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The rest of the commenters are quick to dismiss this article as presenting scapegoats, but I'm very keen to see more in-depth investigation about how this was o
by akamaka 11y ago
The rest of the commenters are quick to dismiss this article as presenting scapegoats, but I'm very keen to see more in-depth investigation about how this was orchestrated.
There are a lot of different ways that this type of cheating can develop over time, and simply saying "lots of people knew must have known about this" isn't very satisfying to me.
There are plenty of ways that upper management can stay in the dark. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, BP didn't make the decisions that lead to the blowout, but created excessive pressure for cost-cutting. In the case of Barings Bank, the managers were genuinely unaware of the rogue trader's fraud, but allowed him to bypass internal controls.
There are important lessons that will come out of the VW case and I'm very interested to learn them. The dismissiveness of the comments here is really disappointing, on the other hand.
- 5h 11y agoI wonder how differently the reaction here would be if the title/article didn't call them Engineers.
- electricblue 11y ago"we didn't know" is curiously not an excuse you can use in any other facet of human life except to exculpate rich people
- ppod 11y agoIn what other facet of human life would you be held responsible for something you had no knowledge of?
- x3n0ph3n3 11y agoTypically ignorance of the law is not an excuse when found disobeying it, and there are more laws than any reasonable person can know.
- vonmoltke 11y agoTO both x3n0ph3n3 and mkaziz: Knowledge of the act, not knowledge of the law. There are very few contexts in which you can be punished for not knowing an illegal act took place, and they are all situations where you should have known but were negligent.
- 001sky 11y agonegligence casts a very wide remit, but applies mostly to professionals (ie, credentialed staff). general executives are granted considerable leeway with respect to negligence in many context it would appear through things like the 'business judgement rule', where bein incompetent is a legitimate excuse and not presumtive negligence. INAL but just throwing this out there for discussion to see some other sides of the issue.
- mkaziz 11y agoThe Selective Service frequently reminds me that ignorance of the law is no excuse to break the law.
- ppod 11y agoAs mentioned above, this case involves ignorance of the action, not ignorance of the law.
- Gibbon1 11y agoThere is the fiduciary duty aspect in play here. If a the employee of a business does something criminal while conduction the companies business, then it's possible that the owners are victims as well. However if they willfully created incentives and benefited from said criminal actions, it's hard to how they are not perpetrators themselves.
- rodgerd 11y agoTry telling your accountant "I want to pay less tax and I don't care how you do it." When you're audited, have fun claiming you didn't know that you were committing tax evasion. Try buying something for a ridiculously low price down the pub. When the police come to take the stolen goods away, try claiming you didn't realise something selling for a tenth of its value was stolen.
- Pinckney 11y agoIn warfare. A commander can be criminally liable for failing to prevent criminal actions by their subordinates. Most famously, Tomoyuki Yamashita. Or from the prosecution brief during Ernest Medina's trial: >'When troops commit massacres and atrocities against the civilian population of occupied territory or against prisoners of war, the responsibility may rest not only with the actual perpetrators but also with the commander. Such a responsibility arises directly when the acts in question have been committed in pursuance of an order of the commander concerned. The commander is also responsible if he has actual knowledge, or should have knowledge, through reports received by h'un or through other means, that troops or other persons subject to his control are about to commit or have committed a war crime and he fails to take the necessary and reasonable steps to insure compliance with the law of war or to punish violators thereof.'
- x0ra 11y agoahem... abu ghraib... ahem...
- URSpider94 11y agoAs a parent, you can be held liable for crimes that your children commit.
- x0x0 11y agoWell, I believe that there will obviously be an effort to scapegoat some low level suckers, and, as such, the whole effort is garbage. The basic principle is liar's reports are worthless. When reporters want to create a particular outcome (no executives should do hard time), what you end up with is fundamentally dishonest. And since we have reasonable doubts about the integrity of the investigation -- it's being performed by employees of the original deceivers -- the whole thing is garbage. You can't take it and unshade it a little bit; people who have proved their untrustworthiness simply cannot be trusted. Not just a little bit; not at all. ps -- what constitutes a believable report? One done by criminal investigative services belonging to a country where the government doesn't own a major stake in the company being investigated.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y agoNeither of the people mentioned are low level suckers.
