While I certainly don't support the 'rogue engineer' excuse that VW originally gave everyone, the idea does bring up an interesting point. An engineer did write this code. Almost certainly, many of them, working together. Now, their managers told them it was okay to do this, maybe that legal had given the go-ahead or that they had to do it to keep their jobs... But it's still pretty clear that this was not right. The…
This is basically the independent contractor on the death star issue. It boils down to the fact that they are morally responsible because they do the work and take the money fully aware of the end result of their work.