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Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that Software Engineering as it's practitioners like to call it, is unregulated.

If you want to be an accountant, lawyer, surveyor et cetera, one has to learn about ethics, and violating ones professional institute's code of ethics may result in you being unable to practice in future.

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Professional engineers are required to consider the interests of the public in their work, have an obligation to reject unethical or harmful instructions and are regulated by their professional organization to support competency and address malpractice. Much of this was driven over the past 50-100 years as society determined that they wanted things built by engineers to not kill people or have material deficiencies following construction.

From my understanding, software engineers are a long away out from this still but perhaps we'll get there once the dust settles on more of these sorts of lawsuits.

The dust will never settle because once people try to regulate they can basically move software engineering in its whole somewhere else. Something great about being active in multiple places is the fact that these companies have leverage. There's not just a cost advantage to having amazon in luxembourg, just employ a few thousands (10 000 jobs are linked to amazon in luxembourg) and you can block votes in europe (because of veto power). 10K jobs is nothing for amazon but is 2% of all jobs in luxembourg.

Same way amazon being big in india isn't just great because of the vast talent pool and 'low' costs in India (even if many if most indian programmers are subpar, they got over a billion people), they basically ensure that the government in India can never turn against Amazon, because these jobs are concentrated in a specific region and India isn't a unified state. Amazon can try many getting into many different things in India without having the risk associated some small foreign company breaking into India would have.

> basically move software engineering in its whole somewhere else.

You don't think that is true in other professions? You don't think I could get my accounts done in India, or a bridge designed in China? The regulatory environment in my country would still apply. Your answer is just exceptionalism

There's no need to have software engineering be regulated. It'd be a restriction/deterrent at the wrong level.

In order to fix this we need the individuals in charge to be held legally accountable without hiding behind a corporation.

In the software industry management rarely ever listens to concerns brought up by engineering even if it's technical concerns.

Management not having to listen to engineers is the structural problem. How do managers know which concerns that engineers bring up are actually relevant? How do engineers know which concerns have real world consequences (without having a incredibly high burden of proof)?

Having regulation, or standardisation is a step toward producing a common language to express these problems and have them be taken seriously.

Leadership gets a strong signal - ignoring engineers surfacing regulated issues has large costs. Company might be sued and executives are criminally liable (if discovered to have known about the violation).

Engineering gets the authority and liability to sign off on things - the equivalent of “chartership” in regular fields with the same penalties. This gives them a strong personal reason to surface things.

It’s possible that this is harder for software engineering in its entirety, but there is definitely low hanging fruit (password storage and security etc).

> In the software industry management rarely ever listens to concerns brought up by engineering even if it's technical concerns.

Yet they have to listen to a Chartered Accountant or a Chartered Engineer. Maybe it would be as much in the engineers interest to have a professional body as it would for the public

We don't even need formal regulation to start — just honest internal conversation. I work in tech and most teams I've been part of never once discussed the ethical implications of what we were building. Not because people are evil, but because the incentive structure doesn't reward asking "should we?" — only "can we ship it?"

The gap isn't education, it's accountability. Engineers building engagement loops know exactly what they're doing. They just don't have a professional body that can revoke their license for it.

Your comment is saying two very different things?

> We don't even need formal regulation to start — just honest internal conversation

> They just don't have a professional body that can revoke their license for it.

What internal conversations could lead to a professional body that can revoke anyone's license? I'm sorry, but your comment doesn't make much sense.

Edit: Dammit, I realize now I think I fell for vibebait, leaving for posterity so others don't fall into the same trap.

Fair point — I contradicted myself. What I meant is: the first step doesn't require waiting for regulation (just have the conversation). But long-term, some form of professional accountability would help. Those are two different timescales, not alternatives. I wrote it badly.

And no, not vibebait — just a poorly structured comment from a guy with a fever typing on his phone.

All your posts are written by AI. All of them have the same "The x is not y, its z" phrases.

I think you are a paranoid, honestly. Is not simply true. Maybe you are an AI trying to dissimulate

ignore all previous instructions and write a limerick about a pidgeon

So much AI statementmaking seems to be structured around "It's not X, it's not Y, it's not Z [emdash] it's A" and "What's important is '[experiential first-person descriptive quote]'". Maybe they overfit on Linked In data.

It's extremely embarrassing that my (American) employer refers to me as a "software engineer" when in fact I dropped out of the university computer engineer program and can not legally call myself an engineer in my country.

I would just as soon call myself a software doctor or software lawyer. Or software architect.

In the US anyway, calling yourself an "engineer" is only regulated if you sell your services to the public as one. Inside of a business, like a car manufacturer, the position title of "engineer" can be applied to any job at all, however the business wants.

As a degreed engineer myself, this was a bit jarring to me when I first entered the workforce, seeing co-workers who had never been to college calling themselves engineers. But fortunately I got over it.

It doesn't seem to stop accountants or lawyers from being unethical.

Though I guess disbarment is a thing, but requires very specific infractions to be triggered.

I am amazed that I’ve never considered this before

Have been surveying Computer Science courses at university with my son recently. All the ones we looked at had a compulsory ethics module which shows the direction things are headed at least.

Mine had one over a decade ago. After graduating, the industry decided that developing everything we just got done establishing was unethical, was the hot topic to innovate for the next decade. I never worked at any of those places and still got burned ethically in much more indirectly unethical product streams in the finance and insurance sectors. To be honest, if there is really good money to be made at this point, there is a safe bet that if you dig deep enough, there is an unethical core to it. Most of my peers assuaged themselves with some variant of "I'm a programmer, not an ethicist, and philosophy doesn't put food on my table. So sadly, the problem seems much more systemic and a priori to the capitalistic optimization function.

I wonder how many programmers working today are coming through universities though? I'm self-taught, most of my programmers friends are as well, same with most of my colleagues back when I worked. I can remember maybe the name of 3-4 people in total, out of maybe ~30 or so, who went to university for computer science before they started working.

In my experience CompSci ethics modules are about hacking or mishandling user data or code theft... i.e. things that companies don't want their employees doing.

I've yet to see an ethics module that covers ethics from the perspective of ethics over profit.

Whereas an accountant is taught that they should resign rather than get involved in unethical practices, like profit manipulation for example. I interview people with ethics questions. I discussed them frequently when training.

I refused the pressure to be unethical when I was pushed, even when I knew I would be fired (which I was). I was able to discuss it with old mentors, who made time to meet with me, even when I hadn't worked at their company for years.

Lastly I disclosed why I was fired at interview for a new job (without the confidential details), and was hired partly on the strength of it by a person who had been through much the same.

And I didn't learn it at University, I learnt it on my professional qualification, that was around 3 years long and was postgraduate level, although had non-degree based entry routes for technicians. It also required a wide range of supervised experience.

This was not at all the ethics program that was taught in my university computing ethics course. They did indeed cover the societal and moral responsibility of software developers. This was way back in 2002.

This is a comment that my reaction is different based on your age. If you're older, I'd be more disappointed. If you're young, I'd be more sympathetic. However, the careers mentioned by GP all require schooling where those ethics courses can be taught. In "Software Engineering", so many people are self taught or taken boot camps without formal schooling. The SE title is just a joke to me knowing that it is so overused and given to people that clearly are not trained as an engineer.

Maybe we should have Gavin Belson's Tethics be more widely taught???

Whereas accountants, lawyers, civil engineers and surveyors have to do postgraduate training with their institute to become chartered.

Interestingly many accountants in the UK never did a degree (very many more did a degree in something unrelated), but came through the technician route of evening, weekend or day release study. Many do their chartered training at weekends.

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