[ThrowawayR2]

Not new for software and hardware industry though, practitioners have just chosen to ignore it. From the Association for Computing Machinery, which encompasses all forms of software development, the very first principle is the public good:

"Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest. In particular, software engineers shall, as appropriate:

1.01. Accept full responsibility for their own work.

1.02. Moderate the interests of the software engineer, the employer, the client and the users with the public good.

1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. ..."

From the IEEE, which also encompasses computer engineering, their first principle and its first few sub-items are:

"To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities.

1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;

2. to improve the understanding by individuals and society of the capabilities and societal implications of conventional and emerging technologies, including intelligent systems; ..."

[hnthrow0287345]

This would be more meaningful if, perhaps, we had to swear an oath to it before being able to practice. And practitioners would be treated more seriously if everyone knew we swore that oath. And the legal utility as accountability and defense would also be useful.

Of course people are going to ignore it if there's no force behind it.

[opsnooperfax]

Professional liability and licensure would create assurances with some teeth, but there are some major drawbacks.

[gymbeaux]

Enlighten us to these drawbacks. On the surface I am inclined to say the pros would outweigh the cons. Compared to other professions, software engineering seems to struggle the most with H-1B/Green Card abuse and interview processes. Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, lawyers, et al. than for software engineers, and that I believe is because of the licensure. I do think licensure adds overhead to an industry (e.g., malpractice insurance, governing bodies, license management) and that probably discourages anyone with real power (like FAANG) to pursue it and try to set it as an industry-wide standard. Most software engineers in the U.S. are making around $130-140k, but lawyers and medical doctors usually make significantly more (perhaps because of the licensure overhead - I'm not sure if malpractice insurance is included in a medical doctor's salary- I would imagine it's not and is taken out of each paycheck like any other industry's health insurance benefits).

[ThrowawayR2]

> "Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, ..."

The job interview for doctors is a 5-7 year residency under tight supervision of an attending physician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residency_(medicine) . People do flunk or drop out as well, meaning they can never become a physician. There's nothing easier about that.

[raphman]

I think the parent commenter agrees with you: because there is tight quality assurance and - in many countries - a license needed to practice medicine, the interviewer can just trust the system instead of having to evaluate the competence of the applicant through questions and coding assignments.

(I'm not sure whether I agree with the commentator that a SE license would be that helpful in practice.)

[gymbeaux]

I’ve been a software engineer for over a decade. At what point is my “residency” over? At what point does the “community” decide I can write software with some level of competency and don’t need to solve fizz buzz over and over again?

[lukan]

It seems to work somewhat with medical doctors and the Hippocratic Oath.

But I would argue it is way easier there. Building software has way more grey areas.

[trolleski]

I don't think there are more grey areas in software engineering than in medicine. The difference is the feedback loop of the outcome - if you design a dopamine slot machine you will ruin the generation and that's a long arc.

[lukan]

And that makes it hard. I am open for banning all comercial advertisement - but general society is largely fine with it. So is someone designing new targeting algorithm for ads breaking his potential oath of doing good for society?

What grey areas are there for doctors?

[trolleski]

Prescribing meds which you could avoid while receiving 'courses' from Key Opinion Leaders in fancy places from the pharma companies. This ranges from antibiotics through psychotropics and up until the pain meds. You can argue some of it is on the safe side, some may be beneficial, etc. Should you accept an invitation to a conference which will increase your skills?

[boppo1]

Tangential, but where do you draw the line on commercial advertisement? If a podcast is sponsored by a business & supports behavior the business benefits from, is the podcast advertising? What if it also contains useful educational content related to that activity?

[lukan]

There probably will never be a clear line and none of this is realistic, but I would start with banning all flashy light polluting physical advertisements. Any advertisement people cannot evade.

A podcast I can choose to listen or not. A news site I can also evade. But any (internet) service people must use, should be ad free. Ideally all of society, but any regulation here will have a hard time in the real world.

[brcmthrowaway]

Canadians do

[jimbokun]

We need to find an organization to which software engineers can report corporations abusing these principles, that can then take legal action or at least disclose those practices to the general public.

[MichaelZuo]

Noble ideals can be upheld, relatively consistently… only if violators are visibly punished. And to a degree roughly commensurate with the violation.

The critical point is that the violators have to be punished more consistently then the demanded consistency of the ideals.

[mentalgear]

I think not just (computer) scientists but the general population thinks to serve the common good makes sense, not last because we understand it's eventually for our own good.

It is however just that very small minority of the population with highly psychopathic/narcissistic traits - those that, in pre-historic times, would have been kicked out swiftly of hunter & gatherer / small village communities because of their parasitic nature - that in bigger civilisations seem to thrive due to abstraction (distance/time of the effect of their actions) and obfuscation (PR) and instead unfortunately seem to rise to the top (CEOs, presidents, 'thought leaders' ...) to steer the world's overall economy and mindset - and steer it in the abyss.

Sometimes I think humanity was just not made to scale, and this aspect is one very large aspect of it.

[aerodexis]

Humanity was not made to scale quickly. The trouble we have nowadays is that there is no backpressure, largely because the systems that generated that backpressure were dismantled in the name of "freedom" and other myths.

[RugnirViking]

I agree. Heck, it was only 20 or 30 years ago that a common exhortation was to not "sell out". Nowadays that is gone, replaced only by "get that bread". We need to hold each other to a higher standard

[jimbokun]

You are referencing prehistoric times because there is no evidence to confirm or refute your claims.

Most likely the same kind of Machiavellian political maneuvering was effective in those groups as well.