Being an ethical software engineer

In today’s world, software engineers have a lot of power in their hands, after all, someone had to write the code behind every medical cancer detection, but also behind every spam bot. They can shape the apps we use every day, craft the AIs and LLMs that are used daily to solve everyone’s questions, and have access to gigabytes of sensitive information. Having the knowledge to make almost everything possible on a phone, laptop, or server, means they need to use this knowledge wisely and responsibly.

Some decisions can seem harmless, like questionable subscription opt-in practices to a daily newsletter. Others may seem trivial, like avoiding to send a password in cleartext. However, certain decisions are much harder to detect, and even more difficult to resolve.

More than ever, developers should know about the consequences of what they build, and help shape the way apps are built tomorrow. Based on real life examples, this talk will explore common situations where engineers should think twice before pushing a PR.

Transcript

1. Being an ethical software engineer Android Makers 2025 1
2. Xavier F. Gouchet About me Staff Engineer @ Datadog Android Dev since 2009 Geek since 1984 2
3. Why am I doing this talk? 3
4. StackOverflow 2018 Survey Why this talk? 4
5. StackOverflow 2018 Survey Why this talk? 5
6. StackOverflow 2018 Survey Why this talk? 6
7. Software engineers, as a group, are privileged - higher education - better income - job stability Mobile devices are everywhere You are special! 7
8. “ ” — Winston Churchill Where there is great power there is great responsibility. 8
9. Definitions 9
10. ethics /ˈɛθɪks/ n. moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity; 10
11. moral /ˈmɒr(ə)l/ adj. concerned with right and wrong conduct or behaviour; 11
12. extralegal /ˌɛkstrəˈliːɡ(ə)l/ adj. (of an action or situation) beyond the province of the law; 12
13. It’s very subjective - No silver bullet - No algorithm - No AI - No `true` or `false` answer 13
14. Spoiler Alert I will mostly ask questions… … answer a few of them… … but will sometimes give a few pointers 14
15. Moral Philosophy 101 15
16. “ ” We have a long way to go to pull this off, it’ll take hours and hours of studying ethics and moral philosophy. — Chidi Anagonye (The Good Place) 16
17. There are lots of theories about Ethics 17
18. Plato (-385) Protagoras A virtuous person will act morally, it’s in the person’s character that lies the virtue. Virtue Ethics 18
19. John Locke (1689) Two Treatises of Government Morality is based on a hypothetical agreement individuals make to follow certain rules for the benefit of society Social Contract 19
20. Consequentialism Jeremy Bentham (1780) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Focuses on the consequences of an act to determine if the act is moral or immoral 20
21. Deontology Emmanuel Kant (1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Certain acts are intrinsically right or wrong, as there are universally moral rules 21
22. But which one is right? 22
23. John Manoogian III for DesignHacks Do not trust your instincts… 23
24. A few Horror Stories 24
25. 2015 - Volkswagen 25
26. Generated with Leonardo.ai 2024 - AI “An automatic wristwatch, with the gears visible by transparency, with the hands showing exactly 5:30.” 26
27. Generated with Leonardo.ai 2024 - AI “The CEO of a successful company” 27
28. Generated with Leonardo.ai 2024 - AI “A successful investor” 28
29. Generated with Leonardo.ai 2024 - AI “A secretary” 29
30. 2025 - Instagram Source: BBC 30
31. How can I be ethical? 31
32. Being ethical regarding… … the users 32
33. TL;DR; Give a F… about your users! unsplash.com/@darya_ezerskaya 33
34. Would your users be happy if they were in the meeting room? Would you make the same choices? 34
35. Are your users also your clients? 35
36. What’s is the impact on your users’ life? What’s is the impact on their device? 36
37. Tip Give a name to your users unsplash.com/@jontyson 37
38. Being ethical regarding… … the product 38
39. “ ” — Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park) Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. 39
40. TL;DR; Focus on what the product is about unsplash.com/@studiomedia 40
41. Does the feature make sense? Does the product solves the problem? 41
42. Is this UI / UX relevant? Accessible? Is the feature usable smoothly? 42
43. What are the customers feedbacks? What are the frustration points? 43
44. Tip You’re allowed to say “no” unsplash.com/@durken 44
45. Being ethical regarding… … the code 45
46. “ ” — Elan Mastain (All our Wrong Todays) When you invent a new technology you also invent the accident of that technology. When you invent the car, you also invent the car accident. 46
47. How can the code be misused? Hacked? 47
48. Should we ship a Minimum Viable Product? Or fix every single bug? Which bug to fix? To fix first? 48
49. Which tech stack and CI should we use? Is our PR approval strategy enough? Are the tests strong enough? 49
50. Take ownership of the whole codebase TL;DR; unsplash.com/@clark_fransa 50
51. Tip Always leave the campsite codebase better than you found it. unsplash.com/@paulinel 51
52. Being ethical regarding… … AI 52
53. TL;DR; Don’t trust AI blindly unsplash.com/@mrsunburnt 53
54. “ ” — Sarah Jeong We know already that although machine learning has huge potential, data sets with ingrained biases will produce biased results — garbage in, garbage out. 54
55. Is there bias in the training dataset? How was it curated? 55
56. Was the training data set obtained legally? Does it have IP or copyright infringement? 56
57. What metric was used to define success in reinforcement training? 57
58. Does the AI replaces human creativity? Who owns the AI output? 58
59. Tip Put people first… … and last unsplash.com/@marissacristina 59
60. Code of conduct 60
61. Article 12 61 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. […]
62. In other fields • Medicine: Hippocratic oath, drugs approval • Journalism: Munich Charter • Architecture: Architects Registration Board (UK), American Institute of Architects • Aviation: Aviators Model Code of Conduct, ICAO 62
63. In Software engineering • Code of Ethics and Professional Practice ◦ IEEE/ACM (1994-1999) • First, Do No Harm: A Hippocratic Oath for Software Developers? ◦ Phillip A. Laplante (2004) • The Programmer’s Oath ◦ Robert C. Martin (2015) • A Code of Ethics for (Agile) Software Developers? ◦ Christiaan Verwijs (2017) • A Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers ◦ Malcolm Young (2021) 63
64. “ ” — Hector Barbossa (Pirates of the Caribbean) The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. 64
65. Conclusion 65
66. An ethical mindset 66
67. An ethical mindset • Primum non nocere • See Something, Say Something • Ask the difficult questions • Learn about Deceptive designs • Learn about Cognitive Biases 67
68. An ethical mindset • Give a F… about your user • Focus on what the product is about • Take ownership of the whole codebase • Don’t trust AI blindly 68
69. Going Further? 69
70. Going further • Did you read the OSS License of the libraries you use? • Do you credit them? • Do you credit the code snippets copied from SO? • Do you credit Copilot? Chat-GPT? Tabnine? • What’s your code/app carbon footprint? 70
71. StackOverflow 2018 Survey Remember this? 71
72. “ ” — Marian Wright Edelman Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right. 72
73. Thank you! Any questions? 73