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"In 2008, the world turned against bankers, because many profited by exploiting their expertise in a rapidly accelerating field (financial instruments) over oth

by zzzeek 11y ago

"In 2008, the world turned against bankers, because many profited by exploiting their expertise in a rapidly accelerating field (financial instruments) over others’ ignorance of even basic concepts (adjustable-rate mortgages). How long before we software engineers find our profession in a similar position? " Never. Software developers as a group are nothing like bankers as a group. Developers are far more ethical and have an incredibly low aptitude for opportunism (look how underpaid we are as a whole, not to mention half of us suffer from imposter syndrome. Ever meet a banker with imposter syndrome? Ha! ). Being a predatory, unethical banker requires a certain kind of personality that would never find itself slaving away writing code for 12 hours a day (except to write software to assist in your task of being a predatory, unethical banker).

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
We could then talk about the ethics of the engineers working for the NSA whom are engaging in massive surveillance of the country and world. They may not be opportunistic like bankers, but they definitely have moral failings grounded in their delusion that they are making the world a safer place.
- zzzeek 11y ago
  it has to do with who is deciding the activities to take vs. who is implementing them. Everything a bank does is via software as well. Software is just the infrastructure. It is the leadership that takes the steps to do things that are unethical. The NSA and perhaps Facebook have the special caveats that there are developers there who can see that what they are being told to do is unethical. So the large bunch of them that go along anyway, you can make an argument. But that's not the majority of developers and also re: the NSA, the most famous software person of them all is Ed Snowden and he's a symbol of opposition to what the NSA is doing. People aren't blaming programmers for the crimes of the banks, the NSA, or Facebook. The programmers are fully the ones executing the tasks for all three, but they aren't in general the ones making the decisions; to the degree that there are programmers who are making those decisions, they are considered to be a "banker / NSA goon / Facebook executive who also codes".
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    You can't just say, "Oh, well, I'm not the _decider_, so my hands are clean". When you decide to put fingers to keyboard and go along with implementing something unethical, you become just as culpable. And no, I don't feel sorry for the construction contractors who bought it when the Death Star blew up.
- afarrell 11y ago
  What about writing open source software which you strongly suspect will be used by the NSA?
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    That depends, NSA almost certainly use GPG or PGP, OpenSSL or something like that (with their own patches) - yet the world would be drastically worse of if these technologies didn't exist.
jacquesm 11y ago
> Software developers as a group are nothing like bankers as a group. Developers are far more ethical and have an incredibly low aptitude for opportunism Wow. That must be why half the posts on here are about security (which in effect is to stop those other ethical programmers from either owning our systems or intercepting our communications). And then there are all the scams, the rip-offs and the extortions. Case in point, some groups of no doubt talented and extremely ethical programmers hold companies at ransom for bitcoin payments or they'll be DDOS'd into the ground. No, we're doing just fine as a profession. I'm sure my bank has its warts but they don't hold a candle to some of the stuff I've seen in the programming world.
- zzzeek 11y ago
  > Wow. That must be why half the posts on here are about security really? so those discussions are all held amongst programmers eager to use these security vulnerabilities to illegally exploit systems? Or are they entirely groups of programmers dedicating their careers to being very worried about the prospect that our systems might not be secure enough? Is that not an ethical position? > Case in point, some groups of no doubt talented and extremely ethical programmers hold companies at ransom for bitcoin payments or they'll be DDOS'd into the ground. We're talking about the prospect of an industry being held as globally unethical, not that people will become aware that software can be used to commit crime. Many crimes are committed with guns - is there an outrage against gun owners as a group, that they're all just criminals ? > No, we're doing just fine as a profession. I'm sure my bank has its warts but they don't hold a candle to some of the stuff I've seen in the programming world. I think you're grossly underestimating the scale of crime being perpetrated by banks even very recently. Start with worldwide currency manipulation: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or-criminality-lite.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or...
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > so those discussions are all held amongst programmers eager to use these security vulnerabilities to illegally exploit systems? No, that's the other half of the equation. But you need both, people that are the 'bad guys' and people that are the 'good guys'. > We're talking about the prospect of an industry being held as globally unethical, not that people will become aware that software can be used to commit crime. Well, what if it's both. Software can be used to commit crimes and the software professions is at least actively helping in many crimes where software needs to be written in order for the crime to be perpetrated. > Many crimes are committed with guns - is there an outrage against gun owners as a group, that they're all just criminals ? Depending on the country, yes, people tend to frown at gun owners in some places and even though not all of them are criminals some of them are. Whether or not the %age of criminals that legally own guns is larger than the %age of people that do not own guns and that are criminals is something I don't have statistics on but it would not surprise me depending on the location where you polled. > I think you're grossly underestimating the scale of crime being perpetrated by banks even very recently. Yes, and they ALL needed software to do that, by themselves these bank dudes would be about as able as a general without an army. > Start with worldwide currency manipulation: Very bad stuff. So who got charged? Anybody go to jail yet? Still wondering why they feel that they can get away with it in the next round? Society has checks and balances and those tend to fail if enough money is involved. The point of having some rules of ethical conduct is that you try to take the money out of the equation and focus on the actual deed, and the responsibility flowing from that.
nathan_long 11y ago
> Software developers as a group are nothing like bankers as a group. Developers are far more ethical I guess it was bankers that hacked Target and stole all that credit card info, then.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Criminals exist everywhere. We're not talking about embezzling bankers and hacking developers. Consider the median banker vs the median developer.

