GM Names Names, Suspends Two Engineers Over Ignition-Switch Safety 236
cartechboy (2660665) writes "GM said it has placed two engineers on paid leave in connection with its massive recall probe of 2 million vehicles. Now, GM is asking NASA to advise on whether those cars are safe to drive even with the ignition key alone. Significantly, individual engineers now have their names in print and face a raft of inquiries what they did or didn't know, did or didn't do, and when. A vulnerability for GM: One engineer may have tried to re-engineer the faulty ignition switch without changing the part number—an unheard-of practice in the industry. Is it a good thing that people who engineer for a living can now get their names on national news for parts designed 10 years ago? The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?"
Hero ? (Score:5, Interesting)
What follows is my baseless personal opinion based only on what I see at similar businesses ---
The engineer that changed the part without changing the part number and without management knowing intentionally did it behind their back because management wouldn't let him make the change. Everyone knew about the problem. Management knew changing the part was akin to admitting the fault. The engineer did it on his own to save lives - company be damned. And he kept the part number the same so that no one would know.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Changing part without changing part number is something which the engineer shouldn't have done. Sure, management wouldn't let him make the change and that is bad. However, by making a change without following the basic accepted procedures meant that sleuth work needed to be done to even identify that a change had been made. The engineer clearly did something wrong. That in no way reduces the responsibility of management for their decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
That said, naming names of an engineer is a really bad precedent. What is the goal GM is trying to achieve here. Do they want people to go break the guy's windows? Burn down his house? Call him in the middle of the night or deliver pizza? Apart from potentially removing the guy's livelihood for the remainder of his life because no-one wants to hire 'that guy' ever again, and a lot of abuse being targeted his way, what will this achieve?
If he did something criminal, then he should be charged. If he did something extremely incompetent then maybe membership of the engineering body should be revoked, but it isn't the place of GM to throw their engineers to the wolves.
changing part without changing number is common (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not saying that it's good, and this case is an example of exactly why it can be a bad idea to do this, but changing part numbers has a lot of overhead (inventory management of multiple part numbers, all the manuals that now refer to the wrong number, etc)
If it's expected that the new part is significantly different than the old one, then it's worth all the pain, but if it's not expected to be significantly different (just cheaper to build, or more reliable when nobody expects series reliability problems with the old one, etc) its not completely insane to just change the design and keep the same part number.
If you want to be really paranoid, you track each batch of parts produced as a separate item, because minor things like the temprature that day could theoretically affect something. In medical and aerospace industries, this sort of tracking is done (which is one of the reasons why 'simple' things are so expensive in those industries)
but in the automotive industry that level of tracking is just not done, and it's very common for parts to be substatuted with no notice.
In the computer industry, it's unfortuantly common for some manufacturers to make what many people consider major changes (like changing chipsets) without changing the part number.
David Lang
Re:changing part without changing number is common (Score:5, Informative)
Since I work for an automotive OEM.... When this is done, there is an Engineering Change Order documenting the change and why it was implemented. We don't change anything without first getting the approval of the customer; and, invariably they will want all the relevant DV and PV testing redone. Huge effort and pain. All of this is well documented and nothing ships until we have final approval from the customer.
The part number may not change; but, the part revision level will. PN 123456 RevA will become PN 123456 RevB. We treat it as the "same" part number but will only ship the latest revision once we have customer approval. As for tracking, I don't know how our customers tracks the change internally; but, I can tell you which batch, serial number, and date code the new revision started shipping.
Re:changing part without changing number is common (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
The part number may not change; but, the part revision level will. PN 123456 RevA will become PN 123456 RevB.
Most automakers' part numbers do change. But some very much do not, for example the FIPL (TPS equivalent) on the old Ford diesels changed color but didn't change part number, and the two colors have substantively different internals. And there's no revision number, either.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The document linked in the article shows several revisions to the switch assembly without changing GM p/n (revs A, B, C1, C2, C3 and D).
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say that a part that doesn't lead to lethal accidents, as opposed to a part that sometimes does, constitutes a "significant change", no matter if the difference small. In this case, it actually seems to have been a fairly large change. They should have not only changed the number of the part, but made sure that cars in the wild with the old one got word, and probably should have been recalled immediately.
This is also why the question asked in TFS is the wrong one:
The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?"
To be comparable with the case at hand,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hero ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Assuming this hypothesis, it was better he make the change and save lives... management, convention and rules be damned.
