The Reasonable Developer

The Reasonable Developer Paul Verbeek-Mast Front-end Developer @ Werkspot

Content warnings Detailed description of sexual assault Image of raw meat Image of Mark Zuckerberg

“I’m just an engineer.”

– Tom Lehrer (in ‘Wernher von Braun’) “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?”

The Reasonable Developer Paul Verbeek-Mast Front-end Developer @ Werkspot

Reasonable having sound judgement; fair and sensible

Normal distribution & standard deviation L’Homme Moyen (The Average Man)

! "

$ Menlove Vaughan % % % % % %

did he behave like an ordinary, reasonable man?

The Legal Village & ' ( ) * + reasonable person reasonable o ! cer ordinary prudent man of business reasonable hairdresser fair-minded and informed observer

“Fitbit helped expose woman's false rape claim in Lancaster County” http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/04/watch_today_segment_on_how_fit.html

https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/692004889380179968

“The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good . It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned” – Andrew Bosworth, VP @ Facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data

Ethical dilemmas
are everywhere

What is your product when it’s “free”

to use?

What is “safe enough” ?

How much effort should we put into preventing misuse ?

Should I fix this bug?

How much harm can
this bug cause?

What are we sharing back to the community?

Would you write code that’s clearly unethical ? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#ethics No Depends on
what it is Yes 58.5% 36.6% 4.8%

Would you report unethical code? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#ethics Depends on
what it is Yes, but only
within the company Yes, and publicly 46.6% 35.7% 13.1% No 4.6%

Who is ultimately most responsible ? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#ethics Upper management The person who
came up with the idea The developer
who wrote it 57.5% 22.8% 19.7%

Do developers have an obligation to
consider the ethical implications of their code? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#ethics Yes Unsure /
I don't know No 79.6% 14.3% 6.1%

Reasonable Developer 1. Does not write code that’s clearly unethical; 2. Reports any unethical code; 3. Holds upper management responsible for accomplishing something unethical; 4. Is obligated to consider ethical implications of their code.

Code of Ethics

ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct 1. Avoid harm; 2. Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing; 3. Be fair and take action not to discriminate; 4. Design and implement systems that are robustly and usably secure. “An ACM member should”

Accept full responsibility for their own work; 2. Be careful to use only accurate data derived by ethical and lawful means, and use it only in ways properly authorized; 3. Avoid associations with businesses and organizations which are in conflict with this code. ACM Software Engineering Code “A software engineer should”

ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and- professional-conduct

ACM Software Engineering Code (with IEEE) https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-code/ IEEE Code of Ethics

https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

What if you encounter ethical problems?

What is the problem exactly?

Who is affected?

What are the internal procedures?

What are the alternative actions?

ICAEW framework for resolving ethical problems https://www.icaew.com/technical/ethics/framework-for- resolving-ethical-problems

Santa Clara University framework for ethical decision making https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision- making/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/

Ethics is an integral part of software development

Don’t just act reasonable. Act responsible.

Create your own code of ethics, and live by it

You are not
“just an engineer”

Thank you

Paul Verbeek-Mast @paul_v_m Front-end developer @ Werkspot

The Reasonable Developer Paul Verbeek-Mast Front-end Developer @ Werkspot