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In the physical engineering teams I've worked with the culture you just described is not what happens at all. There are always some people who seemingly live to

In the physical engineering teams I've worked with the culture you just described is not what happens at all. There are always some people who seemingly live to circumvent the intention of rules lurking around the edges of regulated industries. But my own experience has been that real engineers very much value real engineering - it's often why they got into the field in the first place - and will push back hard against and if necessary refuse to sign off anything they consider inappropriate for the job. They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either. Some of these people have had pretty stellar careers so I think it's safe to say their professional conduct hasn't damaged them with their employers or clients.

disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
> They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either. Some of these people have had pretty stellar careers so I think it's safe to say their professional conduct hasn't damaged them with their employers or clients. It really depends on the status of the profession in society and the company. I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach.
- Silhouette 1mo ago
  I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach. No doubt. Imposing this kind of professional standards to regulate an industry as rich as tech would never work unless the penalties for cutting corners involved making the offending organisations significantly less rich very quickly. They would need to be taught a very clear lesson that hiring people pleasers had become an expensive mistake. As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment. I don't want people like them. I want the quiet, unassuming developer you've never heard of because they're the principal engineer of a team you've also never heard of that has been developing life saving medical equipment without a single significant failure in a live environment for the 15 years since their first device went into use at a local hospital. Get me those people to write the rules - starting with what is acceptable practice when developing software that really needs to work and letting the people who know how to achieve the most challenging results figure out how to tone everything down for applications where imperfections might be more acceptable - and then we can talk about whether regulating software development effectively is now a viable proposition.
  - disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
    > As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment. This is why any such regulation is likely to end up in a much better state if it's driven by actual practitioners. However, given how many software people are wildly against this, it seems unlikely to happen and so we'll end up in the less good state you note above.
    - Silhouette 1mo ago
      It looks like we agree here. I too think any useful regulation should be specified primarily by experienced practitioners who have been achieving demonstrably good outcomes. And I too think that in reality it would mostly likely be a very different type of person who got to write the rules - which is why I don't think our industry is ready for that kind of regulation and I believe introducing it now would be counterproductive.
groundzeros2015 1mo ago
> circumvent the intention of rules lurking around the edges of regulated industries That’s not what I said, For every human activity there is an underlying reality and there is a social component of how it’s framed or talked about. Regulatory compliance is 90% social and 10% reality. So a focus on compliance means engineers spend less of their time on reality. > They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either Correct. But they do care about their management chain. Imagine a new grad telling their boss “we aren’t going to build it like that because I learned X in school”. They have the same credentials!
- Silhouette 1mo ago
  Regulatory compliance is 90% social and 10% reality. Again our experiences are on opposite ends of the spectrum. For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly. I have certainly seen compliance become a box-ticking exercise in other contexts but usually this seems to happen when the professionals involved were not personally responsible for their own decisions. Imagine a new grad telling their boss “we aren’t going to build it like that because I learned X in school”. They have the same credentials! We appear to live in different realities on this one too. In my reality new grads are not the people signing off major decisions in regulated industries and no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience and peer review that are typically required to reach a level of professional qualification where someone does have the authority to sign off those big decisions. Getting an undergraduate degree in a subject like engineering or medicine or law is just a foot in the door. The real work starts afterwards.
  - groundzeros2015 1mo ago
    I think we are in full agreement! > For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly. That's exactly right. An engineer aims to build a safe and reliable product (not because the credentials tell him to)! The regulatory myth is that all products are death machines until being redeemed. That's why I say it's 90% social. The engineer builds a reasonable product. With regulation they do the same, but now they need to do work to frame that same work in regulatory terms. Real fixes are made. The value isn't 0, but it comes at that cost. > no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience That's exactly what I'm saying! Professional experience and reputation within the field is what: 1. gives someone influence and credibility. 2. results in safe and reliable engineering projects. And note that those are actually informal defined qualifications. It's NOT the credential! So trying to add credentials to software is an attempt to bump the quality of new grads and has little to no impact on the quality of engineering leadership. As you said, the recent undergrads already lack power and influence, and the credential is simply the bare minimum to participate.

disgruntledphd2 1mo ago

> They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either. Some of these people have had pretty stellar careers so I think it's safe to say their professional conduct hasn't damaged them with their employers or clients. It really depends on the status of the profession in society and the company. I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach.

Silhouette 1mo ago
I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach. No doubt. Imposing this kind of professional standards to regulate an industry as rich as tech would never work unless the penalties for cutting corners involved making the offending organisations significantly less rich very quickly. They would need to be taught a very clear lesson that hiring people pleasers had become an expensive mistake. As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment. I don't want people like them. I want the quiet, unassuming developer you've never heard of because they're the principal engineer of a team you've also never heard of that has been developing life saving medical equipment without a single significant failure in a live environment for the 15 years since their first device went into use at a local hospital. Get me those people to write the rules - starting with what is acceptable practice when developing software that really needs to work and letting the people who know how to achieve the most challenging results figure out how to tone everything down for applications where imperfections might be more acceptable - and then we can talk about whether regulating software development effectively is now a viable proposition.
- disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
  > As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment. This is why any such regulation is likely to end up in a much better state if it's driven by actual practitioners. However, given how many software people are wildly against this, it seems unlikely to happen and so we'll end up in the less good state you note above.
  - Silhouette 1mo ago
    It looks like we agree here. I too think any useful regulation should be specified primarily by experienced practitioners who have been achieving demonstrably good outcomes. And I too think that in reality it would mostly likely be a very different type of person who got to write the rules - which is why I don't think our industry is ready for that kind of regulation and I believe introducing it now would be counterproductive.

groundzeros2015 1mo ago

> circumvent the intention of rules lurking around the edges of regulated industries That’s not what I said, For every human activity there is an underlying reality and there is a social component of how it’s framed or talked about. Regulatory compliance is 90% social and 10% reality. So a focus on compliance means engineers spend less of their time on reality. > They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either Correct. But they do care about their management chain. Imagine a new grad telling their boss “we aren’t going to build it like that because I learned X in school”. They have the same credentials!

Silhouette 1mo ago
Regulatory compliance is 90% social and 10% reality. Again our experiences are on opposite ends of the spectrum. For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly. I have certainly seen compliance become a box-ticking exercise in other contexts but usually this seems to happen when the professionals involved were not personally responsible for their own decisions. Imagine a new grad telling their boss “we aren’t going to build it like that because I learned X in school”. They have the same credentials! We appear to live in different realities on this one too. In my reality new grads are not the people signing off major decisions in regulated industries and no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience and peer review that are typically required to reach a level of professional qualification where someone does have the authority to sign off those big decisions. Getting an undergraduate degree in a subject like engineering or medicine or law is just a foot in the door. The real work starts afterwards.
- groundzeros2015 1mo ago
  I think we are in full agreement! > For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly. That's exactly right. An engineer aims to build a safe and reliable product (not because the credentials tell him to)! The regulatory myth is that all products are death machines until being redeemed. That's why I say it's 90% social. The engineer builds a reasonable product. With regulation they do the same, but now they need to do work to frame that same work in regulatory terms. Real fixes are made. The value isn't 0, but it comes at that cost. > no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience That's exactly what I'm saying! Professional experience and reputation within the field is what: 1. gives someone influence and credibility. 2. results in safe and reliable engineering projects. And note that those are actually informal defined qualifications. It's NOT the credential! So trying to add credentials to software is an attempt to bump the quality of new grads and has little to no impact on the quality of engineering leadership. As you said, the recent undergrads already lack power and influence, and the credential is simply the bare minimum to participate.