Comment by the_hoffa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_hoffa | Hacker News Reader

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You'd be surprised how many SE's would love for this to happen. The biggest reason, as you said, being able to push back.

Having worked in low-level embedded systems that could be considered "system critical", it's a horrible feeling knowing what's in that code and having no actual recourse other than quitting (which I have done on few occasions because I did not want to be tied to that disaster waiting to happen).

I actually started a legal framework and got some basic bills together (mostly wording) and presented this to many of my colleagues, all agreed it was needed and loved it, and a few lawyers said the bill/framework was sound .. even had some carve-outs for "mom-n-pops" and some other "obvious" things (like allowing for a transition into it).

Why didn't I push it through? 2 reasons:

1.) I'd likely be blackballed (if not outright killed) because "the powers that be" (e.g. large corp's in software) would absolutely -hate- this ... having actual accountability AND having to pay higher wages.

2.) Doing what I wanted would require federal intervention, and the climate has not been ripe for new regulations, let alone governing bodies, in well over a decade.

Hell, I even tried to get my PE in Software, but right as I was going to start the process, the PE for Software was removed from my state (and isn't likely to ever come back).

I 100% agree we should have even a PE for Software, but it's not likely to happen any time soon because Software without accountability and regulation makes WAY too much money ... :(

The problem with software is that it's all so, so decentralized.

If you're building a bridge in South Dakota, there's somebody in South Dakota building that bridge. That person has to follow South Dakota laws, and those laws can require whatever South Dakota regulators want, including sign-offs by professional engineers.

If you're a South Dakota resident signing up for a web portal, the company may have no knowledge of your jurisdiction specifically (and it would be a huge loss for the world if we moved to a "geo-block every single country by default until you clear it with your lawyers" regime). That portal may very well be hosted in Finland by a German hosting company, with the owners located in Sweden, running Open Source software primarily developed in Britain. It's possible that no single person affiliated with that portal's owner ever stepped food in your jurisdiction.

Bridges are only built on-site. They're designed and engineered elsewhere, frequently overseas.

They’re however designed and engineered for a specific jurisdiction and its laws/building codes

I work in manufacturing, though this comment is a generalization, and depends on what industry you’re in. What happens in practice is that products are certified by a third party regulatory agency, probably Intertek. They’re the ones who hire the professional engineers. The pushback comes from the design engineers being aware of the regulations, and saying: “This won’t get past Intertek.”

The downside is, bring money. Also, don’t expect to have an agile development process, because Intertek is a de facto phase gate. The upside is that maintaining your own regulatory lab is probably more expensive, and it’s hard to keep up with the myriad of international standards.

As for mom-n-pops, why do you want competition from them? Regulatory capture always favors consolidation of an industry. What happens in practice for consumers is that stuff comes from countries where the regulatory process can be bypassed by just putting the approval markings on everything.

Okay, that was sarcastic, but it’s possible that the vitality of software owes a lot to the fact that it’s relatively unregulated.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind some regulatory oversight, such as companies having to prove that they don’t store my personal data.

Note that I’m naming Intertek, not to point a finger at them, but because I don’t know if they have any competitors.

If you actually have that framework, then give it to someone with less to lose & all them to share it with the world.

> 2.) Doing what I wanted would require federal intervention, and the climate has not been ripe for new regulations, let alone governing bodies, in well over a decade.

Unionization could achieve the same end but the propaganda is strong in the US

  > You'd be surprised how many SE's would love for this to happen

I'm one of them, and for exactly the reason you say.

I worked as a physical engineer previously and I think the existence of PEs changes the nature of the game. I felt much more empowered to "talk back" to my boss and question them. It was natural to do that and even encouraged. If something is wrong everyone wants to know. It is worth disruption and even dealing with naive young engineers than it is to harm someone. It is also worth doing because it makes those engineers learn faster and it makes the products improve faster (insights can come from anywhere).

Part of the reason I don't associate my name with my account is so that I can talk more freely. I absolutely love software (and yes, even AI, despite what some might think given my comments) but I do really dislike how much deception there is in our industry. I do think it is on us as employees to steer the ship. If we don't think about what we're building and the consequences of them then our ship is beholden to the tides, not us. It is up to us to make the world a better place. It is up to us to make sure that our ship is headed towards utopia rather than dystopia (even if both are more of an idea than reality). I'd argue that if it were up to the tides then we'll end up crashing into the rocks. It's much easier to avoid that if we're managing the ship routinely than in a panic when we're headed in that direction. I think software has the capacity to make the world a far better place. That we can both do good and make money at the same time. But I also think the system naturally will disempower us. When we fight against the tides things are naturally harder and may even look like we're moving slower. But I think we often confuse speed and velocity, frankly, because direction is difficult to understand or predict. Still, it is best that we try our best and not just abdicate those decisions. The world is complex, so when things work they are in an unstable equilibrium. Which means small perturbations knock us off. Like one ship getting stuck shutting down a global economy. So it takes a million people and a billion tiny actions to make things go right and stay right (easier to stay than fix). But many of the problems we hate and are frustrated by are more stable states. Things like how wealth pools up, gathered by only a few. How power does the same. And so on. Obviously my feelings extend beyond software engineering, but my belief is that if we want the world to be a better place it takes all of us. The more that are willing to do something, the easier it gets. I'd also argue that most people don't need to do anything that difficult. The benefit and detriment of a complex machine is that small actions have larger consequences. Just because you're a small cog doesn't mean you have no power. You don't need to be a big cog to change the world, although you're unlikely to get recognition.

I also come from a more "traditional engineering" background, with PEs and a heavier sense of responsibility/ethics(?). I definitely think that's where it's going, although in my somewhat biased opinion, that's why the bar for traditional engineering in terms of students and expected skill and intuition was much higher than with CS/CE, which means the get rich quick scheme nature of it might go away.

I think you’re taking the professional responsibility that engineers are given too far. They are not given that responsibility to make political decisions, as you seem to be implying. Engineers are professionals in the hard sciences, not in social sciences. They only have power over ethical and safety issues directly pertaining to technical matters. I think ethics in this sense includes only very widely accepted ethical opinions, not anything that people from different political parties would disagree on. Engineering, in other words, is not political. Making the world better, as you put it, is something that requires political decisions. I hope people don’t make this confusion because the last thing most of us would like to see is Engineering becoming a political endeavor, including software engineering.

Engineers are citizens too.

You're the one that brought up politics. You're right that they're hard to decouple from ethics as that's essentially how the parties form.

But where I disagree with you, and extremely, is that we should not have our own personal ethics and adopt that of what we believe is society's. You're asking the impossible. Such a thing doesn't exist. Whichever country you're in you'll find a diverse set of opinions. The most universal ethics are only the most basic. But if it did exist I'd still disagree as you're asking engineers to not be human. You'd be discriminating people based on religion. You'd be discriminating people based on culture. You'd be discriminating people based on their humanity. I'm extremely opposed to turning humans into mindless automata. Everyone has the right to their own beliefs and this is our advantage as our species.

Well interesting... I absolutely expect engineers to make the "right" decisions no matter their religion, race or culture. It's not about being mindless automata, it's about using scientific rigour to guide your decisions. Engineering is the application of science to real problems. I don't really get how you can disagree with that, but that's fine, we're humans and we will never be able to all agree with everything others say, even when we're only talking to other engineers :). So I'll give you that.

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