5 ms·

> The secret was kept for so long. How many programmers were involved with the relevant code? How many project managers signed off on it? Surely VW does its own

> The secret was kept for so long. How many programmers were involved with the relevant code? How many project managers signed off on it? Surely VW does its own emissions testing internally so some of them must have known. How high up in management did this go? It seems like it must have been quite a few. Amazing that none of them got mad and told someone outside the company. We should not be surprised; we need to learn to expect it and manage that risk. Institutions of all types have long histories of such conspiracies to cover illicit activity. Think of the many recent financial industry scandals, the Catholic Church (and Penn State University) covering widespread rape of children, various military scandals, US government spying on citizens, IT companies spying on their users, performance enhancing drugs in baseball ... in fact we should be surprised when someone steps forward. The #1 rule of any institution is loyalty. Rape will be covered for; blowing the whistle is a mortal sin. It shouldn't be that way but we can't deal with these problems until we accept that it's human nature, at least in certain situations. EDIT: I don't mean to preach. A certain part of me is always surprised too.

harryh 11y ago
You are clearly correct and you're probably right that I underestimate the power of loyalty. Just something in my lizard brain remains surprised. Defect in my circuitry I suppose.
notvladputin 11y ago
The used of PEDs in baseball was a well known issue dating back to the 1980s. Players, front office types, writers, and anyone in the public paying attention knew about it. I can't comment on the other items, but it's pretty clear that everyone knew about PEDs but just didn't care enough to ban them. (That said, my personal opinion is that steroid testing done in baseball is much more about using the issue as a wedge to weaken the MLB Players Association, rather than "fixing" the game.)
- hackuser 11y ago
  I don't agree: Back then I was a very knowledgable baseball fan (I probably could have named almost every player on every team) and I didn't know. I heard occasional rumors but nothing more persuasive than that, and nothing at all which indicated, in any convincing way, how widespread it was. When Jose Conseco talked about it, he was ridiculed as a nutcase and shunned (as expected; see my comment above about loyalty). I remember when home runs and offense increased dramatically, to record levels, and everyone was saying that the ball was juiced - nobody suspected it was the players who were juiced.
  - notvladputin 11y ago
    In 1991, the commissioner tried to institute a policy banning steroids. He didn't have the authority, so it was no different than if I tried to write that. But it's a clear indication that MLB was aware of the steroid problem and tried taking a small step to fix it. Regarding the "players being juiced", it's never been shown that juiced players performed better. There have been a number of studies comparing players who were caught using PEDs, before and after, comparing to clean players, etc. None of them show any indication that taking steroids helped players perform better on the field. If you look at the power-on-contact or ISO of players across periods (the 90s, 00s, current game), you find that there is just as much power on contact in the game now as before. The different is strikeouts, which is clearly tied to strike zone enforcement and some other tradeoffs hitters are making now that teams understand strikeouts are fine if you have power. I apologize if my tone has some frustration in it, but my pet peeve is people saying that steroids = strength = McGwire hit ball far. The reality is far more nuanced, and if you are able to come into the analyses without preconceived conclusions, it's pretty clear that the 'steroid slugger' era happened to overlap with the power era, but it does not appear to have driven the higher rate of home runs and offense during the time.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      I don't know about studies, but the evidence is strong. Let's look at home runs: * Since 1920 [1], excluding the PED era, only twice have players hit 60 or more home runs in a season and both barely passed the threshold: Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927 and Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961. * In the 4 years from 1998 to 2001, the feat was accomplished 6 times by 3 different players (2 very strongly associated with PEDs, the other widely supsected of it), many blowing away the former threshold, hitting 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, and 63 home runs. * Since PEDs were banned in baseball, only one player has hit more than 55 home runs in a season. [1] 1920 is when hitters embraced the modern strategy of trying to hit home runs, led by innovator Babe Ruth. Before that, a period called the 'Dead Ball Era', they generally just tried to get any hit they could and home runs were much more rare. Also, there were technological and rule changes which may have facillitated home run hitting. Before 1919 players regularly led the league with 10-15 home runs; in 1919 Ruth hit 29, a record at the time and more than most entire teams hit; in 1920 he hit 54.
baakss 11y ago
I would call it a fear issue more so than loyalty. I would be willing to bet not a lot of people knew to begin with, and the few that were told or stumbled upon it didn't want to make it into a big deal for fear of getting caught up in a problem. In the past, when I've seen a situation like this, one person in middle to middle-upper management made the call, and seriously only 1, maybe 2 devs were involved. If those devs said anything, it was usually a halfhearted attempt to escalate the risk, and was ignored as "well, that manager must have some reason" or "That's too hot of an issue." I know, it's a crappy mentality, but most people don't want to get caught up in a big ethics issue at work. It's extremely risky for the person escalating. As far as how only a couple people might know this even happened, corporate codebases are sometimes a total mess. There usually aren't things like code reviews. Project managers sometimes have absolutely no idea what the project actually is or what the requirements are. Devs often work in a bubble with shoddy requirements worked out by managers in the business and/or IT management. Not every company works this way, but I've seen three like this where the SDLC was miserably flawed.

