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I don't know how common this is in general, but an ethics course was a required part of the engineering core curricula at my school (Case Western Reserve). Ult

I don't know how common this is in general, but an ethics course was a required part of the engineering core curricula at my school (Case Western Reserve). Ultimately, though, an ethics course isn't going to make people stand up for their ethics. A professional organization along the lines of the American Medical Association (at least in terms of political strength) that stands up for its members and censures those who behave unethically would do far more for strengthening engineering ethics collectively. When there are few professional consequences for unethical behavior at the behest of your employer, taking an ethical stand is ineffective and quixotic. You will be fired and another engineer will likely complete the job.

rexf 10y ago
I agree, I'm not sure that an ethics course will make people behave ethically. As part of my former life, I had to take an Ethics course for my accounting license. It focused on topics like conflicts of interest. Even though many professional (licensed) accountants have taken the ethics course and passed an ethics exam, it doesn't mean that much. Ultimately, behaving ethically will come down the individual's morals.
imjustsaying 10y ago
> When there are few professional consequences for unethical behavior at the behest of your employer, taking an ethical stand is ineffective and quixotic. You will be fired and another engineer will likely complete the job. Well quitting a job as a concentration camp gas chamber constructor may merely slow down the operation a bit, but that could mean more lives saved until VE day arrives. And yes I did just make that metaphor.
- derefr 10y ago
  That assumes your job has a very low bus factor. Presuming a company of the scale required for a state to need its assistance, your absence (and that of however many people there are who agree with you) likely won't slow down the operation at all.
  - toothbrush 10y ago
    ...which is a good argument to give up and continue building, how exactly?
morgante 10y ago
If you can professionalize a certain set of ethics, you can make it impossible for your employer to find anyone to complete the job. For example, capital punishment is increasingly hard to carry out because anesthesiologists refuse to participate and drug companies won't supply the drug.
- walrus01 10y ago
  I'm not sure the capital punishment part is a good comparison... It's because north american governments are squeamish about solutions that look brutal but efficient. I'm sure that if a state wanted to implement capital punishment via firing squad and advertised for death penalty proponent rifle marksmen they would have no lack of candidates.
  - lolc 10y ago
    Yes but how would that look? The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry. Similarly for surveillance, if you're only able to implement crude solutions people will be disgusted. "So you're saying Yahoo was compromised because no good engineers wanted to work there due to government interference?" We don't know whether it's true, but the assumption is already damning.
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      > The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry. It seems unlikely you know anyone you know supports the death penalty. The death penalty has almost universally been abolished despite public support for it. I say almost only because I am too lazy to check whether or not it was in fact universal. Norway was among the first countries to abolish the death penalty and they brought it back especially for Vidkun Quisling. I'm not going to go looking through the Pew World Survey for attitudes to the death penalty but at a guess Sweden probably has the highest proportion of the population opposed. If you got less than 1,000 people volunteering for the firing squad for the kinds of crimes that get the death penalty in the USA I'd be very surprised.
walrus01 10y ago
> When there are few professional consequences for unethical behavior at the behest of your employer, taking an ethical stand is ineffective and quixotic. You will be fired and another engineer will likely complete the job. I disagree. I've seen this in action where people who were CCIE-level senior network engineers at one of the five largest ISPs in Turkey quit and got new jobs elsewhere (outside of the country) rather than be an active participant in the autocratic government's messing about with internet censorship and null routing of IP blocks. These were not people who could just be replaced by advertising an open position. The more junior staff members left behind had trouble with the government's diktat, with less clue and technical capability, and ultimately ended up implementing what was required in a less effective and shittier way than an unethical CCIE could have.
- rmcpherson 10y ago
  Having to leave home country, friends, and community is a steep price to pay for ethics. And the dirty work still got done, albeit ineptly. I think you proved my point. As morgante said below "If you can professionalize a certain set of ethics, you can make it impossible for your employer to find anyone to complete the job."
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
hibikir 10y ago
Professional organizations have a lot of other, unintended negative consequences that make me want to stay the heck away from them. Also, nobody guarantees that the professional organizations themselves would be ethical. The AMA lobbies for things that I consider unethical, as a way to keep their leverage. The American Psychological Association was fine and happy with torture. I've seen an architects association let a member amend their copy of signed documents (which I got to court for, and won, because the editing ended up overlapping a little over my signature, and my own copy didn't have the last clause) Collective action like this demands doing a lot of work to make it difficult to get a job without being a member, and then works on limiting the influx of members: For instance, you'll find that the attempts of a professional developer association in Spain advertises how it'll increase the value of your college degree, and protect you from having to compete with intruders, like those with physics degrees, or that learned programming from an accelerator, or on their own. And professional organizations have to do this kind of thing, because otherwise they lack the power to get anything done. So no matter how much I personally dislike mass surveillance, I'd not be caught dead supporting the creation of a professional organization. Instead of using force, how about growing the utility of our work so much, everyone knows they can change jobs the next day to a place that doesn't do mass surveillance? If enough great jobs exist, the awful can't retain talent. That's why developers in the US have far better working conditions like in my native Spain, where finding another job is not something you can do in a week.

