...and monkeys might fly out of my butt. :-D
Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
71–80 of 259 posts
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably a little reactionary, but can we just stop for a second and admire the difference in American CEO's versus his European counterpart? The latter resigns immediately as a way of accepting he is ultimately responsible, the former points fingers. This is a blatant example of why the tide of opinion is turning against those with the most wealth.
Agreed. However I do feel that the European CEO got off easy by simply being able to walk away.
That chapter may not be over.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. However I do feel that the European CEO got off easy by simply being able to walk away.
AFAIK the German government is still investigating the issue. He may have walked away, but that's not necessarily the end of the story.
The Staatsanwaltschaft Braunschweig is leading the criminal investigation and they said specifically that they are not after Martin Winterkorn, the press reports.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, it implies a couple of engineers could slip through arbitrary code to be executed under selective conditions. That's terrifying.
The code might even have been outsourced. I'm not trying to disparage outsourced developers, I know what I might do if the user story was something like "Needs to pass emissions when attached to test system."
In that case it would probably be "The system shall pass all emissions tests"
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engineers aren't solely responsible, but... Did you software guys not take engineering ethics classes? You have a responsibility to society to consider health and safety of the public, even if it means losing your job.
Most 'software guys' have academic backgrounds in computer science, which typically doesn't include anything like engineering ethics. An outright 'Software Engineering' degree might include something like that, but it's definitely emphasized far less than it would be in something like mechanical or civil engineering.
My undergraduate curriculum in Computer Science had a "Professionalism in Computing" course where we discussed ethics. It is still a requirement: http://www.cs.vt.edu/undergraduate/courses/CS3604
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#76Yeah, an intern did this in his spare 20% time.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/volkswagen-em...
#enron #pinto #oilspill
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperbole much ? When a soldier is ordered to torture - its clearly wrong to do so. Its a question of human ethic. Is it the responsibility of the software engineer to know the exact level of NO_2 0.001 or 0002 that he should be coded into their product ? Also a software engineer doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is a whole testing regime. Why should the coder be solely responsible ?
Engineers aren't solely responsible, but... Did you software guys not take engineering ethics classes? You have a responsibility to society to consider health and safety of the public, even if it means losing your job.
Some schools require an ethic course and some do not for Computer Science degrees. I did at NCSU for my CS degree, but it's no where near universal.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because VW might have more motive to do this doesn't automatically mean that they're lying when they say it was the fault of individual engineers. Guilt is not determined by "who has the most motive", it's determined by who actually did it. Now it may very well be true that VW is lying and it was a corporate decision. But it's not completely implausible that this really was the decision of a few individual emplo…
"But it's not completely implausible that this really was the decision of a few individual employees." Oh, I fully believe it was the decision of a few individual employees. I just don't believe those individuals were the actual coders. Coders will code to the spec they are given; problems are far more likely to lie in the spec layer. It is possible it will turn out the coders should have known better. But it isn't e…
The article did say
> The German automaker has suspended 10 senior managers, including three top engineers, as part of its internal investigation.
So it could be a few engineers and their managers that colluded together on this.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
No way could it be just a couple of software engineers. The engine is a system, and its the engine that has to pass the emissions tests. So that means the whole engine development team had to be in on it, including their technical management. They in turn would not have done such a thing if they had not believed that senior management wanted it, and it is the responsibility of senior management to make it clear what…
When this CEO of a company with 600k employees says "it's some software engineers", I assume he might actually be honestly referring to what we would call engineering managers, perhaps with hundreds of indirect reports, 2-3 levels down from the CEO. I find this plausible... (Particularly since these hearings seem designed to score political points rather than to find out what actually happened.)
However plausible it may be, it is still not excusable.
The company should have processes in place that can verify the claims it makes. Plausible deniability is really just a claim of neglect.
Edit: I'm being rate-limited, so I'll respond to the points below right here:
>What processes should be in place, exactly, to do what?
How about driving a vehicle in the manner most of their customer's do and examining the emissions?
>Quarterly polygraph tests performed by all engineering managers
How would that help exactly? Polygraph is demonstrably unreliable.
>to assure top management they haven't broken any laws?
It's mostly irrelevant how assured top management is about anything. What matters, in this case, is how far out of spec the vehicles Volkswagon produced are. That is what needed to be verified: specs vs. facts.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
But also probably true, regardless of this specific situation.
From what I know of the car industry, coding standards are very low. I don't think any car companies would look good if their code was audited by professional software engineers in other fields.
Then you don't know the motor industry very much as it has very strict coding standards like ISO 26262, the code has to be audited internally and by certified 3rd parties with every release to meet the development cycle requirements of the standards.
http://www.ldra.com/en/software-quality-test-tools/group/by-...
The industry also has specific coding standard for every language that is used in embedded systems like MISRA-C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C
Today every thing you do with your car from using breaks to deploying air-bags is done through the computer, there's no way in hell that the motor industry would be releasing poor code "intentionally" because it would cost them billions in liabilities.