VW engineering executive sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case

It doesn't work like that in the real world. These laws only nab the lower-rung staff in the unfortunate position of unavoidably leaving tracks while implementing the directives from higher management. Directives are given in abstracted form, and clarifications are passed out in untraceable means, typically verbal conversations, and even then the clarification is very rarely spelled out in black and white, and more often expressed as a gruff "do whatever it takes" command.

A soft, low-level form of how this plays out in the US that many can relate to: salaried employees officially are supposed to only work 40 hours a week. It is commonplace for many organizations to abuse that, but nowhere in official, litigable forms will you ever see a manager telling an employee they must work more than 40 hours.

Finally, above a certain level, employees who try to play CYA games with emails and/or written letters will find themselves frozen out by management. It isn't like this everywhere, but it is common enough that I see it happen in some of my client accounts where I consult at; fortunately, I'm not the adversely-affected party, but I feel for the many permanent staff who I see subjected to this anti-pattern.

If you really want to put a dent in this, then lobbying for allowing single-party recording to bring evidence of malfeasance to law enforcement might be a start.

The biggest sources of pressure were offsite and in another country, which made "managing up" a very fiddly and tricky proposition.

We did have some problematic leadership on-site though. Our sales director, formerly a sidekick for the UK's equivalent of Donald Trump, and who had exactly the sort of relationship with the truth as you might expect, was responsible for much of the misinformation that made the situation difficult in the first place. A big chunk of the pressure was in order to make good on the lies that he had told - that sort of dishonest leadership can have insidious, widespread and lasting harmful effects.

He did try overt bullying with me once, but I was able to pull him aside after the meeting where he had tried to single me out and told him that he should either fire me or back off and let me do my job rather than trying to humiliate me in front of my peers. He backed off, at least overtly, but continued trying to undermine the authority of everybody around him. Eventually he got kicked out (after a conflict with another more experienced manager lead to mediation and all sorts of protracted HR stuff).

Another manager (the one who turned green) I had a lot more respect for. Even so, she tipped the scales of some key technical decisions by sending stakeholders overseas on a wild-goose chase at short notice so she could stuff the relevant meeting with people who would support the decision that she wanted. A dirty trick, and very hard to counter from hundreds of miles away.

My proudest moment was when I gently reminded one of our project managers of his ethical responsibilities -- that as a professional he had a duty to protect our customers as much as a duty to serve his employer. I feel that that was an inflection point in our relationship with one of our customers -- which until that time had been characterised primarily by deceit and dissembling, and which subsequently became incrementally more open and honest.

That whole period was not good for my health or for my marriage. I was away from home from 6am 'tll 11pm most days, and away in Germany on the occasional wild-goose-chase for weeks at a time -- leaving my wife alone to juggle her own full time job, and look after our two small children. (I was a terrible husband and father for sticking with that job for as long as I did, and I am tremendously lucky and privileged that she stuck with me through that period).

Anyway, I am very happy to be out of that particular corner of the automotive industry and now working for a company that could not be more different and more supportive.