Wednesday

(1) Ryan, JoungYoun, Lin, Collin

• international export – ther is no oversight, no regulation
• conflict of interest – nobody to go to
• research grant proposals inflate the end goal – EECS
• suggestion: create mentorship positions, that people apply for; mentors get training; they become the go to person
• no resources
• need to find someone for guidance
• it puts the effort on the employee; which seems counter-intuitive – “you’d thinak that somebody in the limelight would be there asking questions”

(2) Sean, Niranjan, Alan, BinYi

• conflict of interest hotline
• easiest to come out as a group
• did ethics change a lot since the 50s?
• there is a lot more communication

(3) Eric, Mark, Siddarth, Biyung

• corporate ethics
• there are software engineers who don’t understand what open source code is – if you incorporate open source, your code has to become open source. open access linceses: GPL, and LGPL. (see gnu.org)
• If it’s for-profit, does it benefit everyone, which is the main principle of open-source code?
• it’s hard to regulate because you’re using open-source inside closed-source code
• data manipulation for the engineer’s own benefit

(4) Luis, Sam, Ronak, Tim

• more proactive instead of reactionary
• employees were ok with managers being the ultimate decision makers and taking on the ethical responsibilities, as long the their opinion is heard
• typical responses: “what is ethics”  “what do you mean by ethics”
• it is possible to reflect on ethical dillema only in retrospect, after the resolution of the issue? are people otherwise uncomfortable? why?
• stealing ideas – untilitarian vs. virtue ethics vs deontologic – what’s right vs. your duty

Friday

(5) ian, huda, neha, lin

Taiwan – and moving to Canada
conflict of interest
anonymous ethics board – because they want to have a good public image
conflict of interest
online ethical seminar – basic ethic guidelines

neha’s father – bay area company – ethical hotline
shifts some of the responsibility from the company to the person, by having
more collaborative, more constructive company culture
yearly check-ups on the employees – seminars that everyone needs to show up to
50 page ethical document – is it really effective? it’s

no homogenized idea of ethics – depends on where you are…

(6) cameron, sang min, deaho, jack, jack
company culture
whistleblower agreement – to protect company image
how do you deal with bugs in software companies
is the company culture against using the ethics hotline?
internet software vs “shipped” software packages

ethics hotline:
addresses internal ethics issues
but global ethics issues aren’t addressed – eg for a customer or anybody else outside of the company

what’s the motivation for working in a company vs. research
money, research, reputation

(7) andrea, doug, kevin, alex, tommy
resources for established large companies: human resources, legal
didn’t have time to deal with it, and it was somebody else’s problem
has an impact in the company’s direction by what he does

fast timescale
“don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough”
tunnel visioned engineers

loyalty to the company
mobility, changing companies
freedom to say something may be affected