The Ethical Dilemmas Today's Programmers Face 183
snydeq (1272828) writes "As software takes over more of our lives, the ethical ramifications of decisions made by programmers only become greater. Unfortunately, the tech world has always been long on power and short on thinking about the long-reaching effects of this power. More troubling: While ethics courses have become a staple of physical-world engineering degrees, they remain a begrudging anomaly in computer science pedagogy. Now that our code is in refrigerators, thermostats, smoke alarms, and more, the wrong moves, a lack of foresight, or downright dubious decision-making can haunt humanity everywhere it goes. Peter Wayner offers a look at just a few of the ethical quandaries confronting developers every day. 'Consider this less of a guidebook for making your decisions and more of a starting point for the kind of ethical contemplation we should be doing as a daily part of our jobs.'"
I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 years.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And every employer I've developed code for has told me the same thing: shut up and get back to work.
Ultimately, in order to address the ethical considerations of programming, we would need a work culture that supports it. Otherwise it simply becomes another "know which side your bread is buttered on" lesson.
Re:Not a programmer's problem, a managerial one (Score:4, Insightful)
To a computer programmer, ethics is dead code, and I mean that in a good way. It takes effort to do wrong, and money to add the ethically problematic features -- and the only person who makes that happen is your boss.
Not necessarily - imagine software that controls a physical device, which has safety concerns. There's a simple and elegant check that can be performed that catches 90% of the dangerous use-cases, or there's a really hideously complex set of layered checks that will catch 99% of them. You have two days to ship or you're fired. Which do you include?
Re:I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 year (Score:4, Insightful)
...but sometimes you just have to shut up and play the game if you want the rewards of the game.
Basically, you chose to shut up and do unethical things, to keep getting your hands on those $$$$ greasy paychecks. So quit rationalizing.
You had and have options.
Re:I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 year (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 year (Score:5, Insightful)
Those options don't scale. Honest people will receive less resources and have less influence and perhaps have less children, leaving the world full of slimebags and enablers of slimebags.
It's probably why so many slimebags exist today. If you want to solve the issue on a large scale, you need to find a way to change the system(s) to not reward slimebags, not rely on futile individual volunteerism.
Re:I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 year (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, ethics classes won't help. I left a good career at a major medical center when I was told that we were going with the technology that would likely create medication errors because the correct software was too expensive and it would be cheaper to settle the lawsuits.
Nobody needs an ethics class to know that that's wrong behavior, and taking an ethics class would not have changed that behavior. And it certainly wasn't the programming staff that needed ethical correction.
Re:Content protection (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the solution in my case as well. Make yourself so valuable that your (occasional) moral judgements are valued more than the immoral or amoral corporate decision. (But don't abuse it.) Some artful negotiation may be required.
Re:I've grappled with the ethics of CS for 20 year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a programmer's problem, a managerial one (Score:2, Insightful)
IEEE has a code of ethics. They talk about the implications and the best strategy for establishing what they call ethical dissent:
http://www.onlineethics.org/Resources/ethcodes/EnglishCodes/IEEEguidelines.aspx
What you believe is unethical, may not be unethical to others.
Having said that, they also have noted that being a whistleblower is not a good career move.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-whistleblowers-dilemma
In the US, in particular, there is very little to protect a whistleblower. There are laws about non-retalization, but they only work if the whistleblower is basically proven right at trial. Even that will not prevent the employer from providing poor raises, no advancement, and poor performance reviews. Leaving for another employer effectively shed the protections and often brings with it a reputation that was actively damaged during the trial.