11 ms·

Saying the compliance department exists to make sure the company adheres to the law is like saying the HR department is there for employees. That is what they s

Saying the compliance department exists to make sure the company adheres to the law is like saying the HR department is there for employees. That is what they say, but in reality it's the other way around: Compliance acts to protect the company against the law. This has clearly failed at WV. Also the post assumes a big organisation operates as a whole. My experience is that management high up are either competent and evil, or ambitious and ignorant. That mix lends itself to all kinds of random organisational behaviour. I know nothing about WV, but I assume many people knew this but did not think too much of it (everyone cheats), thought it would help their career (hit that target), or wanted their company become the largest car manufacturer in the world.

hoorayimhelping 11y ago
Jesus, that is a cynical way to look at the people who work in an organization. Is any non engineer not evil or amoral in your worldview?
- meagain20000 11y ago
  Exhibit A: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714990 It is naive not to be cynical. You'll be taken advantage of otherwise.
- JorgeGT 11y ago
  Ratbert is not a bad guy.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Maarten88 11y ago
  Very few people really think of themselves as evil. But in my worldview most people (including engineers) cheat a little bit and then rationalize it so they don't have to feel bad about themselves. Big corporations and complex economical systems lend themselves very well for rationalizing your part in something evil away, especially for upper management. Watch this video. It changed my view on the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc p.s. It has been shown that the psychological profile of top-criminals and CEO's are remarkably alike.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > But in my worldview most people (including engineers) cheat a little bit and then rationalize it so they don't have to feel bad about themselves. So, if we assume that is 100% accurate then maybe a company the size of VW should have a department that checks up on these sneaky cheating engineers to make sure they don't expose the company to liability. The whole idea is that the company avoids - given the size of the penalties involved - to be caught cheating, especially not at this scale. Then there is the matter that the ethical rules for engineers specifically state that an engineer will never assist or cause a company they work for to break the law. (For some this sort of an oath may hold more strength than for others, but it must have been very clear to the people involved they were doing this to break the law and they would have definitely wanted at a minimum indemnification from higher ups about the possible consequences of this if they didn't actually blew the whistle internally.) This is the sort of thing that Germans tend to be big on and it is one of the reasons 'made in Germany' was seen as a source of trust and quality. VW management is throwing all these values under the bus as if 60 years of brand creation are utterly worthless.
    - bardworx 11y ago
      I don't know how VW gets audited but in US, when a company is audited by their accounting firm, one of the sections is a "Process Audit" - checking to make sure that regular business practices are followed. In a perfect world, audits would catch these things, however, because there is a lot of pressure on accounting firms, usually, this step isn't given a lot of consideration. In the event a company is caught, the accounting firm takes a hit on their reputation and have to go back, re-audit, and change their designation of company policy. Source: my wife works at one of the big 4 accounting firms and recently explained how an unrelated company had similar issues in failed business practices etc. etc.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        I think you hit the nail on the head with something that I've been wondering about for a while. I do audits (TDD) for a living and I actually take my job serious. I invest a lot of time into gathering all the information available on the company and try hard to figure out what the main issues facing a company are before I even go there. That means that when I go and look at a company I really look at it. This has two possible outcomes: the first is that the company is actually flattered that someone would take them - and their investors - serious enough to spend the time to make sure everything works and works well. They'll be proud to show someone that spent the time and effort to get to know their company and product how good they are at their jobs and how well their