Of course we don't really know if that what really happened.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the ethical course is to blow the whistle. Sure you will loose your job and probably never work again, but .... Yeah, there are no up-sides to this one...
Re:Hero ? (Score:4, Informative)
That said, naming names of an engineer is a really bad precedent. What is the goal GM is trying to achieve here. Do they want people to go break the guy's windows? Burn down his house? Call him in the middle of the night or deliver pizza? Apart from potentially removing the guy's livelihood for the remainder of his life because no-one wants to hire 'that guy' ever again, and a lot of abuse being targeted his way, what will this achieve?
Why exactly is it a bad precedent?
The names of everyone involved are going to come out anyways, with all the possible consequences you described.
Our judicial system is usually exceedingly unwilling to pierce the corporate veil and directly hold bad actors responsible for their choices.
So I'm perfectly happy with a society that aggressively shuns those people, regardless of judicial outcomes.
I'm *guessing* GM's goal is to scapegoat a few responsible parties as early as possible,
so that when the management failures are unmasked, there won't be as much heat and vitriol.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why exactly is it a bad precedent?
So I'm perfectly happy with a society that aggressively shuns those people, regardless of judicial outcomes.
IMHO, engineers have a hard job. They constantly need to manage trade-offs, complex concepts, and scope/schedule trade-offs. Sometimes they make mistakes. I've worked in design of automation equipment, enterprise software, and medical devices and in all cases there were the occasional mistakes. People forget to update a requirements document, a change order is approved but not implemented, a drawing rev number isn't updated before sending to vendor, a critical bug is mistakenly set to low, a vendor changes a part and someone uses the old data sheet, etc.. There are recalls all the time on products through honest mistakes people make. Should we call out each of these people individually?
We would need to have a Google size site just to publish the name of every software engineer who introduced a bug into some software package. Everyone better step-up if we want to do that. I want the world to shun the individual who made a bad trade for my 401K, every person on a road crew who didn't finish a road project on time -- well, there are countless people who make mistakes who are nameless part of a bigger organization.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
There are recalls all the time on products through honest mistakes people make. Should we call out each of these people individually?
The engineer that designed the part and the replacement lied in front of a Senate Committee when asked if he knew there was a defect.
The engineering manager was deposed in a lawsuit and said that GM made a business decision not to fix the defect.
Those aren't honest mistakes. Those are "bad actors" I'm talking about
People who intentionally do something wrong, don't fix something that is wrong, or cover up something that is/was wrong.
Your entire post is arguing against a position I did not take.
Re: (Score:2)
The engineer that designed the part and the replacement lied in front of a Senate Committee when asked if he knew there was a defect.
If he was asked to redesign the part because it was inadequate, then he's a liar. If he decided to redesign the part because he thought it might be inadequate, he isn't. The question is whether that's even feasible. In most companies people work on what they're told to work on. However, I have seen underutilized employees inventing work for themselves as well.
The engineering manager was deposed in a lawsuit and said that GM made a business decision not to fix the defect.
Well, GM is a typically evil corporations.
The engineering manager was deposed in a lawsuit and said that GM made a business decision not to fix the de
Re: (Score:2)
There are recalls all the time on products through honest mistakes people make. Should we call out each of these people individually?
But what has happened here is they did NOT initiate a recall, though they knew enough about the problem to redesign the part. I have no idea how likely or unlikely it is that the named engineers were responsible for that, or even for not assigning a new part number, as opposed to their managers.
If the latter turn out to be culpable, the names of the engineers should be seen in headlines once more, to clear their reputations.
Re: (Score:2)
[Mel Brooks] Hey, you said "trade-offs twice! [/]
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure it was really them? Where was the checking? Were they ordered to make the compromise? Was it built as designed?
What do you bet if any of those questions would absolve them it'll be yet another case of allegations making the headline and the exoneration makes page 23?
Re:Hero ? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the goal GM is trying to achieve here.
Create a scapegoat and deep six the visibility of the problem in the media. I don't buy at all that this problem can be narrowed down to two misbehaving engineers especially given what appears to be collusion on the regulatory government side (perhaps over both Obama and G. W. Bush's terms) to ignore the problem.
Re: (Score:3)
Engineers have bosses. Sometimes in a complicated situation where there are no good answers, engineers do what their bosses say.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Engineers have bosses. Sometimes in a complicated situation where there are no good answers, engineers do what their bosses say.
