Dark Side of Software Engineering
From charlesreid1
List of chapters:
Part 1:
- Subversion - focuses on people who wish the software project to fail; gives statistics on motivations for subversion, examples of situations, and suggestions for dealing with subversion.
- Lying - lying is a chilling but ubiquitous activity, with outcomes that range in seriousness; the chapter explores survey results on motivations for lying and various responses to deal with it.
- Hacking - covers examples of hacking, definitions, important concepts, intellectual property, hacker subculture, how hackers make money, social engineering; specific mention of Operation Aurora
- Theft of Information - ranges from subtle to blatant; often done to accomplish a specific goal; opens a much broader discussion of intellectual property.
- Espionage - not a common occurrence, even in banking/defense, at least on software projects; but included nonetheless.
- Disgruntled employees and sabotage - this topic focuses on the "who," not on the "what" - a disgruntled employee may utilize a number of methods, but the book spends a chapter discussing the particulars of disgruntled employees.
- Whistle-blowing - this is not an act of wrong-doing, but an act of exposing wrong-doing; but whistle-blowing is not always an inherently good activity; it can be misguided; leaks are sometimes driven by ulterior motives
Part 2: Opinions, predictions, and beliefs
- Automated crime
- Playing make-believe
- Dark, light, or another shade of grey?
- Rational software developers as pathological code hackers
Part 3: Personal anecdotes
- Officer and gentleman confronts dark side
- Less carrot and more stick
- Virtual software teams
- To lie on a software project
- Merciless control instrument
- Forest of Arden
- Hard-headed hardware hit-man
- A lighthearted anecdote