harryh 11y ago

You are clearly correct and you're probably right that I underestimate the power of loyalty. Just something in my lizard brain remains surprised. Defect in my circuitry I suppose.

notvladputin 11y ago

The used of PEDs in baseball was a well known issue dating back to the 1980s. Players, front office types, writers, and anyone in the public paying attention knew about it. I can't comment on the other items, but it's pretty clear that everyone knew about PEDs but just didn't care enough to ban them. (That said, my personal opinion is that steroid testing done in baseball is much more about using the issue as a wedge to weaken the MLB Players Association, rather than "fixing" the game.)

hackuser 11y ago
I don't agree: Back then I was a very knowledgable baseball fan (I probably could have named almost every player on every team) and I didn't know. I heard occasional rumors but nothing more persuasive than that, and nothing at all which indicated, in any convincing way, how widespread it was. When Jose Conseco talked about it, he was ridiculed as a nutcase and shunned (as expected; see my comment above about loyalty). I remember when home runs and offense increased dramatically, to record levels, and everyone was saying that the ball was juiced - nobody suspected it was the players who were juiced.
- notvladputin 11y ago
  In 1991, the commissioner tried to institute a policy banning steroids. He didn't have the authority, so it was no different than if I tried to write that. But it's a clear indication that MLB was aware of the steroid problem and tried taking a small step to fix it. Regarding the "players being juiced", it's never been shown that juiced players performed better. There have been a number of studies comparing players who were caught using PEDs, before and after, comparing to clean players, etc. None of them show any indication that taking steroids helped players perform better on the field. If you look at the power-on-contact or ISO of players across periods (the 90s, 00s, current game), you find that there is just as much power on contact in the game now as before. The different is strikeouts, which is clearly tied to strike zone enforcement and some other tradeoffs hitters are making now that teams understand strikeouts are fine if you have power. I apologize if my tone has some frustration in it, but my pet peeve is people saying that steroids = strength = McGwire hit ball far. The reality is far more nuanced, and if you are able to come into the analyses without preconceived conclusions, it's pretty clear that the 'steroid slugger' era happened to overlap with the power era, but it does not appear to have driven the higher rate of home runs and offense during the time.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    I don't know about studies, but the evidence is strong. Let's look at home runs: * Since 1920 [1], excluding the PED era, only twice have players hit 60 or more home runs in a season and both barely passed the threshold: Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927 and Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961. * In the 4 years from 1998 to 2001, the feat was accomplished 6 times by 3 different players (2 very strongly associated with PEDs, the other widely supsected of it), many blowing away the former threshold, hitting 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, and 63 home runs. * Since PEDs were banned in baseball, only one player has hit more than 55 home runs in a season. [1] 1920 is when hitters embraced the modern strategy of trying to hit home runs, led by innovator Babe Ruth. Before that, a period called the 'Dead Ball Era', they generally just tried to get any hit they could and home runs were much more rare. Also, there were technological and rule changes which may have facillitated home run hitting. Before 1919 players regularly led the league with 10-15 home runs; in 1919 Ruth hit 29, a record at the time and more than most entire teams hit; in 1920 he hit 54.

baakss 11y ago

I would call it a fear issue more so than loyalty. I would be willing to bet not a lot of people knew to begin with, and the few that were told or stumbled upon it didn't want to make it into a big deal for fear of getting caught up in a problem. In the past, when I've seen a situation like this, one person in middle to middle-upper management made the call, and seriously only 1, maybe 2 devs were involved. If those devs said anything, it was usually a halfhearted attempt to escalate the risk, and was ignored as "well, that manager must have some reason" or "That's too hot of an issue." I know, it's a crappy mentality, but most people don't want to get caught up in a big ethics issue at work. It's extremely risky for the person escalating. As far as how only a couple people might know this even happened, corporate codebases are sometimes a total mess. There usually aren't things like code reviews. Project managers sometimes have absolutely no idea what the project actually is or what the requirements are. Devs often work in a bubble with shoddy requirements worked out by managers in the business and/or IT management. Not every company works this way, but I've seen three like this where the SDLC was miserably flawed.