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Ethics

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Situation 1: Adapted from WAFBLA “Everyone Else Does It!” Ethics Project You have been struggling in your Engineering Models class. The content does not come easily, so you have put in countless hours to understand and do the assignments. There is another student who breezes through the assignments, getting high marks for the work he turns in. You know for a fact that he has used his college-aged cousin to do some of the assignments for him. You don’t know how many assignments were turned in this way, but you are certain that he, in fact, did not do all the work. Your frustration increases over the last assignment that you worked overtime on, but did poorly. Of course, this other student scored well on the same assignment. You drop the …show more content…

They are confident that they can fix it, but it will take a month or more to do the redesign, coding and testing. Wayne meets with his boss, Deborah Shepherd, the project manager, to discuss the implications. She tells him that what he is asking for is impossible. The contract requires that the company deliver a fully certified, working version of the software in three days for system integration and test. The government has developed a new, get-tough policy on missed deadlines and cost overruns, and Occidental is afraid that if they miss this deadline, the government will make an example of them. They would be subject to fines and the loss of the remainder of the prototype contract; and they might not be allowed to bid on the contract for the full system. This would have a devastating effect on the aerospace division, resulting in thousands of lost jobs. They consider whether they can do a quick patch to the software before turning it over, but Wayne adamantly refuses to release any code that has not been tested thoroughly. There is always a chance that the patch would interact with some other part of the program to create a new bug. "Then we'll have to deliver the software as is," Deborah says. "I can't jeopardize this project or the jobs of my people by missing that deadline." "We can't do that!" exclaims Wayne.

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