It's hard to see this as anything but a way for executives to foist responsibility upon software engineers when things go wrong (and of course, claim credit and

It's hard to see this as anything but a way for executives to foist responsibility upon software engineers when things go wrong (and of course, claim credit and profit when they go right) as other commenters have pointed out. That said, this might actually work! If a software engineer can suffer personal harm by working for a business with iffy ethics, then they are incentivized to play it safe by avoiding working for those types of businesses -- thus correcting the market by internalizing the externalities. I doubt anyone would work for Facebook in a world with a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers that has real teeth. Put another way: pointing to decision makers instead of individual engineers is a simple rephrasing of the Nuremberg defense, "I was just following orders!" It is obvious that we should hold leaders accountable. The question here is whether we hold individual software engineers accountable too (they're not mutually exclusive) and the answer is probably yes.