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The ensuing passage is to put forward my deliberations on anarticle that was published by Sharon Florentine titled ” Should softwaredevelopers have a code of ethics?” I concur that some sort of code of ethics should exist forsoftware developers to call upon in case of a moral predicament, but thefollowing points should also be taken into consideration: 1.

Code of Ethics vary from person to person. 2.      The merit and importance of good ethics issomething that is taught and ingrained in a person from his upbringing and fromhis experiences and their impact on their and other’s lives. 3.      Every company has faced some problems withethical conduct, on part of their employee’s known or unknown actions, and thishas helped them grow and learn from their own demerit. Similarly, the employeestoo grow by making mistakes and learning from them. The article gives us several examples that indicates towardsthe absence of a code of ethics for software developers.

It goes on to mentionthe incident of Volkswagen engineers programming their cars to cheat emissionstandards in 2015, the recent ‘ fake news’ debacle which was synonymous with Facebookand the consequent Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 presidentialelections. This makes it look like there should exist some codes of ethics, blanketing the entire software industry but an important point in each of thesecases is that behind each of this event some human beings with their own set ofethics and beliefs were responsible. This brings me to my main argument: ethics are taught by twoways, the education that one receives in a professional environment and fromexperiences in life which effect and shape a person’s beliefs. In the presenttechnological environment, where knowledge of software development is so readilyand freely available, people not bound by good morals and ethics are bound touse their knowledge to create unfair and unethical situations. For example, Russianhackers will not think of ethics when their motives are politically fueled andthere’s no organization to check or firewall their activities. But similarly, aperson with good ethics, based on their experiences, will doubtfully indulge inunethical actions and work for the betterment of the society and towards hiscompany’s success. He will only fall into an ethical trap unknowingly and willprobably learn and grow from his mistakes.

In the present scenario Knowledge is Power. Companies arealways on the lookout for candidates who can use their knowledge base tointegrate into a company’s target and help in their ongoing projects. Theygenerally tend to overlook ethics as a parameter as they expect it to be taughtto the person eventually through the company’s dealings and workings and theirexperience in the company. In a working environment, it’s very important forthe people in charge to value and enforce good ethics as by leading by example, their subordinates can learn from their actions. For example, when Mr GeorgePolisner,  a senior executive in atOracle, resigned due to bad ethical decisions, it must have affected the mindsof people and made them think of ethics.

In this competitive world, whereemployees are in constant fear of losing their job due to underperforming, sometimes, ethics take a backstage. Then it again falls on their superior’sshoulders to lead by example. I believe every company has dealt with some sort of ethicalconundrums sometime or the other. For example, our company, Google was itselfat the center of a big ethical mistake when it came under international criticismfor it’s invasion of the privacy of Wi-Fi users with it’s street-view mappingcars.

Though unintentional, the cars mistakenly collected samples of payloaddata sent over Wi-Fi networks. Google got in much hotter water for using a tracking cookiewith a known security exploit to snoop on users of Apple’s Safari browser. Whenthe news broke, it was a major scandal with possible criminal implications. Google ended up settling for $22. 5 million; it faced a potential fine of$16, 000 per violation, per day, which for the size and span of this operationcould have totalled hundreds of billions of dollars. My inference from thesecases is that Google recognized and learned from it’s mistakes and as a resultpositioned their own code of conduct to prevent such ethical malpractices fromoccurring again.

This shows that while it would be beneficial to make anumbrella code of ethics for software developers but it would be more beneficialfor each company to have their ever updating code of ethics to follow. So my suggestions to resolve the issue are as follows: 1.      We should keep in mind that having a uniformcode of ethics will not fix the situations created by unethical malpractices ofsome users. But still an ever updating blanket code of ethics and anorganization to enforce it would be beneficial for upcoming companies. 2.      Companies should focus on teaching theiremployees good ethical conducts too along with software development skills.

They should lead by example. 3.      Each company should have their own ever updatingcode of conduct so that employees can learn from it and also the company cangrow from their mistakes and never commit them again. Reference: 1.      Google Blunders into WI-Fi Privacy Issues – JohnD Copeland , Kallman fellow at the Center for Business Ethics at BentleyUniversity in Waltham, Mass. 2.

GoogleFaces a Fresh Privacy Class Action Suit Over Tracking iPhone Safari Users –David Meyer -November 30, 2017 – Fortune. com