If you're in this kind of situation, always secretly record any interaction with a higher-up where you raise a problem, and are ordered to not fix it. Even if your state (or company rules) bans secret recording. Do it anyway.
[Simple sound-activated voice recorders are available that can record dozens of hours of conversation, so you don't even have to remember to turn it on.]
Then if the situation escalates where the penalty against you is worse than the penalty for making the recording, reveal the recording
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Interesting)
With this going so high that congress dragged the CEO in to lie to them that this involved anything more than "cheaper to let you die", by naming these two engineers, GM has just given them the power to completely ruin the company.
"We tried to do the right thing and management thwarted us at every turn". Done in one, the CEO just perjured herself before congress, and the class action liability suits put GM (back) into bankruptcy (where they belong).
Unfortunately in this case, engineers tend to have too strong of a "boyscout" streak in them, and the ones implicated here will probably just do their best to ignore the fact that GM just threw them under the bus for following orders.
Or put another way - I don't work in an industry that seriously puts people's lives in danger, and legal would goose-step me out of the goddamned building before they let me do something like GM claims these two engineers did "on their own". So an entire multinational supply and manufacturing chain of command just quietly went along with the whims of two peons that massively violated protocol? Bullshit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a Sr. Engineer, I can state that very few certified technical lead Engineers I have known would ever consent to such a modification without changing either the part number or revision number. However, there have been a number of times when hardware managers will not listen, since such a change has ramifications affecting a product's BOM, certifications, and various procurement/logistical processes.
If there are liability consequences, my company will comply with the overhead. However, that is not the ca
Re: (Score:2)
Changing part without changing part number is something which the engineer shouldn't have done.
A single engineer can't do that alone. It takes collusion, probably by management.
Sure, management wouldn't let him make the change and that is bad. However, by making a change without following the basic accepted procedures meant that sleuth work needed to be done to even identify that a change had been made.
The question is whether some rogue engineer actually did this himself. And the question there is whether it is even possible. And it probably is not, since we're all just sitting here conjecturing.
The engineer clearly did something wrong.
It's not clear to me. Maybe an engineer completed a redesign, and someone else is responsible for it not getting a new part number?
That in no way reduces the responsibility of management for their decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
Every single person involved in the chain of decisions leading to this switch being released without a
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody in management had to sign off on the change and a whole lot of work had to be done to revise the tooling and approve the expenditures. This wasn't an invisible modification done by a sneaky engineer unbeknownst to higher levels of management. There is always a bottom to every hill and the shit stops rolling once it gets there.
Re: (Score:3)
a whole lot of work had to be done to revise the tooling
Ah, so we need to name the machinists too! Charge the whole lot with a conspiracy to embarrass management!
Somehow Harry Tuttle is probably involved.
Re: (Score:2)
What machinist, they probably had to order half a new production line.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that, all that was done was to make a little bit of metal a little less little. If the part by which it is held when it is placed into the switch didn't change, then odds are the only thing which had to change was a punch and die set in one machine in the production line.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a hero. An engineer has a responsibility to act ethically. It's part of what makes the profession ... err professional. A cover up to save face of management is not something that should have been done under any circumstance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It was either that or just don't do the change at all, so that even more people would die. This is the problem with engineering: grandstanding fools like you sit in armchairs and say that engineers should "act ethically", but they're not allowed to by management, because they have zero power in the company, and are really nothing more than interchangeable cogs that management can replace at a whim. Management makes all the engineering decisions, but when something goes wrong, people want to blame the engi
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No it was not either or. It is never either or. See part of this thing called ethics is to not act unethically at the request of others. It's part of the charter of being a professional engineer. If you can't say NO to the people who are paying you then you have absolutely no business being a professional engineer.
Re:Hero ? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't say NO to the people who are paying you then you have absolutely no business being a professional engineer.
If you can't feed your children otherwise, you can't say no.
If you fail economically, our society tells you that you are a failure. Ethics don't pay the bills.
Maybe this guy is just feeding himself, I don't know. But society punishes the kind of ethics you're talking about. We clearly don't actually hold that value.
Re: (Score:2)
And if the engineer was stopped from making the changes then he should have gone to the proper regulatory officials with evidence of the cover up.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And we've all seen how well whistleblowers have been treated lately.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Informative)
Reuters [reuters.com] has a longer story that explains the background. Digrigio testified in the Senate that he did not know of the issue. Later senate dug up documents implying the opposite.Altman did something similar (but not nearly as bad) in front of a Jury.
