I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that...
Maybe we just, as a society, need to adopt morality and ethics more deeply into our cultural DNA.
Canada has a professional software engineering organization, at least in some provinces. That said, they talk a lot about ethics but then award first place at a local engineering competition to a team that tracks people's position and movements without them knowing using their cell signals (for use in airports), so maybe it doesn't do any good. Great technical work by them mind you.
I think Canada has had a professional, and pretty serious, association of engineers (in the traditional sense) for a long, long time. Maybe the software thing is a spin-off of that.
The regulation is coming on very gradually since they're confused about how to define and regulate the title/practice.
The regulation won't necessarily help anything but to outlaw a lot of smart people from being able to write certain software. It will put us further behind the USA in our ability to create tech companies that matter (or that can compete with offshoring) and lead to higher unemployment as computers take away more jobs.
Luckily the restriction is barely enforced at this point, though it is getting stricter. I guess it will benefit me in the future when somebody will be forced to hire me because there weren't enough other applicants with professional membership... sort of a depressing thought
> The regulation won't necessarily help anything but to outlaw a lot of smart people from being able to write certain software. It will put us further behind the USA in our ability to create tech companies that matter (or that can compete with offshoring)
Has any of that happened with engineers in Canada? We still have plenty of engineers.
A lot of this comes off as any industry wanting to hold onto the engineer title without any of the accountability that should come along with it, or really any accountability at all.
I don't want a random self taught engineer involved in building my house or a local highway overpass. So why would I also want a random self taught software engineer working on vital computer systems or on autonomous vehicles or on the software that controls the pitch controls on a Boeing 737? Software is not just some shit-tier SaaS app. It being hard to get official credation means accepting holding oneself to high (legal) standards. If that means lots of people have to go around calling themselves a developer instead of an engineer then I'm fine with that.
It might seem depressing that we hold engineers to high standards and expect legal accountability for the things they sign off on or create or approve, but I think more accountability in the tech industry is a good thing. The modern tech industry and software engineers hold themselves to ludicrously low standards because they basically operate on the idea that innovation = good and if-it-makes-money it must also be good. I know fast food workers who are held to higher standards than software engineers. That many continue to call themselves engineers is mainly just a hold over from a metaphor that describes computer systems as "architecture".
Software is a big deal and it effects every fabric of daily life in 2019. We shouldn't treat it like it's ephemeral stuff that has no consequences beyond the next VC exit or going public.
I think the fear is that the same restrictions will affect shit-tier apps as well as aeronautic control software. After all, it's not like you can't already say "to work on aeronautic software you must have credential X or Y". So what's the point of restricting the word "engineer" as a whole?
The problem with that argument is that they can just call themselves developers and nothing would change. Currently, "software engineer" doesn't mean anything. There is no credential that obligates software engineers to the same standards as other engineers or more than developers. Right now it's just an empty title in the tech industry.
It's not a restricted word. It's a restricted accredation that, should one carry it, obligates them to a certain set of standards and accountability.
The people making those apps don't need to call themselves engineers. They can call themselves developers. And the world will keep spinning. But a developer calling themselves an engineer is like a local contractor calling themselves a "residential engineer". An engineer can be a local contractor, but a local contractor can't simply call themselves an engineer, of any sort, unless they're accredited. That distinction matters because engineers have obligations that they are held to that a local contractor doesn't. That's the point.
The Candian Association For IT Professionals (cips.ca) administers the only nationally recognized IT designation, called the I.S.P (think of it like a P.Eng for computer scientists).
Their goal is to make this a requirement for the handling of certain types of sensitive data, as one needs to swear by a code of ethics in order to become a bearer.
A lot of sensitive data processing isn’t done by engineers or developers, it’s done by data scientists, statisticians and economists. How do they plan to handle that?
While it's true that getting "up and running" with a simple project is only a matter of getting a working laptop and internet connection (and a bootcamp if one is available to you), getting into the position where you could build (or not build) a system capable of broadly violating human rights on behalf of an oppressive government is not an opportunity most workers have. If you're interested in the sort of union that could help you take action in your workplace I'd recommend looking into the Tech Workers Coalition -- there's an active community online and probably a branch near you.
Further down in this thread the discussion has broadened to worker rights in tech-adjacent jobs (eg. amazon warehouses). It would be great if we could have one big union that fights for the rights of all workers, and if you think so too you should look into joining the IWW.
Yes, our society does need to adopt morality and ethics as guiding principles in our work, and organizing your workplace is not some orthogonal venture but is actually part of that goal.
