Phil Wolff, @evanwolf, pevanwolf@gmail.com

▪ OpenOakland tech/design volunteers worked with the City to automate bringing young people to summer jobs

▪ Found making it easier to apply would bottleneck agencies, waste user time, discourage job seekers

▪ Our team walked away

▪ We acted on conscience

▪ But we were volunteers. No profit motive or jobs to keep. No conflicts.

▪ We could have gone ahead, accepting the harm as a cost of partnering with the City and agencies. Partners over Users.

▪ Doctors, Nurses

▪ Lawyers, Judges

▪ Police Officers

▪ Accountants

▪ Engineers

▪ Should I take a paid speaking gig

▪ from this outside company

▪ when their actions harm my customers?

▪ What should I do if,

▪ when I take over a product,

▪ I discover it has Dark Patterns?

▪ What should I do if my product

▪ is legal where I live

▪ but illegal in other countries?

▪ What should I do when I see a product manager behave unethically?

▪ If my product brings more harm into the world than good,

▪ what are my obligations?

▪ If my product harms a few people

▪ but is of great good and value for the rest,

▪ what should I do?

▪ If I have to retire my product

▪ but many people’s live depend on it,

▪ how should I approach this?

If my product’s customers are not its users,

▪ like a product sold to an employerfor its employees,

▪ how do I prioritize customer needs vs. user needs?

Not in order (yet)…

▪ Committing product managers to higher duties than career, company, profit.

▪ Help those who rely on product managers to trust practitioners and the profession.

▪ “You are the voice of the customer” conflicts with “You are the CEO of the product.” How do you balance those goals?

▪ Offer the practitioner guidance when moral conflicts and conflicting duties apply.

▪ Help product managers understand how to hold ourselves accountable for mistakes and breaches of faith.

▪ A well-used code of ethics defends the profession from scallywags, rapscallions, and other ne’er-do-wells who’s words and behavior sully our collective reputation.

▪ Are we doing “one thing” or “many things”?

▪ We’re an occupation. Are we a profession?

▪ Does our job balancing many duties make it impossible to write an ethics code?

▪ Get involved▪ What should a Product Manager’s code of ethics

accomplish? (Quora)

▪ What should be in a Product Managers' code of ethics? (Quora)

▪ Twitter: #prodmgmt

▪ Where you talk with other product managers.

▪ Needed: Real World Cases

PHIL WOLFFpevanwolf@gmail.com

@Evanwolf

1-510-343-5664

LinkedIn