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Within the financial services industry, there are significant monetary incentives for whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of malfeasance. The SEC offer

Within the financial services industry, there are significant monetary incentives for whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of malfeasance. The SEC offers something like 0.5% of recovered funds, which can amount to millions of dollars... which is important because even with the protections afforded by Dodd-Frank, it's a very real possibility that you won't work in the finance industry again. By contrast, while it might not be a permanent career-ending event for an engineer to blow the whistle at an engineering company, it holds the significant risk of ending the engineer's career at that company. Not to mention lawsuits and the cost of finding a new job. Most every engineer I know wants to do the right thing... but those are powerful headwinds. So on the mere suspicion of misfeasance or malfeasance, the prospect of losing a job and being embroiled in a lawsuit serves as a powerful deterrent. People will point out (correctly) that adding financial incentives will inevitably lead to a combination of malicious compliance and misreporting, so there's a line that has to be drawn. Also, protections in private sector are either toothless or come with expensive oversight, but it's clear that if the government wants more whistleblowing from the ranks of normal engineers (and that's a big 'if'), they probably need to do something more to cause it to happen besides just keep asking.

snarf21 7y ago
Agree completely. Companies will do whatever it takes to drive sales and revenue and stock price. Employees don't want to raise their hand and get fired as they have families to support. A true whistleblower program with WITSEC level provisions for protection and monetary support would help cut this down. Once it happens once or twice companies are very disincentivized to continue down this road.
emilecantin 7y ago
This is the point of having Professional Engineers and a very strict deontological code; it tips the incentive scale towards doing the right thing. When asked to do something unethical, the P.E. has a choice: they can refuse, in which case they might lose their job; or they can comply, in which case they might lose their license altogether (and thus their job).
- Verdex 7y ago
  While I like the idea of something that helps software engineers to make the right decision due to simply self preservation (so we'll reach even the most self centered software engineer), I don't think Professional Engineering licenses are going to be able to help. If you're designing a bridge, this is pretty obvious work and it's pretty isolated. What I mean by that is that A) you're not going to go off and design bridges in secret and then sell those designs to someone who will build it in secret such that the public will later make use of the bridge. At some point someone in the government is going to ask why there's a new bridge over that river. And B) there isn't a huge world wide market for bridges that has near infinite sub niches in nearly every market imaginable. So having a professional engineer license for bridges makes sense because if the license is lost, then it really does mean the end of your career. Software is often an engineering artifact, but it's also like mathematics. And it's also like literature. You might be able to stop someone from selling their services directly, but you can't stop them from writing code altogether without forming a terrifying oppressive distopia. So the Professional Software Engineer might not care about losing the license because they can still sell their skills to companies on the other side of the world where there is no regulation. Or they can create their own product that contains software and sell that product. Or they can publish their software on github and somehow make enough from tips that they don't need another job. Or they can get a job that doesn't require software development but can be highly augmented by it. Or they can make websites technologically unsophisticated users. Losing the license doesn't mean that their career is over. It is only a slight annoyance. There's always going to be enough software engineers that aren't afraid of losing a license that the ones that are afraid won't prevent anything problematic from happening.
  - zwkrt 7y ago
    Imagine you replaced "software" with "civil" and everything you said remains true. I can design bridges in my home but I can't sell my services legally. Will someone buy one of my bridge designs and impelement it, especially in another country? Possibly! But that doesn't make me a civil engineer, and no engineering firm would hire me. Also, it is probably cheaper and easier for people in other countries to hire a local engineer than to use my services anyway. Your base assumption that other countries than <your country> would not have regulation might be true at first, but probably not for long, and something is better than nothing. I agree that people cannot be banned from writing software outright, but I think it is reasonable that in many situations it is reasonable that a company or agency is held to a standard that they only deploy software that has been produced through some set of engineering practices, similar to GAAP.
neilv 7y ago
I'm inclined to believe that most people want to do the right thing, but, right now, in some fields, I'm not seeing much evidence. In "tech", most of the noise we're hearing within the field about responsibility seems to be coming from two directions: (1) some of the most abusive/dangerous companies, looking to manage PR and give the appearance of self-regulation; and (2) people seeing this as an opportunity for their own careers as intellectual, "thought leader", or PR cover, seemingly more interested in career than mission. What we're not hearing is many "tech" employees avoiding and fleeing the companies that are well-known to be irresponsible, sometimes arguably criminally so. Each of our mental lists of the least-responsible "tech" companies might differ, but some I'd suspect would be on most people's lists are flocked to by new grads every year. Did their colleges and general awareness of industry not clue them in, do they have no other employment options, or is responsibility not a factor in career and "total comp"? Even those of us who don't go to what we think are the worst companies, perhaps the majority of us knowingly employ practices that a modest amount of forward thinking should suggest is irresponsible (e.g., grabbing users' data without informed consent, leaking every Web site visitor's detailed behavior to various third parties in the business of profiling, etc.). Before these practices became normalized, "tech" people could've (and often did) tell you that this sort of thing was a bad idea, and actively fought against some of them. Organizations like the EFF, CPSR, and EPIC (and efforts like PGN's Risks) started for a reason, and there was demand for that among the much smaller "tech" world. Now things we'd already foreseen as bad are normalized, and if you point it out, there's usually silence, derision, or what might as well be quoting of Ayn Rand.
- VengefulCynic 7y ago
  Mike Monteiro has a series of very opinionated (and highly-entertaining) presentations on this phenomenon, coming from the perspective of a designer. If what neilv is saying resonates with you, you owe it to yourself to check out the Designer Code of Ethics: https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-f4a88aca9e95 https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-f4a...
  - neilv 7y ago
    That Monteiro piece seems to come from a good place, and start with the right broad idea. However, for general audiences, two examples it picks (guns and trans rights) are some of the most controversial in the US right now (where they're famously used as political wedges, to divide and carve out support, in an attempt to grab and retain power), and perhaps also controversial among US "tech" people. Though perhaps less controversial among the designers who were the intended audience. The piece then veers into a kind of guild-like professional solidarity, which I suppose might be relevant to the profession supporting individuals taking responsibility (e.g., no race-to-the-bottom, no infighting).
mrep 7y ago
It actually ranges from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million [0]. In the linked case, 2 whistle blowers shared a 50 million dollar reward. Now that is an incentive. [0]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-44 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-44
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  It's not just an incentive, it's necessary. Being a whistleblower is astonishingly destructive to your career in many ways. Even if there wasn't the issue of getting blackballed, the psychological trauma of it is immense. The only way you can create the psychological safety that makes it possible is to make sure the whistleblower gets paid enough that they aren't going to need to to work again. If they've got that security, they might be able to work again.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Work in financial services, know people who were whistleblowers (2008 GFC), all entirely accurate. Your career is effectively over after you become a whistleblower, so the reward must be very high.
throwaway55554 7y ago
> ... which is important because even with the protections afforded by Dodd-Frank, it's a very real possibility that you won't work in the finance industry again. If nobody will hire a whistleblower, that leads me to believe everyone has skeletons to hide.
- ambicapter 7y ago
  Even if you're not responsible for something that would need to be reported, how certain can you be that none of your bosses or underlings are? Pretty safe to assume the worst.
  - BinaryIdiot 7y ago
    That's incredibly dystopian. Sure, some people will end up breaking the law without others noticing but you make it sound like it's incredibly common. I don't think that's actually the case.
    - ambicapter 7y ago
      Most people commit, on average, 3 felonies a day. I can't link you the time but I heard it here [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- jedimastert 7y ago
  > If nobody will hire a whistleblower, that leads me to believe everyone has skeletons to hide. That statement has a "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" kind of vibe to me.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    The statement is misused. It was applied to private citizens (private <--> privacy) while companies are working for the public good (hence the accountability, regulations, taxation...).
skookumchuck 7y ago
There's also the issue of a disgruntled engineer wanting to lash back at the company, and so exaggerating/misrepresenting issues. Whistleblowing isn't always employee=good / company=bad. Sometimes it's the other way.

