Three quarters of software engineers reporting wrongdoing in their workplace have faced some kind of retaliation, according to a study.
The report by market research firm Survation found slightly more than half (53 percent) of the 280 software engineers questioned suspected wrongdoing at work, while 75 percent of these individuals experienced retaliation the last time they reported such issues to their employers. If they chose not to report wrongdoing, fear of retaliation from management was reported as the top reason (59 percent).
For polling purposes, the research defined wrongdoing as breaching professional standards, negligence, bribery, fraud, criminal activity, miscarriages of justice, health and safety risks, damage to the environment or breaching legal obligations, including discrimination – or deliberately concealing such matters.
British computer scientist Junade Ali, a chartered engineer and fellow of the Institute for Engineering and Technology, was principal investigator for the "Dark Side of Software Development" study.
It revealed good reason for software engineers to be able to raise the alarm when they see potential failures in systems or approaches to engineering. For example, an inquiry is still ongoing into the UK's Post Office Horizon IT system disaster, in which employees were wrongfully convicted of fraud for issues caused by software errors that spanned a period over 20 years.
The flaws in that system created "shortfalls" in the sub-postmasters'...
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