VW engineer sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case • Hacker News Board

Re: VW engineer sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case

#131

Post by goldesel » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 1:53 AM UTC

germanier wrote: post #93

Tomte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German government doesn't control the prosecution. Especially not because it's not a federal investigation. Criminal matters are state matters, with very few exceptions. And to counter your next try: No, the government of Lower Saxony does not control the prosecution either.

Last time I checked the prosecution was bound by instructions (§ 147 GVG), in this case by the government of Lower Saxony. Of course there are some limits to this and I'm not saying anything like that happened here.

Additional fun fact: The state of Lower Saxony owns 20% of Volkswagen AG (https://www.mf.niedersachsen.de/themen/beteiligungen/volkswa...)

Re: VW engineer sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case

#132

Post by greymeister » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

tnzn wrote: post #130

greymeister wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Milgram experiment[0] indicates you'd be willing to do it whether you were desperate or not if you see your employer as an authority figure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Results

The Milgram experiment can't really apply to random people you know nothing about in random situations you've barely described though.

I clarified that it applied when you see the person as an authority figure as it pertains to obedience of said authority figure. Your comment is completely spurious.

Re: VW engineer sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case

#133

Post by SZJX » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 9:23 AM UTC

The problem I find with the whole episode is that it would be incredibly naive to think that only VW cheats the emission tests (as apparently also evidenced by the recent news that Fiat Chrysler also did it, with likely many other carmakers doing it as well. There was also news about Samsung cheating the emission tests on their electronic products, but that made no splash whatsoever). Though all the provisions for fining VW and sentencing those guys are theoretically sound in legal terms, I can't help but feel it highly political, just like the EU's crackdown and fines on Google, Microsoft etc. There's basically an implicit trade war and accompanying trade protectionism going on.

Re: VW engineer sentenced to 40-month prison term in diesel case

#134

Post by w_t_payne » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #53

w_t_payne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be an order on high. The engineering management team is pretty good at making sure that such orders are almost never given explicitly. If they absolutely must to be given explicitly, then they are never ever given in writing. Most of the time, though, they don't need to be. All you need to do is to create a culture where even the smallest failure is not acceptable, where employees are regularly abu…

What you describe is true and makes it harder to prosecute the management. That does not excuse individual engineers for effectively their own decisions. Leaving such company or not having much career is ethically much higher then participating at fraud. And engineers do such decisions and earn less money because they did such decisions. Another contributing factor is larger culture that treats such people as losers…

Thankfully, the company that I work for now is entirely different: my colleagues are a truly exemplary bunch of people, and working with them is a joy.