snarf21 7y ago

Agree completely. Companies will do whatever it takes to drive sales and revenue and stock price. Employees don't want to raise their hand and get fired as they have families to support. A true whistleblower program with WITSEC level provisions for protection and monetary support would help cut this down. Once it happens once or twice companies are very disincentivized to continue down this road.

emilecantin 7y ago

This is the point of having Professional Engineers and a very strict deontological code; it tips the incentive scale towards doing the right thing. When asked to do something unethical, the P.E. has a choice: they can refuse, in which case they might lose their job; or they can comply, in which case they might lose their license altogether (and thus their job).

Verdex 7y ago
While I like the idea of something that helps software engineers to make the right decision due to simply self preservation (so we'll reach even the most self centered software engineer), I don't think Professional Engineering licenses are going to be able to help. If you're designing a bridge, this is pretty obvious work and it's pretty isolated. What I mean by that is that A) you're not going to go off and design bridges in secret and then sell those designs to someone who will build it in secret such that the public will later make use of the bridge. At some point someone in the government is going to ask why there's a new bridge over that river. And B) there isn't a huge world wide market for bridges that has near infinite sub niches in nearly every market imaginable. So having a professional engineer license for bridges makes sense because if the license is lost, then it really does mean the end of your career. Software is often an engineering artifact, but it's also like mathematics. And it's also like literature. You might be able to stop someone from selling their services directly, but you can't stop them from writing code altogether without forming a terrifying oppressive distopia. So the Professional Software Engineer might not care about losing the license because they can still sell their skills to companies on the other side of the world where there is no regulation. Or they can create their own product that contains software and sell that product. Or they can publish their software on github and somehow make enough from tips that they don't need another job. Or they can get a job that doesn't require software development but can be highly augmented by it. Or they can make websites technologically unsophisticated users. Losing the license doesn't mean that their career is over. It is only a slight annoyance. There's always going to be enough software engineers that aren't afraid of losing a license that the ones that are afraid won't prevent anything problematic from happening.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  Imagine you replaced "software" with "civil" and everything you said remains true. I can design bridges in my home but I can't sell my services legally. Will someone buy one of my bridge designs and impelement it, especially in another country? Possibly! But that doesn't make me a civil engineer, and no engineering firm would hire me. Also, it is probably cheaper and easier for people in other countries to hire a local engineer than to use my services anyway. Your base assumption that other countries than <your country> would not have regulation might be true at first, but probably not for long, and something is better than nothing. I agree that people cannot be banned from writing software outright, but I think it is reasonable that in many situations it is reasonable that a company or agency is held to a standard that they only deploy software that has been produced through some set of engineering practices, similar to GAAP.

