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A comment on Programmers confess unethical, illegal tasks asked of them. Parent comment

Re:Programmers confess unethical, illegal tasks asked of them by ars on Sunday November 20, 2016 @10:00PM (#13002783)
Or, it might be the exact opposite: For a building the engineer and builders are required to take personal responsibility.

Not so for software.

Perhaps if you change that software might change.

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Re:Programmers confess unethical, illegal tasks asked of them by notmything on Sunday November 20, 2016 @10:26PM (#13002907)
Nothing would ever get built if individual devs were held liable by the public.

The liability sits with your employer.

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Re:Programmers confess unethical, illegal tasks asked of them by MyNameIsFred on Monday November 21, 2016 @11:59PM (#13011741)
Sorta. The basis for your concern underlines one of the problems. When such gaffs happen in engineering, the firm is blamed. Within the firm, individual actors are blamed. In software, on the other hand, your major system might have responsibility for a critical system spread across a total of 1 persons, so he gets all the blame. Is that really okay for one hip-shooter to take this on in the first place?
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