product is put together. If stuff surfaces that is not 'ok' they either know about it and have a plan of mitigation but simply not enough time or other resources and if they didn't know about it they're grateful for the sincere feedback and will fix things as soon as possible. The second possible outcome is that a lot of stuff surfaces that the people running the company may not even have been aware of and would rather not be aware of. This all in contrast to the same job being done by larger companies which tend to output super nice and glossy reports that are essentially 50% gray paper, there isn't anything you could do with a report like that except for pretending that you went through the motions of doing your job. My reports by contrast are usually 20% the size of the competition without any graphs or other distracting elements but are full of actionable advice and clear guide as to whether or not I believe the investment is a good one or not and why. This doesn't make me a whole lot of friends but the results are there and I stand by every word I write. For the life of me I can't imagine that VW with the budget they have and the amounts of money at stake would not give their compliance department the tools and the authority required to do their jobs. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone leaking a mail archive from VW internal correspondence (assuming evidence has not been destroyed, which would make them look even worse) or something to that effect. This goes way beyond a single arm of VW, it just isn't possible and if it is then it is (counter-intuitively) actually worse for VW because it may mean they are not compliant with a whole bunch of other laws as well. In that case essentially any VW vehicle would need to be re-certified for all aspects of a road worthiness certification because they have make it plain that their compliance departments are toothless paper tigers. And that might be a much worse path for VW than the one where they simply and openly admit to malice with respect to this one single aspect of their products.
- drcode 11y ago
  Saying that people look out for their own interests and are not always competent is one of the most salient and truthful properties of the human world.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Hytosys 11y ago
  OP is looking at people who direct and sustain a capitalist enterprise's internal processes. These people (managers, HR) are hired by the capitalists to optimize internally for profit. The only warm & fuzzy side-effects that these positions provide are the ones that don't get in the way of capital increasing. It's not even about these individuals being evil or not. I'm sure most of them are torn to pieces (before they become numb) when they make decisions against the wellbeing of the workforce. The point is that the managers would not be in these positions if they could not fulfill these roles — they would be replaced. These positions self-select for "evil." The people who optimize externally for profit focus not on squeezing the workforce, they focus on squeezing the public. These are the lawyers, the salespeople, the accountants, the marketers, the compliance experts. There's no point debating the evilness of the individuals, but their roles are necessarily evil. These roles tend to grow more and more evil as the capitalist enterprise grows. The enemy here, then, is capital, not these poor workers who fill necessary capitalist roles.
  - _yosefk 11y ago
    It's a good thing that states and state-owned enterprises always optimize for the well-being of their citizens and customers - after all, that's what they're supposed to do! It never happens that, being largely unaccountable, people working for the state and its enterprises act to maximize their own well-being and minimize their own effort at the expense of the citizens and customers. This is why the enemy is capital, not human nature. All you need is employ people in properly-named organizations with properly stated lofty goals (the constitution of Stalin-era USSR is a good source of inspiration), and none of their bad traits will ever rear their ugly heads!
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - ricksplat 11y ago
      So towards the end of your post, I began to get the impression the tongue was somewhere in the cheek. But up to that point I was thinking there was some good insight there. The dichotomy of business vs the state. The roles of each: A business to make money; the state to look after her citizens, and the ongoing struggle for dominance between each - firmly skewered by the citation of the USSR, where "it was tried before". Poor businesses fail, whereas a poorly run state will limp along, but at the end of the day it is the businesses that fail into the state, and if a business is badly run it is the state (and her constituents) that have to pick up the pieces.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Let's not exclude the customers and the public at large. Does any significant number of people really care about this? In my personal list of the 100 biggest problems in the world today, it's not really a contender.
