Comment by hnthrow0287345
1 hour ago
This would be more meaningful if, perhaps, we had to swear an oath to it before being able to practice. And practitioners would be treated more seriously if everyone knew we swore that oath. And the legal utility as accountability and defense would also be useful.
Of course people are going to ignore it if there's no force behind it.
Professional liability and licensure would create assurances with some teeth, but there are some major drawbacks.
Enlighten us to these drawbacks. On the surface I am inclined to say the pros would outweigh the cons. Compared to other professions, software engineering seems to struggle the most with H-1B/Green Card abuse and interview processes. Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, lawyers, et al. than for software engineers, and that I believe is because of the licensure. I do think licensure adds overhead to an industry (e.g., malpractice insurance, governing bodies, license management) and that probably discourages anyone with real power (like FAANG) to pursue it and try to set it as an industry-wide standard. Most software engineers in the U.S. are making around $130-140k, but lawyers and medical doctors usually make significantly more (perhaps because of the licensure overhead - I'm not sure if malpractice insurance is included in a medical doctor's salary- I would imagine it's not and is taken out of each paycheck like any other industry's health insurance benefits).
It seems to work somewhat with medical doctors and the Hippocratic Oath.
But I would argue it is way easier there. Building software has way more grey areas.
I don't think there are more grey areas in software engineering than in medicine. The difference is the feedback loop of the outcome - if you design a dopamine slot machine you will ruin the generation and that's a long arc.
And that makes it hard. I am open for banning all comercial advertisement - but general society is largely fine with it. So is someone designing new targeting algorithm for ads breaking his potential oath of doing good for society?
What grey areas are there for doctors?
Canadians do