[–] nicky_haflinger 1 point 7 points 8 points (+8|-1) ago
So certainly all the engineers on the project violated their professional ethics, but this betrays a fundamental failure in the understanding of the role of management, which is responsibility. Obviously accepting a position of responsibility for a situation you do not understand is quite bad but it is also standard operating procedure ie SNAFU (acronym nsfw)
[–] Oveass 3 points 2 points 5 points (+5|-3) ago
Engineering doesn't have a code of ethics like the doctors. And I sincerely doubt it's a few rogue employees of VW when the problem is spread across several brand using that BOSH ecu. It might be a few employees of the holding of the multiple manufacturers, but it's from top down.
If you look at who cheats best it's mercedes, they rose to 150% on their E class cars. BMW does this as well, PSA does this,... it's not only VW so I think it unlikely it's only a few rogue low levels at VW.
Pure speculation: I think eu law pushed manufactures to cheat, bosh found a solution, under the table offered this to a bunch of companies, good money for bosh, competitive specs for the manufacturers, big bosses everywhere happy.
[–] LusciousFox 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Although thats America, Engineers in Australia do due to membership of EA being a requirement to practice Engineering.
[–] nicky_haflinger 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Engineer certainly do have a professional code of ethics although you are right it isn't as straightforward as the doctor's "first do no harm"
[–] dontdoxxmebro 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
The role of management has nothing to do with responsibility; Unless you consider responsibility and profit the same thing.
[–] YallJusRaycis 1 point 44 points 45 points (+45|-1) ago (edited ago)
Total bullshit. Engineers build what they're told to build and it's the executives' responsibility to approve what goes out the door. Shitty illegal software on millions of cars doesn't mean that engineers knew they were breaking the law. It's totally possible to silo engineers so that they don't know what they're working on. If they had known a lot of them would probably have left. I had a boss with a high security clearance who worked on systems that stored nuclear bomb test data and had no idea what he was working on until he pieced it together from circumstantial clues.
[–] FlintRockBone 0 points 9 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago
I think this is the most likely answer, on a large enough team you can appropriately silo your engineers and then have a small team integrate the code in such a way that it would have violated the professional ethics of the engineers that wrote the underlying code. It's always hard to tell exactly what happened, maybe they had such a shitty development workflow that a single engineer could pull it off. I don't think that's likely though.
[–] Gargilius 1 point 5 points 6 points (+6|-1) ago (edited ago)
I can imagine exactly how it might have happened; some poor cubicle dwelling code monkey schmuck got himself (yeah, it was most probably a dude) a priority one bug in his queue that had to be fixed yesterday, but had to be fixed with a minimal / most localized / least intrusive patch possible because one can't make big changes when the big deadline is looming so near, otherwise it won't ever pass code review, and QA would bitch about it, and it had to be fixed in software of course, because the hardware engs couldn't be bothered, and the technically clueless management was breathing down his neck hard. So he did something like if ( pTestMode ) fudgeTheNumbers() else zoomZoom(); patch and he was able to go home and finally get some rest after a multiweeks death march of all nighters, and keep his job, while the managements and execs got to share their new product launched in time fat bonuses.
Now, that same poor schmuck is going to take the fall.
[–] FlintRockBone 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
That wouldn't happen in any professional development environment I've ever been a part of. Anything involving critical sub-systems has a code review before it's accepted into the stable source control branch. And if one rogue engineer can push code unnoticed into the stable branch then you have a poor software release process. Although maybe I've just been spoiled by being on teams that take software stability and security seriously.
I can only speak about one consumer electronics megacorp, but it totally happens. What's more, there were extensive systems to show who commited some patch, some rarely used (and often circumvented because there was no time) systems to show who did a code review (usually some other engineer), but there's no trace of managerial decisions leading to that patch. Someone tells team leader, who tells project leader, who tells engineers. There's no git for managers and the company acts to shift the blame to the smallest cog possible. I think that if VW goes with it and some happless dev is blamed, they will demoralize their current employees and turn away possible new ones. They will lose more than money.
[–] Acerebral 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Even if this is the case, it is management's fault for setting unreasonable expectations and deadlines, being intolerant of delays necessary to ensure compliance, and failing to put in place a company culture that frowns on that sort of solution.
And that's assuming the exec isn't lying, which I think he is.
[–] RedditDead2005-2015 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Let's blame the Indian and Asian fall guys who can't even speak our language for it. That will solve our image problem. It's the foreigners!
[–] newoldwave ago
Oh we executives didn't know nothing. It was those darned engineers or somebody else, you know.
[–] 2759650? 0 points 19 points 19 points (+19|-0) ago
These executives are liars or else that means that they got paid way too much for being ignorant of what their people do.