  - a3n 11y ago
    November Volkswagen sales in the U.S. fall 24%. (vidoe, sorry, but the blurb under the video essentially says what the video says) http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/volkswagen-core-brands-sales-24-pct-lower-november-35710940 http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/volkswagen-cor... It may not be on the 100 biggest problem list, but it must be in people's minds, and there are lots of other brands to buy so it's an easy thing to do.
- bardworx 11y ago
  It's cynical, but true. A famous sports mantra is: "if you're not cheating, you're not trying". (Mark Grace, 1B, Chicago Cubs) Corp and individuals cheat all the time. However, in most cases, the cheating are little white lies. In Corp world, their big lies that stay high up - with intention of never seeing the light of day.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Isn't that quote itself just a false rationalisation - 'I cheat but so does everyone else so it's not immoral'. Personally I never got anything out of winning at sports per se. What gives me a buzz is performing in a way I can be proud of. Sport requires adherence to regulations to work, I follow Kant's (2nd?) imperative in that respect. (FWIW I'm fond of playing quite a few sports). People cheat, corporations don't as they are just virtual groupings of people.
    - bardworx 11y ago
      > Isn't that quote itself just a false rationalization - 'I cheat but so does everyone else so it's not immoral'. It could be - Here's a moral question: If you are an athlete who is attempting to get into the professional league...would you use performance enhancing drugs to "break in" if you had a small chance of getting caught? (I don't think this requires an answer - people internalize this differently and it could spur a discourse) > Personally I never got anything out of winning at sports per se. What gives me a buzz is performing in a way I can be proud of. I can think of some particular situations in sports (Hand of God - Maradona) when the stakes are high and you'll do anything to win. Technically, he didn't cheat, but he sure as hell didn't come forward either. > People cheat, corporations don't as they are just virtual groupings of people. You're right. What would you call a grouping of people with C-Level titles who "cheat" a cabal? Seems too ominous. I used corporation to describe the high level officials who profit most by cheating.
- Mvandenbergh 11y ago
  I've got bad news about the engineers as well...
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  It's not cynicism: it's the reality of a Compliance group in a regulated organization. I used to work in the FDA-regulated field of medical devices. Because of my job position, I had frequent interaction with our Regulatory Affairs people. They are extremely conservative. Their job, as he stated, is to protect the company's best interests by making sure the FDA doesn't shut us down. That may seem cynical, but enlightened self-interest works in everyone's favor here. If there is a perceived problem with a device, the first concern is going to be "is there a Patient Hazard?" because nothing will cause the FDA to show up unannounced faster than that. The engineers' job is to keep Regulatory Affairs happy; Regulatory Affairs's job is to keep the FDA happy; the FDA's job is to keep patients safe. If everyone does their assigned task, the end result is exactly as desired.
jacquesm 11y ago
> Saying the compliance department exists to make sure the company adheres to the law is like saying the HR department is there for employees. No, it is explicitly meant to convey the message that the compliance department exists to protect the company from liability. I will update the post to make this more clear.
- laotzu 11y ago
  Seems like you are saying the same thing, if the law is to be considered a liability.
MichaelMoser123 11y ago
Interesting that this gets posted at the end of the week when a significant percentage of the readership is stoned ...
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  Kind of early in the day for me, but you go ahead.
  - MichaelMoser123 11y ago
    Depends on the timezone. But you know, everything is relative...
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
The roughest problems are those that emerge in interfaces between individual tribes within an organization. Information loss can be very easy and very pernicious in those cases.

