 Hello everybody, thanks a lot for joining my session. It's impressive that so many people are interested in a non-technical session. And the previous one here was also very interesting. Hi to the online viewers. So I'm doing a session on ethics, specifically for software engineering. And I'll start first with some notes about my context of who I am and also my motivation for that. So my name is Yancho. I come from Bulgaria. And I've been in the software engineering industry for something like 25 years. Started as a developer, did virtually everything within the lifecycle. So I was also an architect, QA, business analyst. I started leading projects, then leading the relationships with big clients, et cetera. And something like 10 years ago, I moved to the dark side. So I started engaging with business and sales. So here we go, a sales guy talking about ethics. Currently, I work for a company called Musala Soft. We are 700-plus people. And we do software engineering services for enterprise clients. Among our clients, we have companies like IBM, VMware, SAP, Automotives like Volkswagen, BMW, and others. So my responsibility in the company covers acquiring new clients, growing the business with existing clients, and also keeping the relation with some of the strategic clients of the company. Then let's continue with my motivation. So I'll start with a story. When I was a student at high school, I was going to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, for Olympiads in Mathematics and Informatics. And one thing always impressed me. When I arrived at the railway station and having the bus to the student city where they usually put us to stay, they accommodated us there, we went through. I saw through the bus so many buildings that were either for governmental institutions or governmental or other, because back then, there was no private companies, so governmental companies that deal with stuff starting with geo, like geology, geochemistry, geophysics, geodes, geoducts. And I always wondered, why is this so prevalent? I mean, to me, it was not understandable why so many things, why that attention to those things? And then it took me something like, I don't know, 10 years. And at some point, I had this breakthrough in my mind that actually whatever you see around you, it comes from work. There is no any chance that anything that you see that a man made actually was not created through some extraction of materials or something that was achieved through agriculture or anything. So geo stuff actually deals with everything in our life, everything material. So because this is so, then actually that's the reason that this is such an important topic. Fast forward a few years later, this well-known person, Mark Anderson, at some point, said, software is hitting the world in all sectors. Around this time, what came to my mind, this was 2011, I think, what came to my mind was similar to this geo breakthrough that I understood. And it was the mere fact that, again, whatever you see around you, whatever, nowadays, five years ago, software is involved in some way with it. Be it designing this or selling that or communicating so that we can make this thing happen. So everything that you see nowadays, software is involved. So I'm not sure to what extent this is being realized by people in the industry, but this is a fact. So this also means that we as software engineers and people in the software engineering industry, we have a big impact all over the world. And I would say, in terms of a profession, next to politicians, I'm not sure if there is another, maybe we are second place with the geo guys, another profession that actually has such an impact worldwide. I tend to say that we are not special in one sense, like software engineers. I don't know about your environment, your bubbles, your social bubbles. What I see is that in the last years, many people in the IT industry, they think they are special, because they have, we are in big demand and companies are looking to recruit people and we have a good social status because the demand is bigger than the supply. People tend to start thinking that they are special, that they are something more than a doctor or something more than a driver, et cetera. I don't believe this is so. And it's a bad thing for our industry and for the people in the industry. So I believe that in this context, we are not special. On the other hand, I believe that we are also special. Why we are special? For two reasons. First, the one that I just told you. We as a profession have an immense impact on everything that happens in our world and in our societies. Because what we do is something that impacts everything around us. And the second reason why we are special is because on our side, because of the fact that we have this, as I said, big demand and low supply, lower supply than needed, actually we have the opportunity to have easier choices to do the things right. Because we are in a situation much better than people in other industries where it is hard to find a job. It is hard to raise a family. With us, it's not like this. So standing up for what you believe is right is a bit easier for us than other guys. So that's a strong reason for me that we do this. Another part of the motivation. So just like with everything that I mentioned that we have as impact, we are also part of some big issues, things that we've heard of from the news that we know. Here are some examples of things where actually software