My experience of it is in advertising, look at something like GroupM. They intentionally make a set of agencies to act as different front doors into the group so they can make it look like there are no conflicts of interest. Then once work comes in the door it all gets serviced by the same shared resources. The 'front door' agencies of course promote as a centre of excellence with deep expertise etc. but you really don't need to read between the lines very much.
For the consultancy it boils down to not reinventing the wheel, learning from others and sharing knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Typically, what is shared are anonymized generic design or cases and not actual code or design files though.
Of course what is knowledge sharing and efficiency for consultants might simply boil down to IP theft for the affected companies. My question is rather how much of it is natural human social interaction and collaboration if you put dozens of people from dozens of projects into one room talking about a similar problem.
Working for a tech consultancy before, they do have clear lines to distinguish for legal reasons and make you take courses. For e.g., you can't give or receive gifts of any monetary value, etc. But management find other ways, to gain client's trust and affection. One way is to overwork the consultants, and other is to share information that is privy sometimes.
This happened in 1999-2001, so it isn't recent & won't affect any outcomes. But it goes on to say it can blunt a prior client company's competitive advantage.
To say that this always involves illegal copying of code in some way would imply that an employee is effectively forbidden from ever writing similar code in two different companies - are you supposed to be forbidden from re-using the experience you gained working for a company ?
No but adding implementations to competiting company's product based on the innovations seen in the first falls squarely under IP misuse (At the least, bypassing patent licensing etc.)
Software domain would see acrimonious litigations cases based on mundane things like the rubber band scrolling (Apple vs. Samsung). Adding readout specific databus improves acquisition speeds by order of 2 or 3x - and that is not a trivial change which can be disregarded. Most times they've been misused since they were minor trade secrets not patents. There was no way to attempt litigation in this one without opening up certain parts of software ecosystem to legal scrutiny/comparison (which probably exposes more IP).
I suppose this is an interesting question, not quite black and white? That said, don't these huge companies have armies of lawyers to protect their IP?
However in many cases of enter-rise software, everyone involved knows perfectly well that copying is happening. In which case there is nothing immoral ~ just a mismatch between elegant and actual reality.
In this case it is very straightforward legally if they copied documents over. You just can't do that, full stop. But I'm uncomfortable to say that this is an equitable relationship between all these companies, because it gives a level of protectionism to DXC to do a really poor job in delivery knowing that the American court system has their back if they lose on re-compete.
Indian engineering colleges really need to start cleaning up the detritus, it is time to provide healthy base for the young ones. Once a culture builds up, the managers at consultancy will feel ashamed to cut loose on ethics even under pressure. Or not, but a start has to be made in this aspect.
previously on HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38432752 Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process (buzzfeed.com)
It's a problem of corporate culture and incentives.
Engineering ethics is knowing what's right or wrong when performing engineering work. Children develop a pretty decent sense of right and wrong. It isn't rocket science.
A 22-year old ordered by their manager to falsify data in their first month on the job knows it's wrong. They aren't going to refuse because they took some course in college. Whether or not they do it is more likely a function of how prevalent that behavior is in the organization, how often it's caught, and how publicly it's punished.
Now, with this kind of money and scrutiny you have to follow the letter of the law, whether it is productive or not. TCS should know better. But we can't pretend that this is about ethics.
As if the engineering grads make these decisions and not managerial types with MBA degrees and "connections".
Indian engineering colleges already have 2-3 such courses in curriculum and don't need to fit yet another subject which nobody cares about, instead of teaching actual skills.
The actual knowledge of average Indian Engineering grad is very low, except in leetcode.
This is the root of the problem.
It's managers who usually make these decisions, not engineers.
Doesn't the ruling elite of most countries study humanities courses? Does that prevent them from commuting much worse attrocites than this?
To be clear, I see more "gaming the system" behavior in India, but it's purely a result of more cut-throat competition in the market. "Ethics" and "morality" courses have shit to do with it.