hoorayimhelping 11y ago

Jesus, that is a cynical way to look at the people who work in an organization. Is any non engineer not evil or amoral in your worldview?

meagain20000 11y ago
Exhibit A: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714990 It is naive not to be cynical. You'll be taken advantage of otherwise.
JorgeGT 11y ago
Ratbert is not a bad guy.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Maarten88 11y ago
Very few people really think of themselves as evil. But in my worldview most people (including engineers) cheat a little bit and then rationalize it so they don't have to feel bad about themselves. Big corporations and complex economical systems lend themselves very well for rationalizing your part in something evil away, especially for upper management. Watch this video. It changed my view on the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc p.s. It has been shown that the psychological profile of top-criminals and CEO's are remarkably alike.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > But in my worldview most people (including engineers) cheat a little bit and then rationalize it so they don't have to feel bad about themselves. So, if we assume that is 100% accurate then maybe a company the size of VW should have a department that checks up on these sneaky cheating engineers to make sure they don't expose the company to liability. The whole idea is that the company avoids - given the size of the penalties involved - to be caught cheating, especially not at this scale. Then there is the matter that the ethical rules for engineers specifically state that an engineer will never assist or cause a company they work for to break the law. (For some this sort of an oath may hold more strength than for others, but it must have been very clear to the people involved they were doing this to break the law and they would have definitely wanted at a minimum indemnification from higher ups about the possible consequences of this if they didn't actually blew the whistle internally.) This is the sort of thing that Germans tend to be big on and it is one of the reasons 'made in Germany' was seen as a source of trust and quality. VW management is throwing all these values under the bus as if 60 years of brand creation are utterly worthless.
  - bardworx 11y ago
    I don't know how VW gets audited but in US, when a company is audited by their accounting firm, one of the sections is a "Process Audit" - checking to make sure that regular business practices are followed. In a perfect world, audits would catch these things, however, because there is a lot of pressure on accounting firms, usually, this step isn't given a lot of consideration. In the event a company is caught, the accounting firm takes a hit on their reputation and have to go back, re-audit, and change their designation of company policy. Source: my wife works at one of the big 4 accounting firms and recently explained how an unrelated company had similar issues in failed business practices etc. etc.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head with something that I've been wondering about for a while. I do audits (TDD) for a living and I actually take my job serious. I invest a lot of time into gathering all the information available on the company and try hard to figure out what the main issues facing a company are before I even go there. That means that when I go and look at a company I really look at it. This has two possible outcomes: the first is that the company is actually flattered that someone would take them - and their investors - serious enough to spend the time to make sure everything works and works well. They'll be proud to show someone that spent the time and effort to get to know their company and product how good they are at their jobs and how well their product is put together. If stuff surfaces that is not 'ok' they either know about it and have a plan of mitigation but simply not enough time or other resources and if they didn't know about it they're grateful for the sincere feedback and will fix things as soon as possible. The second possible outcome is that a lot of stuff surfaces that the people running the company may not even have been aware of and would rather not be aware of. This all in contrast to the same job being done by larger companies which tend to output super nice and glossy reports that are essentially 50% gray paper, there isn't anything you could do with a report like that except for pretending that you went through the motions of doing your job. My reports by contrast are usually 20% the size of the competition without any graphs or other distracting elements but are full of actionable advice and clear guide as to whether or not I believe the investment is a good one or not and why. This doesn't make me a whole lot of friends but the results are there and I stand by every word I write. For the life of me I can't imagine that VW with the budget they have and the amounts of money at stake would not give their compliance department the tools and the authority required to do their jobs. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone leaking a mail archive from VW internal correspondence (assuming evidence has not been destroyed, which would make them look even worse) or something to that effect. This goes way beyond a single arm of VW, it just isn't possible and if it is then it is (counter-intuitively) actually worse for VW because it may mean they are not compliant with a whole bunch of other laws as well. In that case essentially any VW vehicle would need to be re-certified for all aspects of a road worthiness certification because they have make it plain that their compliance departments are toothless paper tigers. And that might be a much worse path for VW than the one where they simply and openly admit to malice with respect to this one single aspect of their products.
drcode 11y ago
Saying that people look out for their own interests and are not always competent is one of the most salient and truthful properties of the human world.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Hytosys 11y ago