and software engineers played a significant role. Yeah, with the issues with Boeing and Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, Dieselgate, the issues in Myanmar that maybe Facebook could have done better. And also the things around the legit usage of Grebo software by Uber for kind of handling in a way of their own with the legislation requirements. So let's talk about ethics then. That's my motivation. So let's start talking about ethics. The word comes from ancient Greek. And actually the two things that are from the etymology of the word are the things that are the most important to me in this context, so moral and character. So it's about values and it's also about character. So having the guts, having the courage, having the character to stand by your values. So quickly I'll go through this. So in ancient Greek, they talked and thought about the moral values, what is virtuous behavior, what actions are morally right and wrong. Nowadays, so there's been a lot of progress. I'll just mention quickly. Nowadays, people focus also on actually what are the ethical dilemmas and try to be more specific on how to handle them. And also what could be the decision making process for actually finding the right way and the moral reasoning behind this. Socrates worked on ethical inquiry and critical thinking. Plato tried to conceptualize the ideal good. And actually Aristotle started cultivating and setting up a framework that was emphasizing the ethics, the virtue ethics. OK, so I was planning to find a few quotes from people in our industry so that I can show you what people that we like actually say about it. But I couldn't skip the quote that I really like most, which is the first one. It's from Potter Stewart, who used to be a justice in the Supreme Court. And he says, ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. So it's this gray area about stuff that might not be legal but are not right to do. And then a couple of other quotes, so Grady Butch. Every line of quote represents an ethical and moral decision. And that encompasses where and for whom one chooses to work to write that quote. The choice that I was talking about. So it's up to us to actually decide for who and what we do. And it's not that hard of a choice in our case at this moment. Again, not that we are special. It happened that we are doing this. The times are like this. And this slide is the situation. But we should embrace it. And the last one is from a guy that is an author and VP of content strategy at O'Reilly Media, a company that I like very much for the educational content that they're publishing. So he mostly says that it's about just like it's not the goal but it's the journey, this cliche in a way. So he says, actually, ethics is about having an intelligent discussion about it rather than having answers to the questions. Because, again, it's about an area where there is no really right and wrong in most of the cases. And talking about this is the way forward. And also, the goal, because we cannot be one and the same with one and the same understandings about everything, we cannot get to the same solutions or to the same conclusions all the time. But if everybody tries to get closer to what he believes is right, things will be better. So this is what he says. Intelligent discussion talking about this. So let's take a look at what type of dilemmas and hard decisions and hard choices people in our industry need to take, usually. As I said, we are different. And also, we have different perspectives. So something in my eyes and something in your eyes and something in your eyes is different. Just a few images. As I'm speaking about the perspective, so this doesn't look morally good or ethical, but it's just a perspective. So those two are one and the same pictures. One and the same moment, photos from different perspectives, just like we have different perspectives on things. Another one that really well shows this, how different people can see different things. And the last one, when it doesn't really make sense to argue about stuff which can be interpreted in different ways based on your perspective. So moving on with some examples of the ethical dilemmas and hard choices. So in our business and in what we do, also, again, this talk, the idea is not to give solutions. As I said, there are no solutions. But to make you think, hopefully, start a discussion about it. So I'll give some examples of areas so that you have my point of view about awareness in what areas can be important in our industry. So I'll just go quickly through them. So data privacy, in the context of protecting sensitive user data, while still delivering functionality that requires more and more user data. So what you do when you need to do this, when you need to design things in a way to balance this. So second one, algorithmic bias. Everybody, I'm sure, knows, especially currently with the progress and everything around artificial intelligence utilization. Having biases is something that is a big issue. So in this context, making sure that all the time you think about it and check about it and try to eliminate bias and discrimination against certain groups is something that is part of this. Addictive design. Everybody that works in gambling or gaming or gaming like computer games, those companies are trying to push the limits of what is good to do, what is right to do, always think on the legal side. But still, in many cases, we hear that people are pushing those