How professional ethics work
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How professional ethics work
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Re: How professional ethics work
#2That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts".
Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.
Re: How professional ethics work
#3> I am well aware that the idea of there being professional licensing of software developers is wildly unpopular among programmers.
That's an issue.
LeetCode tests are often formed to bias towards styles and solutions favored by the testers.
For example, a company may want all their engineers to have a particular approach to recursion, so they test for that approach.
The issue with professional testing, is that it can encompass completely inappropriate tests. For example, I took calculus, and have almost never used it, in my work (over 30 years). I think the closest I got was playing with matrix math and B-splines.
But I guarantee that a "professional programmer" test would have calculus, because "Everybody should know it."
Same with btree stuff (again, in thirty+ years, I have never had occasion to use these).
But I do all sorts of async stuff, and a lot of UX stuff. I'll bet they don't get tested. Maybe everybody should know what a ring buffer is.
That said, ethics don't need that kind of stuff, and I'm all for ethics, but I think the managers need it, a hell of a lot more than the engineers.
Sure. That'll happen ...
Re: How professional ethics work
#4I just skimmed it, personally I'm not convinced by what I saw: the premise that professional ethics is not personal ethics, while true, is not really meaningful to technical disciplines. In my engineering ethics and professional practice courses I never saw anything "nontechnical" in our ethics, most of it was don't do stuff you're not qualified for and awareness of applicable law.
The problem with ethics is that there is a vocal group that wants to turn their personal ethics into our professional ethics and impose on software a bunch of judgements that are super subjective (and thus outside the profession).
While I wouldn't be surprised to find professional conduct in other engineering disciples to be getting similarly hijacked these days, I think the only sensible way to professionalize software would be voluntary and technically grounded, not dealing with what you'd put in the realm of personal ethics at all.
Re: How professional ethics work
#5> I am well aware that the idea of there being professional licensing of software developers is wildly unpopular among programmers. That's an issue. LeetCode tests are often formed to bias towards styles and solutions favored by the testers. For example, a company may want all their engineers to have a particular approach to recursion, so they test for that approach. The issue with professional testing, is that it ca…
Did you read the whole article? The author explains that professional licensure is for prohibiting negative behavior, not for advocating standards or best-practices.
Re: How professional ethics work
#6> I am well aware that the idea of there being professional licensing of software developers is wildly unpopular among programmers. That's an issue. LeetCode tests are often formed to bias towards styles and solutions favored by the testers. For example, a company may want all their engineers to have a particular approach to recursion, so they test for that approach. The issue with professional testing, is that it ca…
Did you read the whole article? The author explains that professional licensure is for prohibiting negative behavior, not for advocating standards or best-practices.
> Did you read the whole article?
Isn't there something in the Ts and Cs about that kind of question?
I know. My comment was about that line (and the "libertarian" comment). Note my comment about managers.
Re: How professional ethics work
#7That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.
Professional ethics are facts in the sense that they are codified by an organization, not in the sense that they are objective and immutable.
The author's running example is that of psychotherapy licensing, but the same applies to any medical license, law license, teachers, coroners, etc. The ethics of your profession are standardized across all practitioners, which means that it's hard for an unethical employer to force you to do unethical things, since the threat of license removal is a stronger threat than that of simply being fired; and also since the hypothetical unethical employer will have a hard time finding another licensed practitioner who would undertake the same task.
I really enjoyed the article, I recommend reading the whole thing.
Re: How professional ethics work
#8That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.
I'd guess there's a kind of authoritarian body of thought taking shape as groups look to use professional licensure as another culture war wedge. So there are going to be articles like this "explaining" "how professional ethics work" to tell us how we are supposed to think about it.
Re: How professional ethics work
#9That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.
I'd guess there's a kind of authoritarian body of thought taking shape as groups look to use professional licensure as another culture war wedge. So there are going to be articles like this "explaining" "how professional ethics work" to tell us how we are supposed to think about it.
The article doesn't explain how you're supposed to think about, just its mechanics and intentions. I'd say the approach to professional ethics described in the article has been pretty successful in the medical and legal world, maybe it could be expanded to other areas. I do not understand your invocation of the "culture war" shibboleth.
Re: How professional ethics work
#10That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.
They explain that: because professional ethics are enforced. If some licensing panel finds you violated the documented ethics, your career in that field can be over… for life.