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by NamTaf 2mo ago
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- cadamsdotcom 2mo agoThe analogy doesn’t work. Train safety issues kill people.
- richardfey 2mo agoI remember hearing this perspective when I first started in the software industry, and I agreed with it for quite some time. But frankly, we’ve never been further from it.
- fathermarz 2mo agoI think there is a fine line. YouTube is not critical software and no one’s life depends on the safety (putting mental health aside) of the code running. Some software engineers do however write code that is critical, but to your point, I don’t think they are ever considered liable. I went through an acquisition as a Canadian software developer getting acquired by an American company. They wanted us to be called engineers like the rest of their SWEs but in Canada it’s a protected namespace. It’s illegal to call yourself an engineer without having the ring and the papers. Which personally I can appreciate.
- m00x 2mo agoYoutube should consider their engineers responsible for the software they write. Big companies these days are just bureaucracy tricks and politics. There's a small handful of real talent, but they're quickly moving to new startups. Also, I'm Canadian as well, and almost everyone calls themselves "software engineer" these days. You just can't say P.eng. in your title. You could be forced to remove it from linkedin/etc if you're called out, but it rarely happens.
- eldaisfish 2mo agoYour latter point is legally incorrect. The protected term in Canada is “engineer”. If someone calls themselves an engineer without a P.Eng, that’s an offence.
- fathermarz 2mo agoThank you for the education. What is the consequence of an offence?
- eldaisfish 2mo agoat least in Ontario, fines, starting at $ 25,000.
- cess11 2mo agoOnce I worked in a company that had an ex-Googler on the board, who insisted on calling us engineers and wanted us to call ourselves that. In swedish, of course, 'ingenjörer'. It's not a protected title in Sweden, but we still refused, because we were nothing like engineers. We were a minuscule team of mostly self-taught hackers who happened to be employed to solve business problems in a system for managing other companies and their customers. I had some idea of the rigour of engineering but my colleagues did not, still, they also weren't willing to appropriate the title. This lead to meetings with this person being quite uncomfortable at times, embarrassing even. To me it was an obvious sign that they were unfit for managing roles. Two thirds of the team, me included, resigned at the same time after they had been increasingly active in the management of the technical department. Since he was on the board the CEO could not get rid of him even though he knew that this person was destroying the dev team.
- 1313ed01 2mo agoI worked for several American companies in Sweden an all of them insisted on calling us engineers. Many I work with happen to be engineers, but I dropped out before getting my (computer) engineering degree. It's embarrassing. I would never call myself a software engineer or any other kind of engineer (or a doctor or lawyer or anything else I am not).
- cess11 2mo agoIf I must I call myself a software or systems developer. I make changes aimed at some improvement to software systems involving machines and people in a way that is more like a craft than engineering. In my view I'm closer to a plumber than someone with a degree in technical engineering. I take some inspiration from engineers, but unlike them I work in an environment where simulation can be as good as the real thing, because both are virtual, and simulation is exceedingly cheap. It is not when you're building an ocean going ship or a bridge or a nuclear reactor. I can also tell my tools to automate my work once I understand it well enough. One of my more senior colleagues at that company called himself a 'fixer', because to his understanding, what he did was fix things.
- rvba 2mo agoI disagree. People's lives depend on money earned from youtube.
- fathermarz 2mo agoRevenue generating services aren’t the same as critical infrastructure. This bug, I would argue, does not hurt creator’s revenue in a substantial enough way to call it “safety”.
- abustamam 2mo agoPeople's lives depend on money earned from lots of things, criminal and otherwise.
- mschuster91 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. The problem isn't the programmers ffs. In your industry, if your superior orders you (or creates the incentive) to hide bad stuff under the rug, you have the ability to push back, at least to some degree. Programmers? We don't have that. Maybe the few of us who actually work on security critical stuff, but some generic AI BS? No chance. You're being treated as a cog.
- Arainach 2mo agoAll sorts of employees are treated as disposable. The issue is absolutely that software engineers have no culture of responsibility or safety and no professional licensing group to enforce it for them.
