3 ms·

Very strange worldview you have there, where engineers are somehow the conscience of the world, holding back greedy managers from breaking the law. Assessing wh

Very strange worldview you have there, where engineers are somehow the conscience of the world, holding back greedy managers from breaking the law. Assessing whether a feature is legal isn't something an engineer can or should do.

sscaryterry 2mo ago
Hmm, engineers are expected to know what is legal and not.
- bonoboTP 2mo ago
  That's called lawyer. It's a special skill, not just intuition.
  - hinkley 2mo ago
    Ignorance is not a defense against getting arrested. Everyone with a drivers license is expected to know all traffic laws, even brand new ones. You’re expected to know all forms of theft and violence. And then you and I are absolutely expected to understand the basics of copyright and IP laws. Lawyering is about being able to argue case law and keeping confidences. That’s how you lose your license, is doing those two things poorly.
    - bonoboTP 1mo ago
      For ensuring legal compliance, there is a compliance department. Yes you obviously can't drive violating the traffic rules even if your boss asks you to. But regulations that apply to corporations, compliance etc are specialized laws, you don't have to know those. And it is the corporation that is acting. The individual employee who typed the Java API cloning thing in Orace v Google wasn't on the hook at any point.
      - hinkley 1mo ago
        Those laws generally aren't high crimes. You know when you're committing crimes against humanity. Some people pretend they don't. And pretend they don't feel the judgement of those around them.
        bonoboTP 1mo ago
        There is asshole and user-hostile design that doesn't quite rise to Nuremberg levels where "I was following orders" obviously didn't and doesn't work. But below a certain level it does work.
  - sscaryterry 2mo ago
    Nope, you need to learn what an engineer is, not somebody who calls themself an engineer.
    - bonoboTP 1mo ago
      That's not the grunts either way. At a construction site, the guy digging the hole with the excavator doesn't have to know whether all the permit paperwork is in order or not. The guy implementing some feature doesn't have to know whether gdpr compliance will be satisfied with it or not, that's for the manager to know who orders it to go into production.
      - sscaryterry 1mo ago
        Engineers (typically) don't dig holes themselves, engineers decide where the holes are to be dug, based on laws.
        bonoboTP 1mo ago
        Software engineer is a fancy title but it often covers code monkeys who are more akin to the shovel guys. The guy who added the Booking.com fake flashing warnings that this room is being viewed by N people right now and other stuff (which the company got fined for) is not like some Engineer(TM) but just some web dev grunt. They can't be the one who shoulders the responsibility and indeed aren't.
        sscaryterry 1mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Software_engineering_degree_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Software_...
        bonoboTP 1mo ago
        Yeah you can call a degree whatever you want. You could also call the excavator operator an excavator engineer. It doesn't change their power lever inside the org.
grim_io 2mo ago
Would you say the same about any other engineering discipline? Those with actual qualification standards?
makeitdouble 2mo ago
You're arguing for diffusion of responsibility, and we've seen it leading to outcomes that screw the whole society. Engineers, as everyone involved, should definitely assess whether what they're doing is legal or even ethical. Not everyone has a choice, or the luxury to stand for their principles, but that's a matter of means, there needs to be a will in the first place.
- ryandrake 2mo ago
  Absolutely. I'm not sure where this idea comes from, that engineers should be compliant, neutral "implementers" who should just turn off their conscience and implement whatever pops up on their JIRA list without any kind of assessment or objections on ethical or legal grounds. That's not what people in a serious profession do. It's also so weird to hear this idea from engineers themselves! Like, are you really advocating to remove your own agency over your work??
  - bonoboTP 2mo ago
    The role of legal oversight is elsewhere. Engineers are not equipped with the knowledge. Obvious ethical issues are are different, like crimes against humanity level. Other than that, it's none of their business. There are institutions for that.
    - ryandrake 1mo ago
      OK, maybe I'll concede the point on legal oversight. But I'd at least expect an engineer to be familiar enough with where the law intersects their work to push back on things obviously illegal. Ethical issues are more likely to be encountered. And they don't even have to be "crimes against humanity" level. I'd expect a professional engineer to strongly push back on and/or refuse things like "write code to cheat a benchmark and make our product look better than it is" and "implement a dark pattern to trick the user into giving us personal information" and "increase our signup funnel by harvesting our users' address books and spamming our app to their contacts."
      - 1mo ago
wat10000 2mo ago
Most engineers are required to explicitly take responsibility for the things they sign off, up to and including prison for sufficiently bad cases. Software “engineering” is the exception.
- bonoboTP 2mo ago
  Yes, because it's not real engineering. The field is too variable and fast paced to be like civil engineering etc. Those have well defined codes because it is physics constrained. Each construction must be done separately at high cost. Software doesn't work like this. So there is much more flexibility and change and there's no stable best practice to regulate.
  - hinkley 2mo ago
    Information theory is its own sort of physics but that’s not the part that needs to be regulated. Psychologists are also licensed. That we still aren’t is a mystery to me at this point. Our stuff is now critical infrastructure. Not everyone works on that sort of things but enough of us do that at least part of the trade should be licensed.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

sscaryterry 2mo ago

Hmm, engineers are expected to know what is legal and not.