by zzzeek 11y ago

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago

We could then talk about the ethics of the engineers working for the NSA whom are engaging in massive surveillance of the country and world. They may not be opportunistic like bankers, but they definitely have moral failings grounded in their delusion that they are making the world a safer place.

zzzeek 11y ago
it has to do with who is deciding the activities to take vs. who is implementing them. Everything a bank does is via software as well. Software is just the infrastructure. It is the leadership that takes the steps to do things that are unethical. The NSA and perhaps Facebook have the special caveats that there are developers there who can see that what they are being told to do is unethical. So the large bunch of them that go along anyway, you can make an argument. But that's not the majority of developers and also re: the NSA, the most famous software person of them all is Ed Snowden and he's a symbol of opposition to what the NSA is doing. People aren't blaming programmers for the crimes of the banks, the NSA, or Facebook. The programmers are fully the ones executing the tasks for all three, but they aren't in general the ones making the decisions; to the degree that there are programmers who are making those decisions, they are considered to be a "banker / NSA goon / Facebook executive who also codes".
- ryandrake 11y ago
  You can't just say, "Oh, well, I'm not the _decider_, so my hands are clean". When you decide to put fingers to keyboard and go along with implementing something unethical, you become just as culpable. And no, I don't feel sorry for the construction contractors who bought it when the Death Star blew up.
afarrell 11y ago
What about writing open source software which you strongly suspect will be used by the NSA?
- tomjen3 11y ago
  That depends, NSA almost certainly use GPG or PGP, OpenSSL or something like that (with their own patches) - yet the world would be drastically worse of if these technologies didn't exist.

jacquesm 11y ago

> Software developers as a group are nothing like bankers as a group. Developers are far more ethical and have an incredibly low aptitude for opportunism Wow. That must be why half the posts on here are about security (which in effect is to stop those other ethical programmers from either owning our systems or intercepting our communications). And then there are all the scams, the rip-offs and the extortions. Case in point, some groups of no doubt talented and extremely ethical programmers hold companies at ransom for bitcoin payments or they'll be DDOS'd into the ground. No, we're doing just fine as a profession. I'm sure my bank has its warts but they don't hold a candle to some of the stuff I've seen in the programming world.

zzzeek 11y ago
> Wow. That must be why half the posts on here are about security really? so those discussions are all held amongst programmers eager to use these security vulnerabilities to illegally exploit systems? Or are they entirely groups of programmers dedicating their careers to being very worried about the prospect that our systems might not be secure enough? Is that not an ethical position? > Case in point, some groups of no doubt talented and extremely ethical programmers hold companies at ransom for bitcoin payments or they'll be DDOS'd into the ground. We're talking about the prospect of an industry being held as globally unethical, not that people will become aware that software can be used to commit crime. Many crimes are committed with guns - is there an outrage against gun owners as a group, that they're all just criminals ? > No, we're doing just fine as a profession. I'm sure my bank has its warts but they don't hold a candle to some of the stuff I've seen in the programming world. I think you're grossly underestimating the scale of crime being perpetrated by banks even very recently. Start with worldwide currency manipulation: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or-criminality-lite.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or...
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > so those discussions are all held amongst programmers eager to use these security vulnerabilities to illegally exploit systems? No, that's the other half of the equation. But you need both, people that are the 'bad guys' and people that are the 'good guys'. > We're talking about the prospect of an industry being held as globally unethical, not that people will become aware that software can be used to commit crime. Well, what if it's both. Software can be used to commit crimes and the software professions is at least actively helping in many crimes where software needs to be written in order for the crime to be perpetrated. > Many crimes are committed with guns - is there an outrage against gun owners as a group, that they're all just criminals ? Depending on the country, yes, people tend to frown at gun owners in some places and even though not all of them are criminals some of them are. Whether or not the %age of criminals that legally own guns is larger than the %age of people that do not own guns and that are criminals is something I don't have statistics on but it would not surprise me depending on the location where you polled. > I think you're grossly underestimating the scale of crime being perpetrated by banks even very recently. Yes, and they ALL needed software to do that, by themselves these bank dudes would be about as able as a general without an army. > Start with worldwide currency manipulation: Very bad stuff. So who got charged? Anybody go to jail yet? Still wondering why they feel that they can get away with it in the next round? Society has checks and balances and those tend to fail if enough money is involved. The point of having some rules of ethical conduct is that you try to take the money out of the equation and focus on the actual deed, and the responsibility flowing from that.

nathan_long 11y ago

> Software developers as a group are nothing like bankers as a group. Developers are far more ethical I guess it was bankers that hacked Target and stole all that credit card info, then.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Criminals exist everywhere. We're not talking about embezzling bankers and hacking developers. Consider the median banker vs the median developer.