rexf 10y ago

I agree, I'm not sure that an ethics course will make people behave ethically. As part of my former life, I had to take an Ethics course for my accounting license. It focused on topics like conflicts of interest. Even though many professional (licensed) accountants have taken the ethics course and passed an ethics exam, it doesn't mean that much. Ultimately, behaving ethically will come down the individual's morals.

imjustsaying 10y ago

> When there are few professional consequences for unethical behavior at the behest of your employer, taking an ethical stand is ineffective and quixotic. You will be fired and another engineer will likely complete the job. Well quitting a job as a concentration camp gas chamber constructor may merely slow down the operation a bit, but that could mean more lives saved until VE day arrives. And yes I did just make that metaphor.

derefr 10y ago
That assumes your job has a very low bus factor. Presuming a company of the scale required for a state to need its assistance, your absence (and that of however many people there are who agree with you) likely won't slow down the operation at all.
- toothbrush 10y ago
  ...which is a good argument to give up and continue building, how exactly?

morgante 10y ago

If you can professionalize a certain set of ethics, you can make it impossible for your employer to find anyone to complete the job. For example, capital punishment is increasingly hard to carry out because anesthesiologists refuse to participate and drug companies won't supply the drug.

walrus01 10y ago
I'm not sure the capital punishment part is a good comparison... It's because north american governments are squeamish about solutions that look brutal but efficient. I'm sure that if a state wanted to implement capital punishment via firing squad and advertised for death penalty proponent rifle marksmen they would have no lack of candidates.
- lolc 10y ago
  Yes but how would that look? The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry. Similarly for surveillance, if you're only able to implement crude solutions people will be disgusted. "So you're saying Yahoo was compromised because no good engineers wanted to work there due to government interference?" We don't know whether it's true, but the assumption is already damning.
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    > The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry. It seems unlikely you know anyone you know supports the death penalty. The death penalty has almost universally been abolished despite public support for it. I say almost only because I am too lazy to check whether or not it was in fact universal. Norway was among the first countries to abolish the death penalty and they brought it back especially for Vidkun Quisling. I'm not going to go looking through the Pew World Survey for attitudes to the death penalty but at a guess Sweden probably has the highest proportion of the population opposed. If you got less than 1,000 people volunteering for the firing squad for the kinds of crimes that get the death penalty in the USA I'd be very surprised.

walrus01 10y ago

> When there are few professional consequences for unethical behavior at the behest of your employer, taking an ethical stand is ineffective and quixotic. You will be fired and another engineer will likely complete the job. I disagree. I've seen this in action where people who were CCIE-level senior network engineers at one of the five largest ISPs in Turkey quit and got new jobs elsewhere (outside of the country) rather than be an active participant in the autocratic government's messing about with internet censorship and null routing of IP blocks. These were not people who could just be replaced by advertising an open position. The more junior staff members left behind had trouble with the government's diktat, with less clue and technical capability, and ultimately ended up implementing what was required in a less effective and shittier way than an unethical CCIE could have.

rmcpherson 10y ago
Having to leave home country, friends, and community is a steep price to pay for ethics. And the dirty work still got done, albeit ineptly. I think you proved my point. As morgante said below "If you can professionalize a certain set of ethics, you can make it impossible for your employer to find anyone to complete the job."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

hibikir 10y ago

Professional organizations have a lot of other, unintended negative consequences that make me want to stay the heck away from them. Also, nobody guarantees that the professional organizations themselves would be ethical. The AMA lobbies for things that I consider unethical, as a way to keep their leverage. The American Psychological Association was fine and happy with torture. I've seen an architects association let a member amend their copy of signed documents (which I got to court for, and won, because the editing ended up overlapping a little over my signature, and my own copy didn't have the last clause) Collective action like this demands doing a lot of work to make it difficult to get a job without being a member, and then works on limiting the influx of members: For instance, you'll find that the attempts of a professional developer association in Spain advertises how it'll increase the value of your college degree, and protect you from having to compete with intruders, like those with physics degrees, or that learned programming from an accelerator, or on their own. And professional organizations have to do this kind of thing, because otherwise they lack the power to get anything done. So no matter how much I personally dislike mass surveillance, I'd not be caught dead supporting the creation of a professional organization. Instead of using force, how about growing the utility of our work so much, everyone knows they can change jobs the next day to a place that doesn't do mass surveillance? If enough great jobs exist, the awful can't retain talent. That's why developers in the US have far better working conditions like in my native Spain, where finding another job is not something you can do in a week.