- x0x0 11y agothey're not the ceo and/or board, are they?
- rqebmm 11y agoThe CEO was already fired.
- venomsnake 11y agoMy lifelong career goal is to become CEO and get fired with a golden parachute.
- x0x0 11y agowhat on earth does that have to do with assessing culpability?
- jpdus 11y agoThey are (/were). Not on the executive board of the Volkswagen Group, but on the executive board of the VW/Audi/Porsche brands.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- croon 11y ago>There are plenty of ways that upper management can stay in the dark. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, BP didn't make the decisions that lead to the blowout, but created excessive pressure for cost-cutting. In the case of Barings Bank, the managers were genuinely unaware of the rogue trader's fraud, but allowed him to bypass internal controls. I read this as an exec saying: "Just get it done. I don't care how it's done, and I don't want to know how it's done, just do it." May have watched too many movies, but whatever is more plausible is usually correct.
- HCIdivision17 11y agoAs an engineer who worked in a couple plants and focused on QC and the like, I damn near have an allergic reaction when any level of management says something like that. I immediately assumed that sort of conversation took place, and it's a strong signal something unethical is afoot - or at least a call for something unethical. ("I'm not saying you should ignore the samples, but sometimes you get different results if you test again, you know?")
- bitJericho 11y agoNo kidding. And what a lot of people are missing is if the choice was to either cheat or walk, they should have walked.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago>There are plenty of ways that upper management can stay in the dark. If they knew about it, they were wrong. If the didn't know about it, they were derelict/incompetent in their duty to supervise, AKA, wrong. > In the case of Deepwater Horizon, BP didn't make the decisions that lead to the blowout, but created excessive pressure for cost-cutting. Oil drilling operations are very much different from any other company structure/hierarchy you are probably familiar with. BP's "Company Man" (Jobsite supervisor) made those decisions and BP gets to own the consequences. BP also made a lot of other poor decisions along the way, and afterward, which are also their responsibility. None of the parties comes out of the DWH disaster looking good, but BP gets primary responsibility, and they earned it.
- scott_s 11y agoI think you're approaching this from a justice angle: who is responsible, who should pay. I think akamaka is approaching this from a system perspective: what enabled this to happen, what can we change to avoid it?
- ecdavis 11y agoIt seems like the majority of people saying these are scapegoats didn't read the article that closely. It clearly says these two engineers were top aides to the former CEO. Regulator's aren't stupid enough to be fooled by a couple of junior engineers being offered up as a sacrifice. They'll definitely go after the highest-level people they can get.
- jandrese 11y agoA top aide to the CEO sounds like exactly the kind of person who would be the fall guy in a scandal like this. Important enough for the regulators to be happy, but not someone who has actual power in the company.
- ecdavis 11y ago> not someone who has actual power in the company. Two men are named in the article. One is on the Audi board of management. The other is on the Porsche board of management. I understand where the cynicism comes from, I really do, but it's exhausting to wade through all the uninformed naysaying in this discussion. The above information took me less than a minute to find.
- robbiep 11y agoThe ceo has already fallen on his sword at volkswagon
- petra 11y agoNot really. In a case like this people will likely go to jail, so resigning isn't a big deal.
- yAnonymous 11y ago* resigning with a 30 million payout
- jandrese 11y agoI thought he just deployed his golden parachute before the shit hit the fan?
- CrimsnBlade 11y agoThese engineers seemed to have gained quite a reputation for their work, and were thought to be very valuable to VW. It's possible that the "lots of people" that should have known about the software simply trusted these engineers and their work to the extent that they didn't bother to inspect the software for flaws as closely as they should have. I can't imagine something this important not having to go through multiple people for inspection. So of those people that are saying they "don't know", though it may be true, for some of them it was their job to know, I think that should (and probably is) being taken into account in the investigations.
- mercurial 11y agoThe rest of the commenters display the same corporatist mentality they usually complain about in other professional groups.