Re:Hero ? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a professionally licensed design engineer, we have a responsibility to the public in general. These two engineers, once the problem had been identified and middle management was preventing the fix from being implemented, should have sent an email to the CEO and copied the entire company mailing list highlighting the potential liability and risk of death and great bodily harm. I guarantee it would have been fixed, and a bunch of jackass middle management would have been out on their asses. If the warning was still ignored, the next stop is the press. They may or may not have lost their jobs, or they may have gotten a promotion, but either is far better than where they are now.
Engineers in general are very conscientious as we have one of very few professions where our work makes us personally liable under the law and that liability cannot be transferred to a corporation (although the corporation may also be liable, and typically have deeper pockets.) This is one reason why, although spectacular (i.e. the Challenger shuttle explosion) it is very rare that middle management succeeds in hushing any serious safety flaws known to the engineers. As an engineer I would much rather be out of a job than on the hook for wrongful death, legally or morally. As for my next employer, if they are worth working for, they know the laws and know that engineers work for them but have a greater responsibility to society.
Re: (Score:2)
This. Please mod parent up. AC is exactly right, except maybe about it getting fixed. The CEO isn't always clued up enough. Also, prior to the press, one should likely approach whatever government regulatory is appropriate in your country.
The paper trail here is the important thing. That email, is critical.
More Impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be more impressed when they suspend/fire the managers/executives that did not pass along the information or made the decision it would cost less to pay off victims than fix it.
Re: (Score:3)
"Credit travels upwards, blame travels downwards. That's just the way it works." - The Pointy-Haired Boss.
Did they name the director? (Score:2, Insightful)
Did they name the director that ordered the two engineers to cover up the change? There's no way the engineers decided to do that on their own volition.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't believe in the existence of bad or sloppy engineers?
Re:Did they name the director? (Score:4, Insightful)
He doesn't believe in rank and file employees having power to enact this level of change at their workplace.
Comparison to code bugs a bit flawed (Score:5, Informative)
The fine article submission asks:
One key difference here is that the engineer(s) responsible for redesigning the switch and not changing the part number were not just implementing an everyday change that happened to be buggy. By not changing the part number, their actions are more akin to trying to fix a known bug that has exposed the company to huge potential liabilities, and then hacking the version control system to make it look like the bug was never there, in full intentional pursuit of obfuscation and ass-covering.
Cheers,
Re:Comparison to code bugs a bit flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
And following on that I fully expect software engineers to be held to account in a similar way. If the Heartbleed bug was silently fixed and then historical logs messed with to make it look like it never existed in the first place then the person responsible should have their name in lights.
Professional Engineers have an obligation to act ethically, not an obligation to be right all the time. Software engineers and other professionals in the IT industry should be held to the same account.
Re: (Score:2)
"Ethically" isn't always clear cut. Perhaps let's use "Professionally". If you act professionally, you won't let known issues endanger the lives of the operators or general public, even if it means losing your job.
I used to work at GM. (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically, OnStar.
I can remember one of the development groups there "discovering" Agile, and immediately trying to patent the crap out of every process they could. Specifically, they were patenting how they made "new" processes to make Agile work with their awful SDP-21 development process (waterfall)..... by putting multiple sprints inside of the waterfall.
The place was soul sucking, conformity was desperately sought in all people, and management was desperate to throw underlings under the bus in order to save their own $160,000/year jobs (the talent for which they never really possessed).
You know... sort of like what is happening to these two engineers.
Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?"
Why not let software engineers take responsibility for their work just like "real" engineers do when they sign off on a project?
The developer responsible for the Heartbleed [arstechnica.com] bug that put the privacy of millions of users at risk stood up and took responsibility for his mistake.
If you know that the world is going to hear about it if you screw up, then maybe you'll take a little more time to vet your work before you sign off on it.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why software developers shouldn't insist on using the title Engineer. This kind of accountability is expected of an engineer, it's not an anomaly. When programming matures to the point where bugs are rare, then we will deserve the title.
I write software for a living and I'm well aware that if we were to compare computer science to medical science, the current era is roughly equivalent to the blood letting and leeches era. I can't wait for our penicillin to come around.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the traditional /. response involves something along the lines of:
"But what if you're a doctor in a movie theater and someone dies because you didn't get an e-mail in the seconds after it was sent?"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In most places "Software Engineers" meet no accreditation requirements, have no requirement to belong to any society which regulates ethics, experience or training.
