[Sunset]

>In my opinion (and I welcome disagreement and debate) engineers have an obligation to say 'no' to wiring unethical code.

I respectfully disagree. Engineers have an obligation to do whatever is asked of them by management. If that means building nuke-hand-grenades so be it.

Being an engineer( be it software or mechanics ) should be a morally neutral thing. Do the job and keep your morals out of it. This is the only way we can have some semblance of sanity in the field.

[lmitchell]

'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department! says Wernher Von Braun.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs

I really really really strongly disagree with this. As the ones who are most knowledgable about the systems they're building, I definitely think engineers have a moral responsibility to make sure they're at the very least following applicable laws and regulations - I would argue that we have a moral responsibility to act ethically even in cases where it's not covered by laws or regulations, but I'll admit that's a bit more controversial.

[Sunset]

The problem with "moral obligations" is a person's moral axioms are fundamentally arbitrary. Would you still want engineers to be guided by their moral convictions when you fundamentally disagree with them yourself?

[lmitchell]

Inasmuch as I want everyone to be guided by their moral convictions, yes. I mean, even if I don't agree with them, I'd much rather an engineer's decisions be guided by 'what they feel is right' rather than guided by nothing at all, which seems to be what parent was implying.

Also, this is why we have engineering codes of ethics, at least in Canada and the US (and while I'm not familiar with elsewhere in the world, I would assume similar things hold in most first-world countries). We don't necessarily have to agree on everything, but there is a baseline for what we consider ethical, and engineers are expected to uphold that baseline, otherwise they are not permitted to practice engineering. Unfortunately the line between 'engineers' and other practicioners isn't as well-defined for software engineering as it is for most engineering fields - but that doesn't mean we should ignore it completely.

[Retra]

This is stupid. There is no such thing as working without morals, and you aren't going to have 'sanity' by asking engineers to adopt someone else's (also arbitrary) morals rather than their own.

[mcguire]

Real engineering disagrees: http://www.onlineethics.org/2959.aspx

[tehwebguy]

You are still a human when you are at work.

[gyrgtyn]

eww