111–120 of 156 posts
Yes, the engineer deserves to go to prison because he pulled the trigger. But his boss deserves just as much if not more prison time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 2008 financial crisis destroyed millions of hard workings people's retirement savings, jobs, and recent college graduates hopes of finding a job. No one went to jail over that. This is clearly a case of someone not having the right lawyers and political connections as engineers are people who actually create value as is often the case they can be successful without those two.
Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he lied about his work, and none else caught it, it brings up other questions about the integrity of VW vehicles. e.g. How valid are their safety testing results (could someone in the org have submitted vehicles for crash tests that weren't representative of the production config?)
Yes - maybe engineer doing air-bags is doing the same. And also brakes... so on. These engineers are not to be trusted: we need more management oversight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure. I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "…
> Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain Even with a slam dunk, prosecutors usually prefer a plea bargain. They have limited budgets, trials are expensive, and if you can get a guilty plea with an agreement on an acceptable sentence and get the defendant and a judge to sign off without the time and expense of a trial, that's a big win. (And, if they were likely to lose at trial, its also a big…
This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise…
It is hard to imagine that a large number of reasonable tech and business people would do it that blatantly for so long. After all it isn't Mafia nor government nor banks. I wonder whether it was done as some temporary "fix" back then, just to meet schedule/KPIs/etc., which just naturally became a "feature".
The way I see it, they probably did it somewhat incrementally. To some degree, they've ALWAYS programmed the ECUs "to the test", because isn't that basically what the authorities want? A system that meets standards X, Y, and Z, as verified by a test of X, Y, and Z? What got them into trouble was the fact that ECUs became more and more sophisticated, allowing them to gradually isolate X, Y, and Z into ever-shrinking "…
Really, the engineer is the fall guy. Yes he's at fault but what kind of QA system does a billion dollar car company have that one person carried on a sham for decades. No way he was alone! Top management needs to be grilled on what really happened. At the very least the VP of the division that manged the emission controls for the company needs to be charged with some felony. I bet that If he would have said somethin…
Note that this is also an American employee, and there is certainly still blame to assign at the head offices in Germany, to both technical employees and upper management. Figure I might as well ask it here: how does it happen in Germany? If you go on reddit, you get inundated every day with tales of how strong their unions and labor protections are, and how seriously they take professional ethics and accreditation.…
I can't speak for Germany, but managers in large companies in general view EVERYTHING as a check box. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter how it's achieved, it doesn't matter if you're lying - if the box gets ticked then you've done your job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.
You can't be serious? Are you!? please tell me that you have a source.