limits too much. So are you OK with it? Building something that you know will actually lead to addiction that can lead to all those things that I mentioned here. Like reduced cognitive abilities, social isolation, those are things that are not just out of somebody's mind. Those are things that, based on studies, have been proven to happen. My favorite, number four, conflicting interests, stakeholder interests. So how do you balance your company's interests, your client's interests, your user's interests, when there is a tough situation? And I know that's another characteristic of our industry is that our projects, very rarely, if ever, our hearts are not on time, are not stressful and anything. So we very often get into these situations. So when you get into such a situation, you need to compromise. So what are you compromising? Is treating your client, is treating your users, or working and doing the extra mile on your side? And does your company support it? Security, again, so how much security is enough? How much investing in security is enough for making sure that you allow as little risk as possible for vulnerabilities? Another thing, we often hear about vulnerabilities that have been found in this or that company, leaks of user data. When we hear it, sometime later, we understand that actually they knew two days before or sometime before. So when do you announce this? Product safety, balancing budgets, time to market, and safety in critical industries like health care and autonomous driving. Things like, for example, also another ethical dilemma. When you have a life threatening situation, what should the AI do? Make a step, make a reaction that will save the people in the car or the people out of the car if those are pedestrians, for example. Hard to answer. Ethical use of AI, misuse, bias that you mentioned, also explainability and transparency. Those of you who deal with AI, you know one of the big, let's say, not issues but challenges with AI models is that many of them don't allow explainability. So you get the result, but you cannot get justification reasoning why this is the result. And in many industries and in many cases, this is not enough. And sometimes people go for it even if this is the case, which not always is a good idea, of course. Surveillance and privacy, you're doing stuff that you see can actually be utilized for surveillance practices that could be harming people. So all those things, actually, or most of those things relate to the products that we built. On the other hand, we know the statements around guns that guns don't kill people. It's people killing people. So more or less it's the same. You here can have the same argument. So it's not the software that will do the harm. It will be the people that will be using it, but still. You are part of it. Are we happy knowingly to go for things that will definitely harm people or will not be accurate enough? All right, I think I'm a little bit behind schedule, so I'll be a little bit quicker. Next is trying to give you some vision about how ethics can be structured. So the IEE and together with ACM got together like 20-plus years ago. And they came up with the Code of Ethics, which is with a commitment to health, safety, welfare, the public. This is the focus. And it is with eight principles. And those eight principles are decoded with smaller, not smaller, but more detailed subtopics. So I'll quickly go through the eight principles and give you some more information after that. So the first principle is around public. So focus number one with this framework is on public interest. The second one is your employer, your client. So working as software engineers and people in IT, because this, of course, actually when we talk about software engineering, a huge percentage of ethics dilemmas and questions go for business analysts and product owners. Because it's a lot of things about how we design software that actually bring the potential challenges and issues in this area, the same for architects. So the third one is about products. So we meet the highest professional standards in the context mostly about security, privacy, and everything. The fourth one is quite interesting, judgment. So software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment. So here the thing, independence, to me, is the most important one. So everybody to feel free and enabled to take a stance when the time comes for any reason. So to not be biased, not to feel that, yeah, not speaking up, for example, or speaking up would be an issue with your job and your family or whatever. The rest, management, promote ethical approach for the management side. Profession as an industry, as a profession, to promote the reputation in this context. Number seven is to address the teamwork and actually treating colleagues, which is a general one, mostly general one. So it's not related specifically to software engineering, to promote treating properly your colleagues. And the last one is about self, lifelong long learning, and promoting ethical approach in general for doing your profession. Another thing that can be used to see how people structure this is to look at how companies that are having internal policies about this are doing it. So I included here three examples of big companies like Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce, and two other companies that I personally like, GitLab. I don't know, maybe they're publishing a lot of things around their processes and