> It would be great if we could have one big union that fights for the rights of all workers, and if you think so too you should look into joining the IWW.
Given how often the interests of various workers can and do conflict, this strikes me as an idea possessed of a wonderful opportunity to come into greater alignment with reality. As are those who advocate it.
I always ask would-be tech union organizers the same question: what's in it for me? Rarely do I get good answers back.
Unions aren't about moralizing. They're about self-interest. Show me that you're going to advance mine, and we can talk.
If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?" And then expand "us" to the people you care about. As it turns out, quite a lot. In the original article, we're potentially talking about the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions.
In more day-to-day union campaigns, you'd be organizing so that your coworkers can have a place to work where they're not harassed, underpaid, or bullied by systems out of their control to create technology that harms people. Admittedly in the US it's not much leverage we have, but you could rest assured that if you were victim of an injustice by your boss, they'd have your back too.
It's about taking back just a little bit of control over what you use your skills to work on, and how. Some people would rather take orders from their boss until they die, but especially in software there seems to a collective desire for more accountability from the bottom up, and maybe a union is what that will look like.
> If your understanding of unions begins and ends in terms of what's "in it for me" then I'd urge you to rephrase the question: "what's in it for us?"
Respectfully, and with a heavy heart, I must decline to do so. I am not interested in some nebulous "us", doubly so one that is poorly defined. I want to know how a union will improve my life. It's far too easy to sacrifice me in the interests of "us". After you, my friend.
I do not want to hear how a union will improve the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. That's the job of governments. I want to hear about how a union will improve my privacy and safety. I want to hear about how this union will unconditionally have my back. I want to hear how you propose to make sure that a union doesn't turn into another way to bully, harass, and sit in arbitrary moralistic judgment of workers.
Alternatively, tell me how your union will expel - and render unemployable - practicioners who through ignorance, negligence, and recklessness endanger the safety and privacy of hundreds of millions. I have worked with more than a few engineers in my time who have been guilty of that. No warnings, no slap on the wrist, just up-front education and swift, harsh incentives to be careful and not fuck up. I know, I know, unrealistic and cruel, right? No need to wreck someone's livelihood, right?
You're absolutely right, of course. It's in every way about taking back control. You'll have to excuse me if I'm reluctant to take it back from one faceless and unaccountable group that doesn't care about me so I can hand it to another faceless and unaccountable group that doesn't care about me. That seems like a needlessly complex way to not solve the problems at hand.
These are good questions to ask of any union IMO. Workers wouldn't join a union they felt didn't advance their interests (and anecdotally, there's gotta be a reason union members are crazy about unions, right?) So this is good to investigate.
Perhaps purporting to look out for the interests of an entire nation is too broad for any one organization. Some questions about your assignment of responsibilities that I think will clear things up: what if, hypothetically, the government was run by a ruling class who would leverage your need for income, healthcare, etc., in order to make you build things you didn't want to build? And specifically speaking of surveillance technology, what if you suspected they were building these tools for other countries as a trial run to later use on their own citizens? It's not that far-fetched.
Otherwise, I think you have some great questions to ask of any union you're considering to represent you. But you're also representing them -- if you felt like you wouldn't get a say in what collective actions were taken, that's not a union I'd encourage you to work with. I specifically mentioned mine because I know their track record and philosophy and would like to see more of it. There's no hierarchy, no inaccessible higher realm of bureaucrats making the decisions, it's workers all the way down! Ask your local branch about it. Although there are often differences in opinion, bullying or harassing workers is not tolerated.
Will it immediately and permanently improve your life? This ain't a fad diet and I won't market it like one, it's a chore sometimes honestly. I don't go to meetings and pay dues because I love it all the time. But I've seen results, and seen how much those in power want to keep us from realizing our collective ability to win some of their power through organizing. And I think you'll agree that the trajectory we're currently on is grim. Think it over.
I've known union workers who love it and I've known union workers who didn't. Both are common enough to be impossible to generalize from beyond opinions being as diverse as people.
Anyone who says "there's no hierarchy" is, without exception, wrong. All they actually mean is "there is no explicit hierarchy". There's always an implicit one. The big difference between the two is generally accountability - explicit hierarchies can have it structured in. Implicit hierarchies get to say "We're all just workers here!" to dodge accountability.
> And I think you'll agree that the trajectory we're currently on is grim. Think it over.
You're right. I do agree. That said, I also grew up in a place where short-sighted unions helped turn a thriving industrial area into a post-industrial wasteland.
Just because one course is grim doesn't mean I want to trade it for any other course.