I've worked with real engineers, ethics was more important than their education.
There is no requirement to belong, but at least there is a society [acm.org] that promulgates ethics. [acm.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Following French law, I am a fully qualified certified engineer. Membership in a professional organization is just a north american concept closer to mafia and group self-interest preservation than engineering.
There is a little more to it than that if you want to be able to put P.E. after your name. To become a Professional Engineer (P.E.) you need to get a degree from an accredited university, pass an exam to become an Engineer in Training, have four years of experience under a P.E., and then pass a another exam. You can join a professional organization, in most cases, merely by paying dues. However, you do not need to be a P.E. to call yourself an engineer, unless you are performing certain types of engineering
Re: (Score:2)
That's why software developers shouldn't insist on using the title Engineer. This kind of accountability is expected of an engineer, it's not an anomaly. When programming matures to the point where bugs are rare, then we will deserve the title.
When that day comes, the programmer won't be called an engineer: he'll be called a mathematician.
Re: (Score:2)
Engineers just build siege engines, they're not responsible if the siege fails.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with this if going by the people I've been interviewing. I usually give a basic C programming problem, nothing particularly hard that any college grad should have no problem doing. A majority of the people I interview fail it and very few get it completely right. We've had a lot of people who throw around buzzwords but won't go into detail (big red flag), or they have a lot of short stints at a lot of companies (another red flag). I swear that some of these people have someone else do the phone scre
Re: (Score:3)
I do exactly the same thing, but I use problems from Project Euler. I think I may be a bit evil, but really, if you claim to know a language and can't at least brute force a numerical problem...
Weirdly though we just took on two paid interns to develop some internal tools under supervision. One failed my sadistic little test, and the other passed it. Turns out the one who failed writes better code and grasps the problems better. Anecdotal, but surprising. Disclosure: I am definitely not a software engineer.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
The world doesn't need to hear about screw-ups, it does however need to hear about cover-ups.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's suppose that you have an interview for on a software project where human lives are at stake.
You learn that if you make a mistake, your name will be published everywhere, and your career will be ruined.
Will you take this job ?
If you take the job:
1) do you believe that you'll accept a normal pay to work on this job ? Do you believe the company will give you a high salary ?
2) do you believe that you'll be able to deliver easily, especially if you have troubles with your emotions ?
3) do you realize that a
Re: (Score:2)
Well, first of all since OpenSSL is an open source project, I doubt staying anonymous was an option as you can go back and check git logs and mailing lists.
Dr. Seggelmann said the error he introduced was "quite trivial", but acknowledged that its impact was "severe". (,..) After he submitted the code, a reviewer "apparently also didn't notice the missing validation," Dr. Seggelmann said
So the takeaway here is that OpenSSL has a review process that lets "quite trivial" bugs in the input validation of a high security product through, that's comforting
Seggelmann said it might be "tempting" to assume the bug was inserted deliberately by a spy agency or hacker. "But in this case, it was a simple programming error in a new feature, which unfortunately occurred in a security relevant area," he said, according to the newspaper report. "It was not intended at all, especially since I have previously fixed OpenSSL bugs myself and was trying to contribute to the project."
If you were a spy agency trying to get a vulnerability into OpenSSL, do you think it'd be on the first patch? Fix some insignificant bugs, get trusted, introduce seemingly innocent but deepl
MK Observer (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The broken switches can move out of the “run” situation suddenly, executing the motor and closing off force to airbags.
What is this even supposed to mean?!? The "run" situation?
Re: (Score:2)
It reads like it was spewed out by a markov chain generator trained on a tiny subset of language to make sure that its rambling stays on topic, but still makes no guarantees that it comes out in English.
Maybe that's what the MK means? I had a look at the other stories on the site:
-- http://www.mk [mkobserver.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He's trying to write 'the run position.'
Not a flamebait summary (Score:3)
Is it a good thing that people who engineer for a living can now get their names on national news for parts designed 10 years ago? The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?
Yes. Well nearly. That is a good thing. If these engineers were found to act unethically in this regard they should be punished. Where I live professional engineers are registered and the charter of professional engineers put a great deal of weight on the ethical practice of engineering. Should the same go for software? Absolutely. I have long held the belief that software can be life critical at times and software engineers should be held to the same professionalism as any other form of engineering.