bonoboTP 2mo ago
That's called lawyer. It's a special skill, not just intuition.
- hinkley 2mo ago
  Ignorance is not a defense against getting arrested. Everyone with a drivers license is expected to know all traffic laws, even brand new ones. You’re expected to know all forms of theft and violence. And then you and I are absolutely expected to understand the basics of copyright and IP laws. Lawyering is about being able to argue case law and keeping confidences. That’s how you lose your license, is doing those two things poorly.
  - bonoboTP 1mo ago
    For ensuring legal compliance, there is a compliance department. Yes you obviously can't drive violating the traffic rules even if your boss asks you to. But regulations that apply to corporations, compliance etc are specialized laws, you don't have to know those. And it is the corporation that is acting. The individual employee who typed the Java API cloning thing in Orace v Google wasn't on the hook at any point.
    - hinkley 1mo ago
      Those laws generally aren't high crimes. You know when you're committing crimes against humanity. Some people pretend they don't. And pretend they don't feel the judgement of those around them.
      - bonoboTP 1mo ago
        There is asshole and user-hostile design that doesn't quite rise to Nuremberg levels where "I was following orders" obviously didn't and doesn't work. But below a certain level it does work.
- sscaryterry 2mo ago
  Nope, you need to learn what an engineer is, not somebody who calls themself an engineer.
  - bonoboTP 1mo ago
    That's not the grunts either way. At a construction site, the guy digging the hole with the excavator doesn't have to know whether all the permit paperwork is in order or not. The guy implementing some feature doesn't have to know whether gdpr compliance will be satisfied with it or not, that's for the manager to know who orders it to go into production.
    - sscaryterry 1mo ago
      Engineers (typically) don't dig holes themselves, engineers decide where the holes are to be dug, based on laws.
      - bonoboTP 1mo ago
        Software engineer is a fancy title but it often covers code monkeys who are more akin to the shovel guys. The guy who added the Booking.com fake flashing warnings that this room is being viewed by N people right now and other stuff (which the company got fined for) is not like some Engineer(TM) but just some web dev grunt. They can't be the one who shoulders the responsibility and indeed aren't.
        sscaryterry 1mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Software_engineering_degree_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Software_...
        bonoboTP 1mo ago
        Yeah you can call a degree whatever you want. You could also call the excavator operator an excavator engineer. It doesn't change their power lever inside the org.

grim_io 2mo ago

Would you say the same about any other engineering discipline? Those with actual qualification standards?

makeitdouble 2mo ago

You're arguing for diffusion of responsibility, and we've seen it leading to outcomes that screw the whole society. Engineers, as everyone involved, should definitely assess whether what they're doing is legal or even ethical. Not everyone has a choice, or the luxury to stand for their principles, but that's a matter of means, there needs to be a will in the first place.

ryandrake 2mo ago
Absolutely. I'm not sure where this idea comes from, that engineers should be compliant, neutral "implementers" who should just turn off their conscience and implement whatever pops up on their JIRA list without any kind of assessment or objections on ethical or legal grounds. That's not what people in a serious profession do. It's also so weird to hear this idea from engineers themselves! Like, are you really advocating to remove your own agency over your work??
- bonoboTP 2mo ago
  The role of legal oversight is elsewhere. Engineers are not equipped with the knowledge. Obvious ethical issues are are different, like crimes against humanity level. Other than that, it's none of their business. There are institutions for that.
  - ryandrake 1mo ago
    OK, maybe I'll concede the point on legal oversight. But I'd at least expect an engineer to be familiar enough with where the law intersects their work to push back on things obviously illegal. Ethical issues are more likely to be encountered. And they don't even have to be "crimes against humanity" level. I'd expect a professional engineer to strongly push back on and/or refuse things like "write code to cheat a benchmark and make our product look better than it is" and "implement a dark pattern to trick the user into giving us personal information" and "increase our signup funnel by harvesting our users' address books and spamming our app to their contacts."
    - 1mo ago

wat10000 2mo ago

Most engineers are required to explicitly take responsibility for the things they sign off, up to and including prison for sufficiently bad cases. Software “engineering” is the exception.

bonoboTP 2mo ago
Yes, because it's not real engineering. The field is too variable and fast paced to be like civil engineering etc. Those have well defined codes because it is physics constrained. Each construction must be done separately at high cost. Software doesn't work like this. So there is much more flexibility and change and there's no stable best practice to regulate.
- hinkley 2mo ago
  Information theory is its own sort of physics but that’s not the part that needs to be regulated. Psychologists are also licensed. That we still aren’t is a mystery to me at this point. Our stuff is now critical infrastructure. Not everyone works on that sort of things but enough of us do that at least part of the trade should be licensed.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]