OP is looking at people who direct and sustain a capitalist enterprise's internal processes. These people (managers, HR) are hired by the capitalists to optimize internally for profit. The only warm & fuzzy side-effects that these positions provide are the ones that don't get in the way of capital increasing. It's not even about these individuals being evil or not. I'm sure most of them are torn to pieces (before they become numb) when they make decisions against the wellbeing of the workforce. The point is that the managers would not be in these positions if they could not fulfill these roles — they would be replaced. These positions self-select for "evil." The people who optimize externally for profit focus not on squeezing the workforce, they focus on squeezing the public. These are the lawyers, the salespeople, the accountants, the marketers, the compliance experts. There's no point debating the evilness of the individuals, but their roles are necessarily evil. These roles tend to grow more and more evil as the capitalist enterprise grows. The enemy here, then, is capital, not these poor workers who fill necessary capitalist roles.
- _yosefk 11y ago
  It's a good thing that states and state-owned enterprises always optimize for the well-being of their citizens and customers - after all, that's what they're supposed to do! It never happens that, being largely unaccountable, people working for the state and its enterprises act to maximize their own well-being and minimize their own effort at the expense of the citizens and customers. This is why the enemy is capital, not human nature. All you need is employ people in properly-named organizations with properly stated lofty goals (the constitution of Stalin-era USSR is a good source of inspiration), and none of their bad traits will ever rear their ugly heads!
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ricksplat 11y ago
    So towards the end of your post, I began to get the impression the tongue was somewhere in the cheek. But up to that point I was thinking there was some good insight there. The dichotomy of business vs the state. The roles of each: A business to make money; the state to look after her citizens, and the ongoing struggle for dominance between each - firmly skewered by the citation of the USSR, where "it was tried before". Poor businesses fail, whereas a poorly run state will limp along, but at the end of the day it is the businesses that fail into the state, and if a business is badly run it is the state (and her constituents) that have to pick up the pieces.
ams6110 11y ago
Let's not exclude the customers and the public at large. Does any significant number of people really care about this? In my personal list of the 100 biggest problems in the world today, it's not really a contender.
- a3n 11y ago
  November Volkswagen sales in the U.S. fall 24%. (vidoe, sorry, but the blurb under the video essentially says what the video says) http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/volkswagen-core-brands-sales-24-pct-lower-november-35710940 http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/volkswagen-cor... It may not be on the 100 biggest problem list, but it must be in people's minds, and there are lots of other brands to buy so it's an easy thing to do.
bardworx 11y ago
It's cynical, but true. A famous sports mantra is: "if you're not cheating, you're not trying". (Mark Grace, 1B, Chicago Cubs) Corp and individuals cheat all the time. However, in most cases, the cheating are little white lies. In Corp world, their big lies that stay high up - with intention of never seeing the light of day.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Isn't that quote itself just a false rationalisation - 'I cheat but so does everyone else so it's not immoral'. Personally I never got anything out of winning at sports per se. What gives me a buzz is performing in a way I can be proud of. Sport requires adherence to regulations to work, I follow Kant's (2nd?) imperative in that respect. (FWIW I'm fond of playing quite a few sports). People cheat, corporations don't as they are just virtual groupings of people.
  - bardworx 11y ago
    > Isn't that quote itself just a false rationalization - 'I cheat but so does everyone else so it's not immoral'. It could be - Here's a moral question: If you are an athlete who is attempting to get into the professional league...would you use performance enhancing drugs to "break in" if you had a small chance of getting caught? (I don't think this requires an answer - people internalize this differently and it could spur a discourse) > Personally I never got anything out of winning at sports per se. What gives me a buzz is performing in a way I can be proud of. I can think of some particular situations in sports (Hand of God - Maradona) when the stakes are high and you'll do anything to win. Technically, he didn't cheat, but he sure as hell didn't come forward either. > People cheat, corporations don't as they are just virtual groupings of people. You're right. What would you call a grouping of people with C-Level titles who "cheat" a cabal? Seems too ominous. I used corporation to describe the high level officials who profit most by cheating.
Mvandenbergh 11y ago
I've got bad news about the engineers as well...
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
It's not cynicism: it's the reality of a Compliance group in a regulated organization. I used to work in the FDA-regulated field of medical devices. Because of my job position, I had frequent interaction with our Regulatory Affairs people. They are extremely conservative. Their job, as he stated, is to protect the company's best interests by making sure the FDA doesn't shut us down. That may seem cynical, but enlightened self-interest works in everyone's favor here. If there is a perceived problem with a device, the first concern is going to be "is there a Patient Hazard?" because nothing will cause the FDA to show up unannounced faster than that. The engineers' job is to keep Regulatory Affairs happy; Regulatory Affairs's job is to keep the FDA happy; the FDA's job is to keep patients safe. If everyone does their assigned task, the end result is exactly as desired.

jacquesm 11y ago

> Saying the compliance department exists to make sure the company adheres to the law is like saying the HR department is there for employees. No, it is explicitly meant to convey the message that the compliance department exists to protect the company from liability. I will update the post to make this more clear.

laotzu 11y ago
Seems like you are saying the same thing, if the law is to be considered a liability.

MichaelMoser123 11y ago

Interesting that this gets posted at the end of the week when a significant percentage of the readership is stoned ...

HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
Kind of early in the day for me, but you go ahead.
- MichaelMoser123 11y ago
  Depends on the timezone. But you know, everything is relative...

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

The roughest problems are those that emerge in interfaces between individual tribes within an organization. Information loss can be very easy and very pernicious in those cases.