Now I said well nearly because these people didn't get their name in the news for mis-designing a part. They got their name in the news for trying to cover up the fact that they mis-designed a part and potentially put the public in danger in the process. I don't believe they acted alone since it would take more than 2 people to pull off something like this unless GM really has no oversight structure, but if a software engineer made a mistake that was discovered to potentially cause a fatality and then attempted to cover it up by messing with the system so it looks like the bug never existed then by all means they should definitely have their name up in lights.
Re: (Score:2)
I have long held the belief that software can be life critical at times and software engineers should be held to the same professionalism as any other form of engineering.
It is a matter of fact, not belief, that software can be life critical. [vt.edu] For the majority of software, though, cost and time-to-market considerations far outweigh coding to the highest professional standard. "Good enough" wins.
Professional responsibility (Score:5, Informative)
Engineers are professionally certified with professional responsibility, if they aren't doing their job it's criminal and names need to be named. Just as a physician working for a hospital is named for accusations of negligence.
It's not obvious if that's relevant here, but if someone tried to pass themselves off as a professional engineer and aren't that's a problem, if someone who is a professional engineering violated the ethical principles that's a problem too.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope that this does not create a precedent that if product is a success the company will win money and get all recognition, if the product fails or if it dangerous the blame is on the engineers and they have to be publicly shamed.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, somehow, electrical engineers are always seat-of-the-pants cowboy coders. At least the ones I know, I work with a few of them. They might be more disciplined with their core skill, developing hardware, but I've heard "let's add a pull-up resistor and see what happens" one too many times to really believe that. I don't have a problem with that, they get the work done. I just can't take seriously this notion some people have, that software engineers are sloppy amateurs and real engineers work to a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm an engineer but I don't have a PE license so what kind of "professional responsibility" am I supposed to have? The answer is none.
In a few localities, it is actually illegal** to call yourself an engineer or offer engineering services if you don't actually have a PE license (akin to practicing medicine or law w/o a license even if you graduated from medical or law school).
However, the odds are you probably don't live in one of the few remaining localities that have these restrictions on the use of "engineer" in a job title, but you should be aware that in most localities, simply by practicing engineering often puts you under the juri
Say what? (Score:2)
How many people died? They get paid leave?
Re: (Score:2)
Snowden (Score:3)
I can see parallels here to the Snowden affair. Basically, if you blow the whistle on management acting unethically, you are screwed. Whether it's Snowden blowing the whistle on the Feds or some engineer blowing the whistle on GM management, there is no protection for someone wanting to do the right thing. This is how Nazi Germany got to where they ended up. We don't know if one of these engineers wanted to blow the whistle, but usually engineers want to engineer, they don't care about bean counting, so its a fair bet he wanted it done right, but wasn't allowed to.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke.
The way society is going, having good men do something gets harder and harder.
Re: (Score:3)
Whether it's Snowden blowing the whistle on the Feds or some engineer blowing the whistle on GM management, there is no protection for someone wanting to do the right thing. This is how Nazi Germany got to where they ended up.
Which is quite relevant actually. During the time of the Wiemar Republic, apparently in the 1920s, several would-be whistle blowers got murdered for knowing too much about violations of the Treaty of Versailles (for example, the secret development of military weapons, tanks, airplanes, naval ships, etc, and the creation of an illegal, shadow general staff for the military).
Those violations in turn were a significant and necessary part of the transformation of Germany into the powerful, totalitarian, mili
Re: (Score:2)
Your message about whistle blowing is lost on me, all I gather from your comment is we should have done a better job spying on Germany.
Who's "we"? A lot of German citizens died as a result of not knowing the secret policies of their own government.
Whew! (Score:3)
Seriously though, I'm tired of being told that it's OK for these people to be super super rich because of all the value they add and the risks they take, when $#@! like this keeps happening and they never once take a hit. I know it's how ruling classes work and all, but it still sucks...
Re:Whew! (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet, these people get to be super rich AND immune from any consequences for their mistakes and misdeeds, however the engineers working for them, who make middle-class salaries at best (and far less than doctors), are somehow expected to have "ethical standards" and are the first to be blamed when something goes wrong that was really because of a management decision.
GM Report for reeducation! (Score:3)
What, exactly just what the fuck are you doing putting Engineers on leave?
Corporate protocol demands that the guilty culprit must be either a Janitor, or a mailroom clerk!
Managers are to blame (Score:2, Insightful)
GM Cars are designed by a crack team of accountants not engineers that's why they generally suck. Did anyone question the penny pinchers that directed the engineers that they must save 0.20 cents on each ignition switch?