- brailsafe 2mo ago> no culture of responsibility or safety and no professional licensing group to enforce it for them. Naturopaths and chiropractors are licensed to do various things too, physicians, etc.. a license does not imply that there would otherwise exist a culture of responsibility, foundation in evidence or anything of the sort. It's an incentive structure and regulatory practice. One may even keep their license while being a monster and abusing other incentive structures that don't have a bearing on that license. Software engineers are not typically licensed as engineers, that's all one can say without dipping into prejudice.
- dolkycape 2mo agoThe professional licensing group is what creates the culture of responsibility. Most developers would be happy to have that as it would limit supply and increase wages considerably.
- qznc 2mo agoI'm working on automotive safety-critical security-critical stuff. There is structure and bureaucracy around this stuff. For example, a project gets a safety managers assigned who has to sign off the release. Project management is explicitly not superior to this safety manager. In most cases these safety managers are just there review stuff according to some process guidelines. If there is pressure (project is late, etc), there are more senior safety managers to call in and they will usually make more nuanced safety arguments (in this specific case, violate this guideline, but at least do X as mitigation). In the end there is bureaucracy. Things need to be signed and archived for potential law suits. Not having archived things will be even worse in the law suits. The upside: As a programmer, you don't need to argue that you need some time for unit testing. The downside: 100% test coverage is mandatory and it really gets enforced.
- beambot 2mo agoThe entire rail industry suffers from massive deferred maintenance issues that manifest as serious safety concerns. This shit happens in every industry: dieselgate, 737max, flint water crisis, PG&E camp fire, etc. Let's not pretend one engineering discipline is holier than thou -- especially when the consequences are derailments versus some leaked youtube videos.
- brailsafe 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. Seems to me like your comment is simply an example of prejudice. You're just describing another standardized incentive structure that you're operating in, and using that as a basis to extrapolate that programmers of all kinds—whether they work on a video platform or on machinery that could cause catastrophe if it fails—are implicitly careless careerists who refuse responsibility by nature.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- j45 2mo agoI understand the direction of your comment, engineering doesn't guarantee security either. Hubris is the single biggest downfall, whether it's pegged on insecurity, or a false sense of knowledge, superiority or entitlement. The very best and most experienced people I know have deep expertise, and maintain a healthy mistrust of their own work to keep an eye on it and improving it. Real world experience and run history is a big thing, and people can re-learn the lessons of the past over and over with their egos, or also be open to learning from others to learn quicker.
- HenryBemis 2mo agoIt's not hubris (for the engineer) in this case though. It is the fact that company X knows that its dept Y can thrive with 10 engineers, and stay afloat with 5 engineers, so the magic number is 5. And then it is down to the individual to convince their manager (or resign) that problem_A is bad, but problem_B is worse, but not in my P&D objectives. The hubris comes from the fact that the CEO doesn't hear the problems that Directors don't disclose. The hubris comes from the fact that the Directors don't hear the problems that Senior Managers don't disclose. The hubris comes from the fact that the Senior Managers don't hear the problems that Managers don't disclose. And Managers simply don't care to hear the problems that Engineers face because "shuddup and close that Jira ticket within 48 hour or else". I am ~50, I have worked (now..) 20? 20+ years in Audit/Compliance, and I laugh-cry inside.... and I am NOT surprised when I read about cases like this, it's another day in the office/life.. (definitions) The terms hubris, ate, nemesis, and tisis originated in ancient Greece and had specific meanings and roles in everyday life. Hubris “Hubris” was a fundamental concept in the lives of the ancient Greeks and was used to describe someone who overestimated their abilities and behaved in an arrogant and offensive manner toward others, toward the laws of the state, but above all toward the gods. According to ancient beliefs, such acts of hubris offended and enraged the gods. Ate “Hubris” consequently provoked the intervention of the gods, and especially Zeus, who sent “ate”—that is, a clouding or blinding of the mind—upon the hubristic person. Nemesis “Ate” led the hubristic person to commit further acts of hubris, until they committed a grave folly or fell into a very serious error, which provoked “nemesis”—that is, the wrath and vengeance of the gods. Tisis Next comes “tisis,” that is, the punishment and ruin or destruction of the person who committed hubris.
- HelloMcFly 2mo ago"The rat is always right." - B.F. Skinner. When the rat presses a lever, don't blame the rat. This is super reductionist of course, but I always keep it in mind.
- bagels 2mo agoIt's worse than that. Google will get rid of you if you are just fixing bugs. Ergo, the people who are inclined to fix are forced out or forced not to fix.
