Principle 3.3 - Promote quality of life

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The following is the Code 2018 Draft 2 version.

If you wish to contribute to this section: Reply to this post with your suggested re-wording and a justification for your proposed changes.

3.3 Manage personnel and resources to design and build systems that enhance the quality of working life.

Leaders are responsible for ensuring that systems enhance, not degrade, the quality of working life. When implementing a system, leaders should consider the personal and professional development, accessibility, physical safety, psychological well-being, and human dignity of all workers. Appropriate human-computer ergonomic standards should be considered in system design and in the workplace.

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Leaders must sustain faith in humanity at large.

#5

The title states “Promote quality of life”, but the content is just on “work life”. Correct the title.

#6

Yes that is the ultimate goal of every omputing professional to improve quality of life for kids, young adults and I wonder how does one include or take their views into oonsideration as a membe rof acm. So can we add some guidlines here for example when we develop video games for kids to discouge aggressive behavior for example. I am passionate about this topic and is anybody here working or can suggest a community of such professionals I can join as I thin Kds and computing is a very niche topic

#7

Agree, the content and title are mismatched. And beyond that, if we’re only talking about work life… this just doesn’t apply in a lot of ways to software companies. Are we talking about the internal tooling we use to produce software? Are we thinking about more internal / IT projects within non-software companies? Do we want engineers to have good quality of life or do we want the users of our systems to have good quality of life?

I think more clarity is needed (and I don’t have the context to suggest a rewording).

#8

Would just suggest removing ‘working’ from the title => there is so much software everywhere, so this shouldn’t be limited to just working life.

Actually is this intended to be both inwards that when developing systems and solutions the quality of life of everyone working with it is good and that leaders ensure sustainable pace so that professionals have healthy and happy life? Or is this more outwards-bound, towards the end user who would be using the system, so that it is at least tried to do as good as possible?

#9

Why is this principle addressed to “leaders” and not software professionals in general?

#10

The sentence “Appropriate human-computer …” This is a practice, not an ethic. I suggest moving the section to section 2.1 and combining it with “professional review.”

One place where I have found this section difficult is working with metrics. I have worked on many projects where managers asked for productivity metric reports. These are common in modern business practice. But I believe that as a rule, productivity metrics lower the quality of life for workers. Perhaps, by writing such reports, I am unethical. Guidance would be useful.

#11

Here I disagree, this article is more a leadership principle than a professional responsibility because the Code also has to deal with the life of the coders and there is hierarchy involved. The computing environment is a 24 hour/7 days a week/365 days a year environment, yet human health requires an ~8 hour sleep cycle in between, and we as managers in emergencies can forget that what extra work we are asking for is at a cost. An example I have to hand is where I had a case of child pornography by a colleague and I had to secure the evidence. Because working a files trail also changes the evidence and I had no clever tools, it took 60 hours to compile the report, along with my usual tasks. The case eventually never made it to court for other reasons, but that ‘being in a pressure cooker experience’ is one I have often had since then. Truth be told, I probably enjoyed those experiences at work, but being divorced now, my family didn’t. I know, I have asked other staff to work like that pressured, and took it as part of my job, but I never asked others to do more than I would have asked of myself. The “human dignity of all workers” I find is a bit of minor, hidden part of the code and needs emphasis - in terms of the leadership of a computing organisation.