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> It’s similar to how lawyers and regulatory compliance rarely change the product. They change how the product is talked about and framed for the purpose of regulation.

This is true, and basically what tends to happen is that if the Head of some compliance function (e.g. internal audit) is causing problems for the business, then they are replaced with someone who won't cause such problems.

It's still better than nothing. Like, software basically runs our society now, so either software professionals get together on this, or regulations will be imposed on us, and they will be much worse than what we'd get in the first option.



> It's still better than nothing.

Once again the alternative is not nothing. The most important factor is that they are stakeholders in a project with influence. That is the reality right now, even without credentials.


> Once again the alternative is not nothing.

Can you help me understand what the alternative is?


Yes the framing above is “business people don’t listen to engineers but if they had a credential they would legally be forced to”.

And I think both are false.

The top engineers on a project are collaborators with leaders in other areas like marketing, sales, IT, legal, etc. And all those have influence on a project. A business person who says “fuck what my engineer says” is not a good leader and won’t have that group’s trust or support. They all want to work together.

So by that process engineering has a seat of influence.

That exists without credentials, and credentials are not what gets you in that seat. Reputation and experience are.

Business leaders don’t do everything engineering says. They also don’t do everything the lawyers say! And having an additional legal backing would change some of these engineering conversation, but not fundamentally.




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