everything, so they're quite advanced and sharing with the society. And Buffer, which if you don't know, this is a company that actually embraces open books strategy, so everything is open. So not only internally, like they know each other's salaries, how much they make, how much they get from each client, and everything, but they open it also to the world. So you can actually see how much everybody makes them and this and that. So those are links to their code of ethics. And at the end, I will tell you my perspective on what are the important things that we can do as IT professionals in this direction. They are kind of related to the eight principles, but I'm trying to do it in a more limited way. So the most important thing is to have courage and integrity, as I said. We should feel free to actually do what is right. This involves a little bit of courage and also integrity. Always try to know and understand the big picture. There are so many people still in the industry that just follow instructions. They open the task in the morning in JIRA or whatever tool they are using and they follow the instructions there and this is what they do. This is a bad thing because they are not effective without understanding why they are doing this and what are the functionalities, what are the processes, what's the reason behind it. But also in the context and from the perspective of ethics, you cannot really understand all those things that I just mentioned as potential challenges unless you know the big picture, unless you know what does this software do, who would be using it, how is your company promoting this software in general, the big picture. So knowing the big picture, always about what you do is an important thing. Speak up if needed. So when you see something that is beyond the limits of your understanding about any attribute of ethics, speak up, even, thank you, even if nobody else is doing it and especially if nobody else is doing it. What I didn't say is that I've been with this company for 10 years and I'm doing sales as part of my job and also strategic land management and also I do a lot of things with emerging technologies like IoT, artificial intelligence, big data, AR, VR, robotics, et cetera. For 10 years, I never had to make a compromise. I always spoke up when I had an issue and I'm really happy that I can do this, but I'm telling you that this can happen. So it's not like, okay, you always need to think about what you're saying, et cetera. It's a state of mind and if you believe that you are in a team and in a company that actually lives by the values because not every company might have code of ethics or policies, but everybody has values and vision and this and that. So if they are not just on paper and you have a good team, then you should feel free to speak up. You should feel free to stand up and lend a hand to somebody that is mistreated, no matter if it's a colleague, if it's a client being mistreated in any way, pushing for people to cheat on him or to, I don't know, to whatever things might happen. So with this balance that I mentioned about balancing interests between your company and company, clients, vendors, employees, et cetera. Dig deeper into the topics of ethics. I don't know how many of you actually came with some previous knowledge and some previous, how should I say, experience in this area, but if at least a little bit of what you heard today is something that rings a bell or makes sense to you, dig a little bit deeper into this and understand more about what you're saying and what you're saying. Dig a little bit deeper into this and understand more about it. Of course, this is a 30 minute session, I'm just scratching the surface. So, dig a little bit and this will allow you to come up with your own internal framework about the limits on the different aspects that you're okay with. Lifelong learning with a course. So everybody says that in our industry, unless we learn every day, we cannot keep up today with our profession, this and that and this and that. Here's another reason and I would say a cause. So in order to maintain this integrity and this freedom and this ability to feel that you can afford yourself even from the perspective of your life and family and everything, you should be able to be up to date and also you should be able to be up to date to also find, for example, vulnerabilities or no potential misuses and this and that. So another reason to keep this lifelong learning and also consider ethics when you're choosing next employer. So everybody's having great team buildings and everybody on Facebook and LinkedIn, they're smiling and the teams are great and everything. But usually it's the story has some additional details. So if it matters, check them. Check them, talk to people, ask the interviewers questions about how they deal with ethics, do they have a whistleblowing policy, for example? Do we have, do they encourage people to speak up? Do they, can they give you examples of how they pursue issues that actually violate their values and their codes? Get into some specifics and you will understand even if you can't find somebody that can tell you. What can you do within your company? Raise awareness, promote the topic, spark discussions with colleagues, do an internal session. If this makes sense to you, make a small session, do it internally with people that are interested. As I said, the quote that I like most is the one that this is a discussion, the way forward to get