The engineer would have a hard time claiming ignorance with multiple widely reported public statements about how Alameda had no special priviledges.

Should an engineer be tracking what their company is telling media outlets? No one else is tasked with looking at my code except other engineers; why should engineers spend their precious time making sure that other business units are performing their duties ethically?

Probably because the whole Topf & Söhne debacle doesn't need repeating? Engineers are of course partly responsible for the things they implement.

> Engineers are of course partly responsible for the things they implement.

That is outrageous. The company owners have limited liability protections. The employees should receive at least that unless they are in a position that requires specific legal training like an engineer legislatively appointed to be responsible for some safety function. Where they are appointed and remunerated specifically for their legal responsibility, in other words.

And the court cases after WWII are hardly reliable precedent. They were basically making it up as they went with fairly flimsy justification apart from the fact they had a bunch of troops still in fighting form.

Limited liability protects against financial loss, not criminal indictment. If you are an employee or owner and you do something to enable fraud the company as a whole is doing, you are still criminally liable.

> > Engineers are of course partly responsible for the things they implement.

> That is outrageous. The company owners have limited liability protections.

The owners have limited financial liability, not limited legal liability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability

> Limited liability is a legal status in which a person's financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person's investment in a corporation, company or partnership.

> > Engineers are of course partly responsible for the things they implement.

> That is outrageous.

And this is why software engineering is a joke.

Engineers are responsible for strictly technical failures. When a piece of software does what a representative of company management asks for it hasn't failed.

Software engineers are not lawyers and they are bad at interpreting laws.

I’ve received yearly training as part of my job outlining my civil and criminal liabilities as a software engineer going back 20 years. It’s par for the course in finance.

Engineering is all about working with constraints. Most of these are technical, but some of them are and should be ethical.

If the product of your engineering directly enables unethical actions, yes, you should bear some of the responsibility for it.

> Software engineers are not lawyers and they are bad at interpreting laws.

Right, so if something seems sketchy ("please ignore these specific deductions when calculating our holdings") , get a lawyer - or CEO or CFO or whatever - to say in writing that it's fine.

And if something seems actually illegal ("just run the blood test results out-of-spec and report them anyway") just don't do it. Nothing absolves you of some things.

Sure. But if the engineer doesn't think it is sketchy enough to seek out a lawyer, why would they suddenly be liable for issues where they are obviously ignorant, and never expected to be competent?

This isn't how ethics works, just doing my job doesn't work legally.

Why should be someone responsible for how the product of their labor is being used?

The tautological answer is that it's because we the people have made laws that in certain specific situations make people criminally responsible for how the product of their labor is being used.

The practical answer is that it's because we do want to discourage criminals from "splitting liability" by having most of a gang doing some illegal goal together stay "clean" and only delegating a single "fall guy" for the final touch; so criminal law is explicitly written to consider everyone who knowingly assists a crime to be partly liable as well.

That's why be don't deserve the title of engineer in software and we should stick with coder or programmer.

'Hi mate. We just bought this rebar from Alibaba, saved as a ton of money. Could you sign here real quick? We need to finish that bridge!'

Engineer doesn't imply honesty. In those jurisdiction where it's a protected title, it just implies that you have some mix of STEM topics in your degree. Software engineers, in these jurisdictions, have that mix, and are as real as bioengineers (a.k.a hospital lab workers), chemical process engineers, construction engineers, etc.

No one has had their engineer title taken away for being a crook, as far as I know. Unless the crooked thing they did was fake their diploma.

Titles won't fix this.

> No one has had their engineer title taken away for being a crook, as far as I know

This seems an absurd claim, unless you're going to get very pedantic about some distinction between "engineer title" and "legal right to function as an engineer".

> https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/engineer-s-licence-revoked-after...

This is one example found after just a few seconds of searching, but it is absolutely commonplace to have your engineering license revoked for carrying out criminal activity.

> In those jurisdiction where it's a protected title, it just implies that you have some mix of STEM topics in your degree.

This seems a bizarre claim too. In jurisdictions where membership of a professional licensing body is necessary in order to refer to oneself as an engineer and practice as an engineer, it is absolutely not the case that all you need is the right "mix of STEM topics in your degree". It means you have a certain degree, have completed a set amount of work experience, have completed a professional certification exam and then maintain that license, which may require meeting other requirements periodically. And yes, "not being a crook" is certainly one of those requirements, and being involved in major criminal activity, especially criminal activity related to your professional practice, is absolutely grounds for having your license and certification as an engineer revoked.

It doesn't imply honesty. It does imply liability, so if something bad happens because you're dishonest, you will lose the title, and suffer other consequences.

I see the sign off as a transaction where the signee assumes responsibility for results being up to spec and all bets are off at this point.

Why not? Why do we keep Apple responsible for Foxconn's labor practices? Isn't Foxconn an independent company after all? The reason is because we don't want evil to spread by externalizing the responsibility to third parties.

Which specific engineers or individuals from Apple did you have in mind?

The ones that specify foxconn parts

Most things are ambiguous, so you can have an argument about what intent was. Even things like firearms, you can say, "well, I made this gun so people can use it in self defense".

This seems pretty unambiguous though. Sometimes you're just facilitating breaking the law, or making things dangerously unsafe.

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topf_and_Sons

> Should an engineer be tracking what their company is telling media outlets?

Are you serious? Make sure your ass is covered if you're doing illegal shit for your company, because they're never looking out for you over the org.

So you expect engineers to have a comprehensive knowledge of their companies media output, to use when qualifying the legality of code changes?

> When individuals are responsible for the theft, loss, or unauthorized disclosure of PHI, the most common consequence is the loss of employment. However, in the most serious HIPAA violations, criminal charges can be filed against the individual(s) responsible.

Yep.

"comprehensive knowledge of their companies media output" is an interesting way to put it. I would really just recommend engineers maintain some sense of self awareness.

Possibly. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’ve ever read any of my own company’s press releases. Was this guy an officer of the company?

It is interesting how commit author could function here as a tech equivalent of "convincing some sucker to sign off on a legally dubious action".