- redsocksfan45 2mo ago[dead]
- moffkalast 2mo agoWell you're not wrong, saying this as a programmer. Incompetence is unfortunately the norm in our industry.
- solumunus 2mo agoIt’s pretty much the norm in all industries.
- moffkalast 2mo agoLess so in those that actually have any barrier for entry, you do need an actual degree to be an engineer, an MD to be a doctor, a forklift cert to operate them in a warehouse, while anyone without any certification can write software.
- Root_Denied 2mo ago>my engineering licence would be revoked and I would be kicked out of the industry. This isn't because you're a "real" engineer, it's because of regulation and industry licensing around specific engineering disciplines that didn't exist until the start of the 20th century. Railroad engineers in the 1800's didn't have the same set of regulations to follow, or the same liability for mistakes. Software engineering could have similar regulation and licensing set up, though I think you'd find it to be an impossible uphill battle in today's world against the lobbying power of the big tech companies.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- term333 2mo agoI think the general hacker culture of most programmers prevents this. There's an undercurrent of anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-management, etc... To think that the industry might choose to self enforce a license system seems very unlikely.
- jongjong 2mo agoI've come to dislike hacker culture. Worst part is that when the hackers succeed with their objectives and take over systems; they become the authority coordinating others and they are often 10x worse than the authorities who came before them. They just focus on extracting money for themselves, pulling up the ladder behind them and building moats instead. There's nothing anti-establishment about it at the end of the day, they just join the establishment and make it much more oppressive for the next generation.
- elzbardico 2mo agoClassical example: Bill Gates who became a billionaire out of writing software built a company that always had as a mission commoditizing software engineering work
- numpad0 2mo ago
- cynicalsecurity 2mo agoDon't blame programmers, blame the insane annual review system at IT corporations. Introduce the same system at train engineering companies and you'll get the same result.
- thaeli 2mo agoAt an operational level for the railroads, we have PSR, which is even worse.
- dexterdog 2mo agoHow is this remotely related? This is not a safety issue.
- stavros 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. I'm a programmer working in healthcare. If I ignore a safety issue anyone discovered, people die and we go to prison. Am I an engineer now?
- rvba 2mo agoCloser to an engineer than the hacks described above.
- marking-time 2mo agoI used to be a sysadmin at hospitals. There is software in everything like biomed devices, imaging machines and even the humble email system that I maintained. Other examples of critical software systems include banking and voting. I have never _ever_ called myself an engineer even when I was encouraged to. It is foolish to leave this field unregulated.
- stavros 2mo agoMedical device software is very strictly regulated.
- marking-time 2mo agoYes, of course you are correct. I should have been more specific in my response. I can print("Hello World") and I am not an engineer. I have a BS in accounting but am not a CPA, and that is also highly regulated. The point I am trying to make is that we are building a society on software that has no legally binding standards but has serious impacts to all of us.
- thin_carapace 2mo ago"engineering - the application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems" agentically vibe coding a website with some minor manual tweaks? adding bullshit to a product for the pure purpose of profit maximization at the detriment of the end user? moving fast, testing user engagement instead of user safety, and being okay with breaking things? .... not engineering ! following an agreed set of processes to formally maximise product safety & consistency eg. adhering to medical device standards for software development? .... engineering!
- lostlogin 2mo ago> because of a performance review my engineering licence would be revoked and I would be kicked out of the industry. Does this happen because train companies just decided to care or because regulators got involved? I believe it was the later. Regulation is often derided here on HN but good regulation does improve things.
- inigyou 2mo agoEurope has the Cyber Resilience Act and of course the more well known General Data Protection Regulation. They do not mandate licensing but they do establish liability when something goes wrong
- sourdecor 2mo agoEngineering and math follow logic - they model reality / self-consistency and always correct themselves because of the scientific method. However, computer science is a chase of what is the most popular at the moment. Those are decisions based on the crowd, not anything close to an objective opinion, and the wrong choices are compounded every day[0][1]. [0]: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Landin66.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Landin66.pdf [1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1622123.1622147 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1622123.1622147
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2mo agoThere's more than one variable here, but nice try.
- jp_sc 2mo agoLast year alone, 40 people died in Spain in a train derailment. In total, how many people have died over the last 100 years because of something a software engineer did?