things better is about discussing, not finding the right solutions. Because this way, especially when people hear about those things from management and from colleagues, they feel much more, it's much easier for people to be speaking up, as I said, and everything. So get management attention. If within your company you don't have a coat of ethics, maybe it would be great to have one. It might be titled in a different way, but still to address those policies and it should be also an action plan. So in the long term, it's like just having a document without reviewing or checking what we did in the last quarter on this. Did we have any signals or anything? It doesn't make sense. There should be something that is regular. Also incorporate ethics questions in the regular company assessment service. How many of you in your companies do you have, for example, annual assessment survey where the company asks you questions about how the year went, so that the company can understand? Okay, just keep your hand. So how many of you have questions about ethics, like the things that I mentioned, incorporated in this survey? Like for example, do you feel that we treat people equally and do sales from one to five? So how many of you? So it's like 60% of the people that raise their hands. So this is what I was mentioning here. So and the last one, beyond yourself and your company, spread the word and trace awareness within the profession, within the society of IT. Do a meetup session or a conference session, just like I'm doing about a topic, share experience and also engage with ethics related initiatives in the IT community. So wrapping up and bungee jumping. The most important thing to me, as I said in the first point of my list, is integrity. So doing the right thing, even if nobody's watching, and even more importantly, even when it hurts. So the tough decisions on doing the right thing, usually would hurt. But as I said, we're in a position where it hurts much less than other people that are doing it in their industries. So if you believe that something is going in the wrong way, speak up, take action. And the last thing is a story about something that works for me. So how, we are human beings, we have our weaknesses. And in my life, I also struggle with making the right decision or making the right thing when the situation is tough. So I have my principles, my virtues, the things that I believe in. I try to live my life following them. But of course, when the tough time comes, you are tempted to do the easy thing, to back off or to do the wrong thing. So I will give you how I'm getting better and it's actually doing the right thing. So the principles that I have, I think about them in advance. So I know that in those situations, the right thing to do is this, for example. So it's like, and at some point it came to my mind, that it's like bungee jumping. So nobody goes to do a bungee jump. Think, I'll go, so the understanding that they will do it. And actually when you're there, you're tempted to back off, I believe, the first time, at least, or the first two, three times, is that you do the step behind it. So you don't think, if you think when you're there, as I said, we are weak, we are human beings, you'll be tempted to back off, et cetera. The same goes for ethical and principle things that guide your life, because in the tough situations, you have this temptation and the easy road to do. So this is the same, I'm trying to follow the same principle. So I just recognize the situation. Okay, okay, I'm gonna tell you. I just did Mechanical React. When you do the first step, just like bungee jumping is no way back. So when you do the first step, usually it's no way back. So it's something that works for me and I wanted to share it with you. So remember, we are special, we have a big impact on the world, and also we are well positioned to make a positive change. So have courage and make the bungee step when you need to. Thank you very much for your attention. Open to questions, to challenges, to opinions about, I think, in a different way, anything. Yes, so the question is about privacy tools and in general, generalize a little bit. So what about tools that you really know that they might be used for good things, but also for bad things? So I believe that we can't stop innovation, we can't stop things to happen. It's been since the world, I mean, since the sun came up for the first time. Be it for the people that used to light the lamps on the street with a fire, and now they don't have a job because we have electricity. So we can't stop progress and we can't stop bad people using stuff that is meant also for, that is for dual use. I can tell you one thing also, additional. There was a movement a couple of years ago about people that are doing open source stuff to actually make a different licensing model that limits certain industries and certain people to actually use it or for certain reasons. I don't think it achieved significant progress, but to me, this is not the way forward. So to me, it's making sure that you do as close to what you believe is ethical within your context and with your understanding, there is no direct harm with it. Apart from that, you can't change the world from going like it went for the last 10,000 years. And if we get closer to this goal, it's much like it would be a really good result anyway. One more question, or we need to go. There's another session. Thank you very much guys, appreciate your attention.