[ozgung]

I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession. It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

Relevant articles in IEEE Code of Ethics:

3. to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible, and to disclose them to affected parties when they do exist;

4. to avoid unlawful conduct in professional activities, and to reject bribery in all its forms;

From NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers:

III.4.b. Engineers shall not, without the consent of all interested parties, participate in or represent an adversary interest in connection with a specific project or proceeding in which the engineer has gained particular specialized knowledge on behalf of a former client or employer.

https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8 https://www.nspe.org/career-growth/nspe-code-ethics-engineer...

[sumeno]

> It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

Oh, it absolutely does, just not in the direction that's good for society. OpenAI (as one example) didn't become like this by accident, it was intentional. Sam Altman isn't going to hire ethical leadership for his company, they would just get in his way.

[latexr]

> I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession.

That’ll never happen with the current incentives. Programming is too easy to get started with and too well-paid to not attract unethical people who are only interested in money.

[pixl97]

At the same time why would businesses want programmers with high standards of ethics? Such programmers wouldn't make the child killing drone software, or the software that steals their life savings via dark patterns.

[nrmitchi]

Software people want to be “engineers” when it’s prestigious and (financially) beneficial, but avoid the actual classification when it comes with industry standards of behaviour.

[overgard]

Not me, at this point I would be perfectly happy with a licensing board.

[behnamoh]

> I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession. It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

For some reason, the ethics followed by Asians, especially the Chinese are not fully compatible with the ethics of the west. Sometimes Chinese people call it being smart to circumvent or bypass the rules, something that would be called cheating in the west.

[sumedh]

If the CEO goes not care about ethics why should the employees?

[Tarq0n]

Ethics are probably internalized long before someone commits to an engineering career. I'm not sure they can be taught later.

[foldr]

This is obviously true to a large extent, but it is also weirdly necessary to explain basic ethical precepts to a surprisingly large number of otherwise well-educated people. Believe it or not, a significant number of people simple don’t know that it’s unethical to, e.g. exfiltrate code or data from a former employer. Making it clear that this is an ethical line may have some value.

[pixl97]

I mean a lot of people work for companies that do unethical things to their customers all day, why would the company expect ethical treatment back?

[foldr]

A does unethical things to B, therefore I can do unethical things to A.

This clearly doesn't work as an argument if A and B are people. Seems like classic 'two wrongs make a right' reasoning.

[pixl97]

It's more of there has to be some kind of external enforcement or you turn into a low trust 'I got mine' society. Modern capitalism says companies should strip mine everything from human resources to the literal earth don't be surprised when their workers treat them the same way.

[whywhywhywhy]

> understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession

Nah this is just pushed on you to disempower you. If you take trade secrets elsewhere lawyers will be used to attack you.

Speaking of lawyers when they move practices they take their IP with them, funny that.