
It is first found in English in 1380, when I doubt any professional certification bodies existed.
Eventually it evolved to mean what you got your license in, and then evolved further to include things like "software engineers".
Unless you build engines, the word engineer to describe what you do is etymologically inaccurate. So why is your particular stage on the path of organic evolution of this word more valid than anyone else's?
I understand the other argument that the job title "Engineer" is being diluted, but that ship sailed a long time ago. There are way more people with engineer in their title than there are PEs so I doubt any widespread legislative attempt to change this would be successful. And it's not just software engineers. Plenty of people working as engineers with ABET accredited engineering degrees haven't passed the PE exam either.
From a few days back:
>Back in Web 1.0 (1999 or so) I worked for what was then a large Social Network. There was no security. Any engineer could look at anything.
I'm assuming you weren't using the word engineer there to refer to Professional Engineers?
https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...
It was only ever administered 6 times.
I've spent all of 30 minutes studying this, so, hardly an expert. But it seems like the genesis and ongoing purpose of P.E. accreditation is to protect the health and safety of the public. There have certainly been some high profile examples of poor software engineering affecting health and safety - thinking about the Toyota acceleration issue and the VW emissions scandal - but I am wondering if people really think an accreditation body would prevent this sort of thing from happening. What would a Professional Software Engineer be, and why would they be inherently better or more qualified than what we have today?
There's no demand because they made the process more or less impossible for developers to ever get to to the point where they take the PE exam.
First, the candidate has to pass one of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to become an engineer-in-training. Except, whoops, there isn't a software specific FE; the most relevant one is the EE/Comp. E. exam. Take a look at the list of topics: https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/FE-Ele-CBT-specs.pdf Most developers aren't going to pass that even with a CS degree.
Secondly, you need 4-8 years of supervision by a licensed engineer. Again, whoops, there are barely any software developers with a PE license, so who would they get to supervise them?
Frankly, the situation was so absurd that one has to suspect that NCEES didn't want to certify software developers as PEs.
Provably correct software development is too slow and specialized to be economically feasible. Even formal correctness is not enough, you also need to defend against unpredictable hardware faults. No traditional engineering discipline needs to do this.
I do have to ask why all the self hate here why would a rational person what to degrade there profession do you want to be working in a blue collar job with worse working conditions?
Whilst both types how workers have problems at work - they express themselves quite differently.
Medical doctors work for an industry that bankrupts sick people for being sick and and a huge number (if not a majority) of practicing doctors can be implicated in the opioid epidemic that has killed thousands and ruined countless lives.
Ethical contracts usually just lead to more politics imo. At the end of the day, we all bow to money in one way or another (some are just willing to bow lower than others).
Maybe we should stop pretending a profession can somehow make a person better than someone else in some sort of meta/ethical way.
Addendum: Personally I wish the law were more open to allowing people to defend themselves. A few years ago I went to court to defend myself in what I was sure was a simple misunderstanding in traffic court. Halfway through my second sentence (not in the legal sense), the judge interrupted me. Then the police officer tried to explain what he put in the ticket may not have been comprehensive. The judge cut him off too and decided it was in my best interest to "learn a lesson" and found me guilty of a violation I was not guilty of. The lesson I learned was if I had paid a lawyer $500 I would have gotten an honest hearing. I don't see the ethics or standards in that.
These professions have codified standards, licensing, and membership requirements for practitioners. There is a real incentive to conform and maintain your license because otherwise you cannot work. In these professions you know the standard of ethical behavior and you can reasonable expect your fellow professionals to also refuse questionable requests. An unethical client is going to have a hard time going down the street to find someone else who is willing to do what you won't.
I'm not trying to excuse the bad behavior of some software developers. My point is that the software industry and profession lacks much of what other professions have established in order to maintain high standards.
The point is that accountants are professionals and have professional standards that they adhere to. Software devs are not and do not.
One often overlooked relationship I find to this sort of argument is that economic harm is somehow independent of physical harm.
While in the purest theoretical sense, its obviously clear/true, the more we abstract parts of life away to monetary valuation and control, the more economic effects have real serious indirect physical consequences.
So someone lost a few bucks due to a manipulative ad? Most the time this has no serious consequences as devious as it may be. However, when lost assets become more significant or lead to serious economic distress, it can and does directly result in health effects that have physical consequence.
Obvious extreme examples include cases of financial ruin that lead to mental health distress leading to suicides. Small repeated loss could also lead to unhealthy lifestyles over time coupled with poor financial choices resulting in limited to no access to preventative healthcare... directly leading to a cause of death (say heart disease from poor dieting).
Practices of advertising from the tobacco industry in the past provide a good model for how these can effect peoples choices which over time had serious physical consequences--the main difference being the tobacco industry actually provided a dangerous product that their behaviours pushed. Arguably consumers have to actively make a choice to follow through but with enough data, people are tending to be more and more easily manipulated.
Nope
> To everyone else, putting it as nicely as possible, it's very off.
