Today we talked about ethics in ken´s class.
Frida, Sara, José Manuel, Estefy, Hermes and me discussed what are ethics and why we need them while making software.Ethics are important in software engineering because they contribute to society and human well-being, be honest and trusworthly, be fair, honor property rights, respect privacy and in general have a good professional conduct.
Software engineering ethics are based on 8 principles that were principaly made to avoid harming others:
-Public
-Client and employer
-Product
-Judgement
-Management
-Profession
-Coleagues
-Self
We discussed a really important point about this, some said that the code of ethics is not a code of rules, it´s just made to suggest a proper conduct but following it or not is an obligation. I personally think that this depends on the place you are working, some companies care about their public image and they will fire you if they notice that you are doing something unethical, but others don´t care if they are harming others with their products and sometimes promote unethical software (see malware). Of course, it is optimal that every software engineer follow the code of ethics as a personal way of living but in reality some people and companies just care for money and they don´t care if they are doing something unethical as long as they are winning more.
