On HN its always big bad management who is the cause of every security problem or shoddy piece of engineering. If only that pesky management would screw off then we could do things "properly". You'd be suprieed at how many incompetent engineers there are out there. If "engineer" Alice in your story was actually competent they would never agree to implement the proposed "fix". Its not a fix. To pass it off as one woul…
And I might add: especially at big companies where being yes men is a higher valued characteristic than being technical
Oh, so much this.
"I'm sick of you bringing me problems, bring me solutions! And I want that blockchain based big-data cloud IoT solution by the end of the week!"
Having been involved in meetings where "stop ship" was the phrase of the day, I'd bet money that the following at least vaguely resembles a real conversation: Engineer Alice: We should really fix this properly. Manager: How sure are you that the proper fix won't break something else for $BIG_CUSTOMERS who are responsible for $OBSCENE percent of this product line's revenue? Engineer Bob: Uh, ten percent on a good day?…
On HN its always big bad management who is the cause of every security problem or shoddy piece of engineering. If only that pesky management would screw off then we could do things "properly". You'd be suprieed at how many incompetent engineers there are out there. If "engineer" Alice in your story was actually competent they would never agree to implement the proposed "fix". Its not a fix. To pass it off as one woul…
There are plenty of poor engineers, but this “fix” has to go through a process defined and enforced by managers. In a good process, multiple engineers would review the code, and if the office culture is good, then objections will be brought up and listened to, and if a fix is insufficient, management will understand and assign resources to make it right. None of those things depend on any one engineer or manager. They’re a culture issue. But the only people with the power to fix a broken culture is management. Engineer Alice doesn’t have that power herself.
On HN its always big bad management who is the cause of every security problem or shoddy piece of engineering. If only that pesky management would screw off then we could do things "properly". You'd be suprieed at how many incompetent engineers there are out there. If "engineer" Alice in your story was actually competent they would never agree to implement the proposed "fix". Its not a fix. To pass it off as one woul…
There are plenty of poor engineers, but this “fix” has to go through a process defined and enforced by managers. In a good process, multiple engineers would review the code, and if the office culture is good, then objections will be brought up and listened to, and if a fix is insufficient, management will understand and assign resources to make it right. None of those things depend on any one engineer or manager. The…
In large orgs there would also be some kind of security team which would have input on the CVEs. Cisco does have them. It sounds like they were not involved at all here for some reason.
On HN its always big bad management who is the cause of every security problem or shoddy piece of engineering. If only that pesky management would screw off then we could do things "properly". You'd be suprieed at how many incompetent engineers there are out there. If "engineer" Alice in your story was actually competent they would never agree to implement the proposed "fix". Its not a fix. To pass it off as one woul…
"Engineer" conveys image of middle class white-collar job with relatively high status, good education and responsibilities. That word now used for everyone doing programming related jobs inside office space for no good reason. I think the word "tehnician" should be used to describe most grey-collar ICT jobs, including most programmers. Their responsibility and scope of their work is limited. Many programming jobs are…
Thankfully there are countries where Engineer is still a proper word, not something that you are allowed to call yourself after a 6 month bootcamp.
You live in a nice world, because usually the actual power (and duty) of a dev team member is to advise, not to agree or refuse.
You can always quit. Or force them to fire you for refusing to implement a non fix. In reality though I doubt this narrative even occurred. Some incompetent engineer likely proposed this fix thinking that it was actually a fix. Edit: I see I've been downvoted for this comment. If we were real engineers working on things like cars and bridges we'd actually be held accountable. Take some pride in your work people, this…
Quitting assumes the possibility of finding a job around the corner and not having people that depend on you.
Meanwhile the US goes around telling other countries not to use Huawei because they can't guarantee security. [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/02/19/huawei-fo...
There can be more than one company that's a security risk.
"Engineer" conveys image of middle class white-collar job with relatively high status, good education and responsibilities. That word now used for everyone doing programming related jobs inside office space for no good reason. I think the word "tehnician" should be used to describe most grey-collar ICT jobs, including most programmers. Their responsibility and scope of their work is limited. Many programming jobs are…
Thankfully there are countries where Engineer is still a proper word, not something that you are allowed to call yourself after a 6 month bootcamp.
And still others have, though it may not be appreciated in all industries, _Chartered_ Engineers.
"Engineer" conveys image of middle class white-collar job with relatively high status, good education and responsibilities. That word now used for everyone doing programming related jobs inside office space for no good reason. I think the word "tehnician" should be used to describe most grey-collar ICT jobs, including most programmers. Their responsibility and scope of their work is limited. Many programming jobs are…
Thankfully there are countries where Engineer is still a proper word, not something that you are allowed to call yourself after a 6 month bootcamp.
Yup, in the UK it bugs me when I keep meeting people who introduce themselves as an 'engineer'. When I ask them if they do mechanical or civil engineering, then I usually get to say "ah, so you're a programmer, just like me".
One thing I did sometimes like about being in Austria is the obsession with academic titles they have there... if somebody is a qualified engineer, they invariably use "Ing" as a title in place of "Mr" or "Ms"; people with two doctorates (not uncommon) really do call themselves Dr Dr So-and-so.
On HN its always big bad management who is the cause of every security problem or shoddy piece of engineering. If only that pesky management would screw off then we could do things "properly". You'd be suprieed at how many incompetent engineers there are out there. If "engineer" Alice in your story was actually competent they would never agree to implement the proposed "fix". Its not a fix. To pass it off as one woul…
"Engineer" conveys image of middle class white-collar job with relatively high status, good education and responsibilities. That word now used for everyone doing programming related jobs inside office space for no good reason. I think the word "tehnician" should be used to describe most grey-collar ICT jobs, including most programmers. Their responsibility and scope of their work is limited. Many programming jobs are…
Yup. The reality of this industry is that most programmers are closer to the handymen you call to fix your faucet or lay floor tiles than to actual engineers. And we all have first-hand or second-hand horror stories related to handymen.