"getting into the position where you could build (or not build) a system capable of broadly violating human rights on behalf of an oppressive government is not an opportunity most workers have."
Come join the Evil Mastermind Technical Union! We have workshops on supertech, the latest coming advances, we sponsor work and mentoring programs for young Evil Geniuses (including internships!) as well as seasoned practitioners of Forbidden Tech!
Last year one of our top candidates improved the speed of facial recognition at checkpoints in a "repressive regime", leading to the arrest of a whole slew of dissidents who had previously eluded the authorities! These kids are going places - and the targets of their employers are going to the gallows/dungeon/gulag/graves, that's for sure!
Why put this on programmers? The guy making the decision to make Dragonfly is a Stanford MBA with a materials background. It's not some working class kid who made it through a Javascript bootcamp that is making decisions about the direction of future Google products. So, why don't we let the MBAs be the ones to form an ethical organization to police themselves.
Because you get paid to do the work, if a person X comes up to you and offers Y amount to do certain tasks which may be seen to be unethical or gross but the Y amount is significant. It's the programmer that chooses.
My impression of the ACM is that it’s basically a glorified academic publisher. Maybe a relatively non-evil academic publisher, but I’d rather not take ethical guidance from any of those bloodsuckers.
This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country).
EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?
EFF, FSF, ACLU are all great organizations. ACM is unique here though because it's specifically a professional organization meant to push the industry forward. EFF, FSF, and ACLU are great and should be supported but aren't as broad as ACM.
If the ACM is really pushing professionalism and ethics now, that's great.
I've actually been a member or contributed to all the organizations either of us mentioned, and EFF has seemed to me likely a better predictor, but that's just a guess.
My biggest issue with EFF is that they often take pro-corporate positions and is lead by many actual executives and former executives (see board of directors https://www.eff.org/about/board), while the ACM comes more from an academic or tech worker strain (see https://www.acm.org/about-acm/officer-bios).
So while I agree with the EFF on many policies, their corporate leanings are a turn-off and isn't, imo, a solid ground for people doing day to day work in computing.
Yeah, even if the ACM or IEEE are not the organizations we need (and I'm not sure if they are or are not), we would be better off if we had a professional organization dedicated to promoting responsible practices.
Just because there's a professional organization that pushes a set of ethics, does not mean they will be anything resembling the type of ethics you are envisioning. Building tools, your ethics generally get framed with regards to your client - not the subjects your tools will be used on.
Traditional engineerings have longstanding concepts of ethics, plenty of professional organizations, and even professional licensure. This does not stop mechanical engineers from adding to USG's weapons disparity or civil engineers from constructing more profit-center cages.
I'm a software engineer largely because my father and grandfather were union laborers. My and my cousins' generation was the first in our family to be able to go to college. And it was precisely because the union was so easy to get in to that my father and grandfather were able to get good paying jobs with benefits without a college education. A low barrier to entry to a profession is no reason not to build a union.
I think the challenge is a bit misunderstood online. The challenging part by far with forming something like a trade union is to gain the influence, not how to wield it. It is having a high participation rate, a strong organisation, institutions and a war chest is the hard part. Actual influence will then be largely automatic just by existing. In general only weak organizations need "activist activities". A strong union's activities would be ongoing negotiations, legal cases, education, conferences, media production etc. That would form the culture more than any sort of code.
The UK has the British Computer Society -- though I'm not actually sure what purpose they serve.
I was a student member for a couple of years, but beyond the occasional Government IT job advert which required BCS qualification and accreditation, they seem to be extremely quiet (or not very good at advertising).
> The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that...
Moreover, "coding" is a cross-cutting concern in that a lot of people who aren't formally programmers have been sold on the idea of being able to automate parts of their job by writing code, and I'm not sure how you'd yoke all of those disparate fields (especially academics outside of industry) into a single labor organization.
It was about combining divergent technical professionals together.
And the previous president Denise was also president of Uni which acts to support workers world wide eg the rights of garment workers and also supporting the victimised organisers of the google walkout.
To give an analogy, I as an engineer need to write a lot of documents sometimes, but nobody in their right mind would suggest that I should be forced to join the writers guild, in order to be allowed to write an essay.
Why does the fact that people can join easily mean there's less interest in a union? Should Amazon factory workers not form a union if they find it's easy to join the ranks?
>Should Amazon factory workers not form a union if they find it's easy to join the ranks?
Please mind the is–ought gap. Parent was talking about difficulties in unionizing, not about whether or not people in this or that sector should unionize.
Maybe we just, as a society, need to adopt morality and ethics more deeply into our cultural DNA.