- redsocksfan45 2mo ago[dead]
- LtWorf 2mo agoProbably way more.
- sutibb 2mo agoTake a look at the software integration in the average hospital and you'd be horrified
- YorickPeterse 2mo agoProbably more than we'd like to admit. This isn't new either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 for example). Thinking software developers have done no wrong (deliberately or not) ever is just borderline naive.
- bentcorner 2mo agoNot just accidental, there are many tools/processes/weapons that are powered by software written by engineers who knowingly write their code to do harm. But people gotta eat and all so who am I to blame.
- urbnspacecowboy 2mo agoSoftware defects are the #3 cause of medical device failures, and growing: <https://meddeviceguide.com/blog/medical-device-recall-trends-2024-2026-statistics-root-causes-guide https://meddeviceguide.com/blog/medical-device-recall-trends...> ETA: Admittedly the above is getting off-topic from YouTube, but I can easily imagine a scenario where an instructional video was deleted due to a spurious copyright strike or some other stupidity.
- throwaway819782 2mo agoI wish I could upvote you more. A-fucking-men. The regard this group has for itself is so adorable at times.
- Der_Einzige 2mo agoSoftware should always be treated as the artisanal, crafts-person like work that it is. There is far more subjectivity and design/aesthetics (not relating to GUI, etc) in the design of software than most will admit.
- burnte 2mo agoIf a train crashes, people die. If Youtube crashes, no one dies.
- cube00 2mo agoUnless some sensitive private footage leaks then who knows. You can blame the subsequent action on the individual but if the footage leaked due to a bug Google refused to fix are they completely blameless?
- burnte 2mo ago1. If youtube crashed then presumably NO video would be available. 2. If you upload sensitive footage to a public video sharing website, I don't really have any concern for that footage being leaked.
- dietr1ch 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. Yup, most don't have the spine to stand up for their moral as they grew up creating low-stake toys. On top of that we have been unable to establish the rigour (proofs, automated-verification, proper design thinking beyond the next 2 quarters) and doing so is really hard and often doesn't have drawbacks comparable to losing speed against teams that just keep throwing stuff at the wall.
- macinjosh 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. The civil engineer who builds a great suspension bridge probably looks down on the one who builds a bridge over a irrigation ditch in a rural county using a big metal pipe covered with dirt. Much like you may look down on train builders who make the novelty trains for kids parks. Software engineering happens to be useful everywhere and most stuff in life is low stakes and the economics do not exist to make it perfect. However, in aerospace, banking, and other high stakes industries software engineering projects are met with the rigor that is called for.
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoProgramming is is serious engineering because we take ourselves seriously. Programming is not serious engineering because real engineers don't half ass everything. <- you are here No wait, programming is serious engineering because the way they do things is shit too. Source: Aerospace employmennt
- blini-kot 2mo agoyeah, and somebody mounting i.e. some sort of audio/video equipment might make a mistake of putting flammable wire through firewall, while a software engineer in a different field (i.e. embedded or network firewall) might get lawful action in case of a design flaw Licenses and reprimands are not bulletproof as those are often portrayed: take 737MAX for example, or Ford Pinto, or bridges, which fail every day as it seems the only good investigation on the matter I've seen is this one: https://www.hillelwayne.com/talks/crossover-project/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/talks/crossover-project/ and it states that yes, software engineers are in fact engineers -- and some investigation of the same order of magnitude is needed to disprove it
- fragmede 2mo agoThe post-mortem on an incident is where it's at. Unfortunately most of those are proprietary and unseen by the rest of the world, but when a load bearing (are humans allowed to user that phrase still?) website like Google or Stripe went down, there's a level of rigor that isn't seen by the public to ask the five why's, or another framework that makes software look like real engineering. Problems are going to happen. Things after going to come up. The question is what you do after that, which determines if it's a serious thing or not.
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- philwelch 2mo agoIf we're going to gatekeep the word "engineer", you're not in the most defensible position as a train designer. If you want to go back to the original definition, engineers were soldiers specialized in siege warfare, which has nothing to do with designing trains. Alternately, "engineer" can be broad enough to include someone driving a train, which presumably required some understanding of how the locomotive worked but was more of what we'd call a skilled technician.