neilv 7y ago

I'm inclined to believe that most people want to do the right thing, but, right now, in some fields, I'm not seeing much evidence. In "tech", most of the noise we're hearing within the field about responsibility seems to be coming from two directions: (1) some of the most abusive/dangerous companies, looking to manage PR and give the appearance of self-regulation; and (2) people seeing this as an opportunity for their own careers as intellectual, "thought leader", or PR cover, seemingly more interested in career than mission. What we're not hearing is many "tech" employees avoiding and fleeing the companies that are well-known to be irresponsible, sometimes arguably criminally so. Each of our mental lists of the least-responsible "tech" companies might differ, but some I'd suspect would be on most people's lists are flocked to by new grads every year. Did their colleges and general awareness of industry not clue them in, do they have no other employment options, or is responsibility not a factor in career and "total comp"? Even those of us who don't go to what we think are the worst companies, perhaps the majority of us knowingly employ practices that a modest amount of forward thinking should suggest is irresponsible (e.g., grabbing users' data without informed consent, leaking every Web site visitor's detailed behavior to various third parties in the business of profiling, etc.). Before these practices became normalized, "tech" people could've (and often did) tell you that this sort of thing was a bad idea, and actively fought against some of them. Organizations like the EFF, CPSR, and EPIC (and efforts like PGN's Risks) started for a reason, and there was demand for that among the much smaller "tech" world. Now things we'd already foreseen as bad are normalized, and if you point it out, there's usually silence, derision, or what might as well be quoting of Ayn Rand.

VengefulCynic 7y ago
Mike Monteiro has a series of very opinionated (and highly-entertaining) presentations on this phenomenon, coming from the perspective of a designer. If what neilv is saying resonates with you, you owe it to yourself to check out the Designer Code of Ethics: https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-f4a88aca9e95 https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-f4a...
- neilv 7y ago
  That Monteiro piece seems to come from a good place, and start with the right broad idea. However, for general audiences, two examples it picks (guns and trans rights) are some of the most controversial in the US right now (where they're famously used as political wedges, to divide and carve out support, in an attempt to grab and retain power), and perhaps also controversial among US "tech" people. Though perhaps less controversial among the designers who were the intended audience. The piece then veers into a kind of guild-like professional solidarity, which I suppose might be relevant to the profession supporting individuals taking responsibility (e.g., no race-to-the-bottom, no infighting).

mrep 7y ago

It actually ranges from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million [0]. In the linked case, 2 whistle blowers shared a 50 million dollar reward. Now that is an incentive. [0]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-44 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-44

PaulHoule 7y ago
It's not just an incentive, it's necessary. Being a whistleblower is astonishingly destructive to your career in many ways. Even if there wasn't the issue of getting blackballed, the psychological trauma of it is immense. The only way you can create the psychological safety that makes it possible is to make sure the whistleblower gets paid enough that they aren't going to need to to work again. If they've got that security, they might be able to work again.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Work in financial services, know people who were whistleblowers (2008 GFC), all entirely accurate. Your career is effectively over after you become a whistleblower, so the reward must be very high.

throwaway55554 7y ago

> ... which is important because even with the protections afforded by Dodd-Frank, it's a very real possibility that you won't work in the finance industry again. If nobody will hire a whistleblower, that leads me to believe everyone has skeletons to hide.

ambicapter 7y ago
Even if you're not responsible for something that would need to be reported, how certain can you be that none of your bosses or underlings are? Pretty safe to assume the worst.
- BinaryIdiot 7y ago
  That's incredibly dystopian. Sure, some people will end up breaking the law without others noticing but you make it sound like it's incredibly common. I don't think that's actually the case.
  - ambicapter 7y ago
    Most people commit, on average, 3 felonies a day. I can't link you the time but I heard it here [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
jedimastert 7y ago
> If nobody will hire a whistleblower, that leads me to believe everyone has skeletons to hide. That statement has a "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" kind of vibe to me.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  The statement is misused. It was applied to private citizens (private <--> privacy) while companies are working for the public good (hence the accountability, regulations, taxation...).

skookumchuck 7y ago

There's also the issue of a disgruntled engineer wanting to lash back at the company, and so exaggerating/misrepresenting issues. Whistleblowing isn't always employee=good / company=bad. Sometimes it's the other way.