Re:Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge
by pessimizer on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @06:49PM
(#20290067)
I think part of professionalization would include your professional organization having come up with a set of standards for password handling that must be followed under penalty of professional sanction, having those available online and in printed form, and having courses that programmers could take to help them work under those guidelines efficiently.
Programming seems like a job particularly suited for professionalization, simply because programmers have to constantly be learning new things, and that's a thing your local org could provide to keep the lights on rather than relying completely on dues payments. If they were a blanket organization, they could even control supply through raising standards, and could certainly detect wage-fixing collusion easier than individuals.
Having clear guidelines and a place to find instruction that supports those guidelines makes "If you think you know what you're doing but don't?" a pure ethical problem. You either checked or you didn't.
Maybe look to the National Association of Realtors for a framework.
But to the greater point, I guess the ethical principle is don't do things that can put people at risk if you know you don't know what you're doing--much less put people at risk because you just don't care or want to take shortcuts.
If you think you know what you're doing but don't? I'm not sure how an ethics course or even a license is going to help there. Because you think you're doing things safely. Arguably, you're not even being unethical, just incompetent.
Now, a license is supposed to be something of a guarantee of a minimum level of competency. But it's pretty minimal. After all, it basically just means you do have an appropriate degree, have worked in the field under someone for a few years, and have passed some standardized test. All that suggests you know (or once knew) something about the basics, but not a lot more.
ADDED:
>However, that people aren't licensed EEs doesn't prevent them from tinkering with arduinos or SDRs; they simply can't sell their skills specifically as an electrical engineer.
In at least most states in the US, sure they can. (And in the ones that theoretically prohibit you from calling yourself an engineer if unlicensed, that's almost universally ignored.) I've known tons of people who have worked or work as electrical engineers and I'm sure few of them have PEs. You don't need a PE for most jobs. Though it's probably more common with civil engineering.