As one of the other people, I disagree.
Also note that a lot of the trade regulation groups like the bar associations also ensure a good standing in the "community", so they would sanction whatever equivalent lawyers have to dark patterns, if they were frequent enough/egregious enough.
In the case of something more complex, developers don't have the leverage of established regulatory bodies and guilds.
I was once asked to finish and deploy code that the previous dev had stolen from his old employer. I said no because the code was paid for by someone else and belonged to them. It wasn't a big deal -- my career didn't suffer.
To your point specifically how many low level German laborers were prosecuted for following orders to build a prison camp or lay railroad track?
Also, what leverage do you think a developer has in these sorts of situations? Should the developer say they're not willing to write the feature because it's possible customers could exploit it?
I've walked away from job offers where I found at interview I really didn't like the smell from how they were making money. I also recognise a 25 year old me might not have had the financial luxury to do so, or to just say no to a boss asking.
Were software a regulated profession like medicine or legal with an ethics body I'd be inclined to agree. Maybe it's time it was, but I suspect stronger consumer protection and treating dark patterns and policies as fraud would be a vastly cheaper route for all concerned.
How would one know one is meeting ethical obligations if they havn't been educated. Password storage, for instance, it's not obvious to many people why plain-text password storage is bad -- it _still_ happens at companies to this very day.
I'm all for people being able to code and do their own work, just like you should be able to build your own shed or house as long as it meets building codes. Maybe we need the equivalent of building codes (except not proprietary). The GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act are sort-of the start of that, I think.
I probably wasn't clear. Ethics courses should probably be more common (and embedded in engineering curricula more) although they are certainly available.
My comment about the PE is that it typically requires, for example, a four-year bachelors degree in engineering in addition to other requirements. [1] Thus, moving to a more formal professional structure in this manner would basically exclude career shifters, boot camp grads, self-taught programmers, etc.
I may not have been clear; how do you know you've built a building that fulfills your ethical obligations if you don't know how to determine so? i.e. you're ethically obligated as an engineer to not build something you know (have determined to the best of your knowledge) is unsafe to use, but how do you do that if you don't know how to? (Especially when there are _many_ people who could.)
Basically I'm saying that you can't have (professionally required) ethical obligations without also having the knowledge and ability to fulfill said obligations.
For issues that aren't a matter of life-or-death, like the vast majority of software, yeah, strict licensure is probably overkill and against the spirit hacking.
However, that people aren't licensed EEs doesn't prevent them from tinkering with arduinos or SDRs; they simply can't sell their skills specifically as an electrical engineer.
I think there is some sensible ground between where we are now and not being able to program without a license (which would be a dystopian nightmare). As I mentioned, clear "building codes", better and more comprehensive best practices (e.g. OWASP), and having said things built into contracts or projects designs from the start, not as afterthoughts (i.e. having business take said best practices seriously).
But to the greater point, I guess the ethical principle is don't do things that can put people at risk if you know you don't know what you're doing--much less put people at risk because you just don't care or want to take shortcuts.
If you think you know what you're doing but don't? I'm not sure how an ethics course or even a license is going to help there. Because you think you're doing things safely. Arguably, you're not even being unethical, just incompetent.
Now, a license is supposed to be something of a guarantee of a minimum level of competency. But it's pretty minimal. After all, it basically just means you do have an appropriate degree, have worked in the field under someone for a few years, and have passed some standardized test. All that suggests you know (or once knew) something about the basics, but not a lot more.
ADDED:
>However, that people aren't licensed EEs doesn't prevent them from tinkering with arduinos or SDRs; they simply can't sell their skills specifically as an electrical engineer.
In at least most states in the US, sure they can. (And in the ones that theoretically prohibit you from calling yourself an engineer if unlicensed, that's almost universally ignored.) I've known tons of people who have worked or work as electrical engineers and I'm sure few of them have PEs. You don't need a PE for most jobs. Though it's probably more common with civil engineering.
Programming seems like a job particularly suited for professionalization, simply because programmers have to constantly be learning new things, and that's a thing your local org could provide to keep the lights on rather than relying completely on dues payments. If they were a blanket organization, they could even control supply through raising standards, and could certainly detect wage-fixing collusion easier than individuals.
Having clear guidelines and a place to find instruction that supports those guidelines makes "If you think you know what you're doing but don't?" a pure ethical problem. You either checked or you didn't.
Maybe look to the National Association of Realtors for a framework.
This would require self-reflection by a community who constantly denigrates Facebook and the like for their issues, but happily punch the clock and collect RSUs from the same companies. It's easier to simply blame your superiors.
Or perhaps it’s clearer if we talk about Jewish people not self-policing Jewish bankers committing fraud, or Catholics with their child abuse, or perhaps Muslims with their bombing? Surely I’ve definitely opposed scamming just as much those people have.
I think you ended that sentence prematurely.... "..after their boss, marketing team, etc., told them to." I don't think I've ever met a dev who implements these things because they think it's a good idea.