A Hippocratic-like oath by itself would be useless without a powerful professional organization watching out for our interests. If I take the moral high road and get fired by my MBA boss, I have no course of appeal. If an MBA were to fire a doctor for refusing to compromise on ethics, I'm sure the AMA would unleash hell on the MBA. Same for lawyers and ABA. Actually those two organizations make it difficult for MBAs to manage their members so they have two safeguards we lack. (I've seen this in the bank I work. The lawyers report to other lawyers all the way up to the general counsel, who reports to the CEO and the board. Such structure makes it easy to keep ethical conduct high priority without fear of retribution from the MBAs.)
In Ontario Canada we have an organization doing so, the PEO. Any professional that has the word "engineer" in his title, including software engineers must do a license exam, old a valid engineering degree and have 4 years of supervised work experience with references. It isn't as common for software guys then let's say civil engineers.
But what happens in the above scenario? Does the PEO kick ass when necessary for its members? Does it, like the lawyers and doctors, ensure that its members are remunerated well?
It doesn't adjust the remuneration of it's members (nor do lawyers in Canada), it really is "market" based, as for doctors the government has a bigger say since our healthcare is universal.
The PEO will take action against non-members using the title engineer, or take action against engineers not acting lawfully.
One can, and one should, but we as a society have a vested interest in providing incentives to make doing the right thing easier than doing the wrong one.
I've criticized the abrogation of responsibility elsewhere in this thread, I'm not giving anybody a pass or an excuse, but the reality of the cowardice of normal people necessitates that we provide some measure of cover for the people unwilling to risk their necks.
I agree with you both. "One can, and one should," and it’s even better if the profession provides a mechanism to remove from practice its own worst offenders. The AMA/ABA examples I gave above do not just offer protection to their members, but they also hold power to send their unethical practitioners to the poorhouse. (If you’re a junior physician with lots of student loans but lose your license due to an ethics violation, I don’t know what you’ll do. Loans don’t go away in a bankruptcy.) So those professions come with a terrible downside for flagrant violators. We don’t have any such downside in software, which may explain some of the moral depravity mentioned.