Nonsense (Score:2)
Making mid-production changes in parts without changing the part number -- at least the customer-visible part number -- is not unheard-of, it's common.
Re: (Score:2)
Making mid-production changes in parts without changing the part number -- at least the customer-visible part number -- is not unheard-of, it's common.
Its not merely common its 'frustratingly common'.
I've experienced this time and again ordering replacement parts for a variety of cars. Usually the differences don't matter. The replacement is shaped a bit different, improved in some way, or the material is slightly different, the item has been cost reduced in some way perhaps, or suppliers were changed, and
Re: (Score:2)
That's generally not a big deal unless its a trip part
trim part
Re: (Score:2)
It's prohibited in aerospace, where you have traceability back through the production process, but not unheard of in automotive. In electronics manufacturing, some changes are permitted. Here's Flextronics policy [flextronics.com] on component changes.
This could start a precedent... or some lawsuits (Score:3, Interesting)
I could see two potential outcomes, if blaming engineers for product flaws becomes commonplace...
First, engineers will (or should) demand an indemnity clause as part of their employment contract, where the company agrees not to blame them publicly for any product flaws, and/or take any action which would identify them. Depending on the repercussions for the test cases, this might become a necessity for employees.
Second, I could see some significant lawsuits for slander, since the company is causing real (and substantial, and more importantly provable) financial loss for the engineers they blame for product deficiencies. Unless they have a pretty solid intentional negligence defense, they could (and absolutely should) find themselves paying out a few million more to each engineer they throw under the metaphorical bus.
Companies are responsible for their products, not the people they employ to make/provide them. Companies reap the rewards when they work, and bear the responsibility when they don't. Absent malicious negligence, naming/blaming individual employees is irresponsible at best, and should absolutely expose the company to civil liability.
False equivalence. (Score:2)
"responsibility" -newspeak-blame little guy (Score:2)
Then I never want to work in a critical position that demands that I solve intractable problems. I think the real answer here is to quit overdoing the plumbing. Needed complexity is understandable. Needless complexity is stupid. Just because we can put the computer in control of everything doesn't mean we should.
NOT engineer's fault (Score:2, Informative)
Everyone is SO fscking focused on the engineers. Yes, I am one. Here's my view:
What about part inspection and quality control? That switch has a detent holding force spec. Does NOBODY inspect batches of switches? No random sample tests? Doesn't someone do a final check on the car? Someone sits in it and turns the key, right? Didn't anyone notice the detent force was lacking?
If the switch detent holding force is this critical, then _EVERY_ switch should have been tested. It would be trivial to make
That engineer's name? (Score:2)
Tyler Durden
There's one thing you can be sure of. (Score:2)
This is a self-serving move by GM.
Perhaps the engineers named are responsible for the deaths caused by the faulty switch. Perhaps they are not. We don't know. But we can be certain that GM is naming these engineers in the hope that the public will blame and vilify them instead of the company.
This is an attempt to evade corporate responsibility disguised as an act of transparency. Even if the engineers bear some responsibility for the faulty design reaching production vehicles, it should be impossible for t
we already do (Score:2)
"The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?""
Two words for you: "git blame".
The story stinks (Score:2)
The design would need to go through several stages before it reaches the car. Changes in a part require changes in the parts production. Can one or two engineers engineer authorize that? Me thinks not.
And publishing the names of the engineers just show how spineless the management are.
I sm
Its really up to NASA to decide (Score:2)
Yeah, I've seen this before (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Management gets credit for rooting out the evil engineers and probably gets a bonus.
Re: (Score:2)
Ironically, NASA has almost certainly killed more people with the space shuttle than have died due to ignition switches.
I haven't the slightest idea why they're going to NASA of all places for an engineering audit, whenever there's a shuttle accident it's always transpired that NASA has intractable compliance and engineering culture problems, and lack the capacity to properly validate a tricycle for safety, let alone a mass-produced motor vehicle. Their incompetence has literally cost the US a manned spac
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Could be an internal change that people on the line would never notice. A stiffer spring perhaps.
Part numbering is a complex issue. GM might probably has an engineering policy in place for identifying part modifications. Not necessarily the part number, but a revision code. [Part numbers usually denote form, fit and function. If one of these changes, so does the part number. If two parts are interchangeable, they often get the same part number but a unique revision code.] Circumventing company policy usual
Re: (Score:2)