Comment by Chris2048 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chris2048 | Hacker News Reader

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Accessibility isn't an ethics topic. Planes falling out of the sky is bad ethically, but when engineers study aerodynamics, they are not studying ethics. No one is suggesting engineers must attend an ethics course to prevent planes falling out of the sky - that's what we train lawyers for - to sue the shit out of those responsible for letting that happen.

A web dev isnt' going to think about "underprivileged backgrounds" etc - that's up to whoever decides who their demographic is. If you are building a website to sell Teslas, do you expect the dev to stamp their feet and demand a low-fi version on behalf of the underprivileged? Whoever is paying for development, it's their decision what to pay for.

"learning what is useful for your employer" is exactly what university is about, is exactly what you pay for, and is exactly what is expected.

It used to be the case that a "professional" was someone who cared about things at industry scope, not just their employer. SWEs are still considered cost centres, have no licence to revoke if they behave "unethically", and no bar, or association to make such a judgement anyway. Without a licence as a barrier to the profession, any uncooperative dev would find themselves outsourced for the next dev who doesn't give a toss.

Doctor and lawyers where always the benchmark for these kind of things, and it's arguable that even those professions have become corrupted by corporate influence.

First off, Ethics course requirements are incredibly common in engineering studies and I've never heard someone accuse lawyers of enforcing ethics. They enforce law and contracts, and are inherently reactive. The existence of lawyers has certainly not prevented a variety of engineering disasters that could have been avoided if the engineer had chosen to act differently.

Now, is it an ethical dilemma if you are asked to write firmware that disables a redundant safety sensor unless the customer pays additional fees? Is it a ethical to use a dataset that you may know is not fully representative for a crime estimation algorithm in order to achieve cost targets for your contract? Is it ethical to write a software that changes device behavior when being examined by regulators? Is it ethical to design an interface for a public service that will be inaccessible to a portion of the population to meet contract deadlines?

>learning what is useful for your employer" is exactly what university is about, is exactly what you pay for, and is exactly what is expected This is a warped viewpoint that assumes you have no agency. I studied engineering because I wanted to learn how it worked and how to build things. Employers be damned, I have no issue working for myself if I cannot find an employer who I can come to terms with.

If you mean to argue that the standing of engineering as a profession has greatly fallen then I agree with you. Especially in software. However, even if there is no license to be revoked, and no personal feeling of responsibility, the engineer who makes these design choices is not shielded from the legal repercussion of his actions no matter how many times his supervisor told him to even assuming he is willing to be responsible. No matter how much you may wish otherwise, engineers are still considered to hold the public trust and expected to behave accordingly. And you should consider it because when you comply with your employer to do something unethical and shit hits the fan, they are going to put you immediately in front of the firing squad to shield themselves from as many bullets as possible just the same as they are going to take the reward for as long as it flies under the radar.

How else do you enforce ethic other than reactively? Until we have minority-report style pre-crime reporting, lawyers decide who is punished on ethical grounds.

> Now, is it an ethical dilemma if you are asked to write firmware that disables a redundant safety sensor unless the customer pays additional fees?

Not for the engineers. They get a spec, they don't write it. Is it unethical to stab someone on the street? yes, but not for the knife manufacturer. Beyond that, it's for lawyers to decide the laws, and how they are enforced e.g. limits of who knifes can be sold to, and punishments for non compliance. It's likely the above scenario doesn't, because it's illegal, not because SWEs refused to do it on any other grounds. If it isn't illegal, they'll just find someone else to do it.

> engineer who makes these design choices is not shielded from the legal repercussion of his actions no matter how many times his supervisor told him to even assuming he is willing to be responsible

There has to be a law to break. If you are assuming everything unethical is illegal, why bother with ethics - just give engineers training in the law. Or, don't bother, and instead run everything by a lawyer.

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