Transcript EECS 690

EECS 690
February 26
Professions
• Just to clear up some word confusion:
• In common usage, a professional is generally
anyone who gets paid to do something.
• ‘Professionalism’ in common usage refers to a
general code of conduct in the workplace
• In this case, we mean to discuss a more
technical and specific definition of ‘Profession’
Characteristics of Professions
1. Mastery of an Esoteric Body of
Knowledge (e.g. Medicine, Law)
2. Autonomy
3. Formal Organization (e.g. Bar
Association)
4. Code of Ethics
5. A Culture of Practice (e.g. Medical
researchers vs. medical practitioners)
Mastery of Esoteric Knowledge
• Computing seems to fit this constraint rather
well, especially for those jobs in computing that
require a college degree. The curriculum is
standard for computing degrees in the US, and
is folded into the entity that accredits most
engineering programs (the Accreditation Board
for Engineering and Technology (ABET)).
• In addition to degrees, many companies offer
certifications of expertise in given systems or
applications.
Formal Organization
• While no single professional society exists to
encompass all computing experts, some large
and growing societies are present (e.g. ACM
and IEEE-CS).
• While these organizations are large and
growing, there is no obligation for employers to
restrict their hiring to members of any particular
society or holders of any particular certification.
(Contrast Actuaries, Lawyers, Doctors, CPA’s,
etc.)
Autonomy
• In this area, computing jobs do not take on this
characteristic of professions. The various
organizations that exist have no power other
than the power of association. Autonomy is not
de jure.
• However, there is a sort of de facto autonomy in
computing jobs, most notably in programming,
because the programmer gets to make
decisions about code for those who do not have
the ability to read or write it.
Codes of Ethics
• There is no single recognized code of ethics binding on
all computer experts.
• There are, however, some existing ideas of what a code
of ethics for computing as a profession would look like
(e.g. the ACM/IEEE-CS Software Engineering Code)
• This code is specific to software engineers, but in places
is sufficiently general for wider application.
• Codes of ethics are not just for socializing new
members, but are also guidelines for what the public can
and should exprect from computing professionals.
Culture of Computing
• It is difficult to generalize about the culture
of computing because of the wide variety
of jobs that the term ‘computer
professional’ could encompass.
• There is really very little self-identification
of such a culture, and very little formal
self-regulation in computing jobs.