- thi2 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. Jumping to a pretty general conclusion there. Incentive packages like the parent described are not the norm.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mardifoufs 2mo agoThe issue is a bit more nuanced. Where I live, software engineering is regulated in the same way civil engineering is. The main difference is that you don't usually need an engineer to sign off for software projects, but I dont see a big difference between PE certified projects and those that are more "agile". And we aren't some sort of SWE quality haven either. Generally speaking i agree that we need better control over titles and competence but youtube is still an incredibly massive engineering achievement as a platform, has been extremely reliable all things considered, and it's been mostly built by people without those certifications or regulations.
- Robdel12 2mo agoYou compared trains to YouTube videos, I cannot take _you_ seriously.
- rippeltippel 2mo agoIn the country where I live there are two university degrees: Computer Science (depends on Mathematics) and Information Engineering (depends on Engineering). I took the latter, where there is more maths (despite not depending from the Maths department), physics, electronic, automation. I now work with healthcare data: a highly regulated field. Can you please explain what is _not_ engineering, given this context?
- ses1984 2mo agoNo one is saying all programmers lack engineering discipline. It is simply not required for all programmers, even in many situations when it probably should be.
- g-b-r 2mo agoYou're certain that there's more math in the information engineering degree than in the CS one? It's usually the opposite
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- consp 2mo agoI am pretty sure my job would be on the line if I neglected to report a security issue. It is Google's incentives which are not aligned.
- miki123211 2mo agoSoftware engineers have a widely-shared belief that most software issues are far less severe than those found in civil engineering. Even a security breach — arguably the worst issue there is — rarely results in any meaningful consequences for those whose data has been breached. I don't think this belief is entirely justified, but as programmers, it's really hard to predict when our actions suddenly become life-threatening, so the belief persists. My college ethics professor told us a story where a few people died at some concert somewhere in South America, because a software developer at a data analytics company pushed a config change that made all apps with their SDK crash on launch, and that included the ticket app needed to get into the concert venue. The mob, when learning that they wouldn't be seeing their favorite artists due to a software bug, got very agitated and trampled a few people to death.
- classified 2mo ago> at a data analytics company So it wasn't even anything related to the app's purpose, it was a frivolous surveillance SDK that got people killed.
- zelphirkalt 2mo agoThat's why trains work, but Google's shitty YouTube often does not: Terrible, terrible video player, tons of crap on the page, broken buffering all the time, huge memory and CPU hog, need to log in to even watch a video if using a VPN, insane key bindings that are switched around depending on full screen mode or not, stupid and manipulative ads that only the uninformed or simple minded can tolerate, and the list goes on. Found a bug? Keep it! You won't reach another human at Google being to tell them about it anyway!
- chii 2mo ago> That's why trains work and that's why trains work but you have to pay a higher price to use it, while youtube is shitty, and breaks often, but it's free to use. It is about the trade offs - not the trade offs that someone talks about passively, but actual action based trade offs; ala voting with their feet.
- chiefalchemist 2mo ago> but it’s free to use This is false. Nothing is free. We watch ads. We are tracked like animals. That time, attention and loss of privacy *is* payment. For this, it’s reasonable to expect a service that aspires to rise above shit-show.
- kmoser 2mo agoIs free software free?
- chiefalchemist 2mo ago[flagged]
- dtech 2mo agoYou pay either just with money (Youtube premium) or by watching ads...
- justinclift 2mo ago> This is a prime example of why programmers are not seriously considered engineers. Alternatively, perhaps Google has a culture problem where it encourages crap like this?
- globalnode 2mo agoi always have a little chuckle inside when i see someone using the term software engineer - i always thought it was a term they used to pick up chicks.
- rurban 2mo agoNo, that's why Google does not do engineering. It's an ad company afterall. Us engineers do have our priorities straight.
- nickserv 2mo agoProgrammers work on trains too, you know. Some of the busiest metro lines in the world are fully automated, pretty sure that code is held to a higher standard than some shitty YouTube feature.
- tearwear 2mo agoIt's YT creators vs people on/in front of/around trains. People with real jobs and real impact. Nobody would have invaded Iraq if those planes back then crashed into a Hollywood studio. ( exaggeration, chill out ) If a programmer fucked up something "train leaks" related and he ignored that because of xyz, there would be trouble.