[jdietrich]

Engineers build small things that have huge impacts. The Linux kernel, the ARM core, the internal combustion engine, the atomic bomb.

As a profession, software engineers have very weak ethical standards. We have no Hippocratic oath, we have no iron ring. We might not be happy about it, but we'll release code that we know to be dangerously buggy, we'll cooperate with surveillance agencies, we'll design systems that exploit users, we'll build products that are sold to the governments of Saudi Arabia or Libya.

If software engineers were collectivised, we could refuse to do all of this shady stuff. Any software engineer tasked with doing something unethical could simply say "I'm not doing that, I'd lose my license". By establishing a professional body equivalent to the Bar Association or the General Medical Council, we could throw a giant wrench in the machinery of evil.

[akavel]

Hmm; so maybe I just misunderstood the original post at first, this or the fact that I'm already trying hard to take into account ethics in what I do as much as I can, so no big change for me? I dunno; still not quite convinced by this interpretation. I understand and endorse the idea of "picking who you work for" (though sometimes it's very nontrivial, esp. in context of big companies/corporations). I just thought that maybe the fragment about "a lot of leverage" and "small changes in what we make have huge consequences" was alluding to some other idea. Personally, I have extremely hard time seeing me choosing a different employer as "a lot of leverage" or "huge consequences [for the world]". I feel it's only a very small, though potentially at least nonzero, leverage and consequences for the world (I imagine someone else with weaker spine will hire for a particular position anyway), but in my perception notable (positive) consequences for feeling of personal integrity, though potentially (but not necessarily) at a cost for personal material situation.