4 ms·

At some point, somebody came up with the idea and a decision was made, either individually or through consensus, to use the defeat device. Why do you find it so

At some point, somebody came up with the idea and a decision was made, either individually or through consensus, to use the defeat device. Why do you find it so unbelievable that it was an engineer (or a group that included engineers)? Would it make a difference if it was an engineer who had been promoted to be a team leader? Promoted to "chief engineer"? "Engineering manager"? At what point would the person's title be far enough removed from "engineer" that you would find it believable? Does having the word "manager" in one's job description automatically make one less trustworthy than someone who has the word "engineer" in theirs? Shall we just adopt a policy of "Engineer good. Manager evil."? You say that the compliance department should have audited the code. Do other car companies' compliance departments audit their code? I doubt they do. I suspect it would be cost-prohibitive.

jacquesm 11y ago
> At some point, somebody came up with the idea and a decision was made, either individually or through consensus, to use the defeat device. What should have happened: Hey boss, there is no way that this engine is going to pass emissions. What should we do now? Manager: sorry, but if there is no way, there is no way, I'll communicate that up the chain. What possibly happened: Hey boss, there is no way that this engine is going to pass emissions. What should we do now? Manager: let me confer with upstairs. Some time passes. Manager: there is no such thing as no way let's find a way, cheat if you have to (but don't tell me you did). Or something even more damning. Now, the big question is what happened during 'some time passes'. Whether the buy-in went all the way to the top or whether that person made this up all by themselves. VW wants us to believe the second. Knowing a bit about German corporate culture I sincerely doubt that. If there is one thing that Germans excel in it must be strict adherence to process and authority. > Why do you find it so unbelievable that it was an engineer (or a group that included engineers)? Would it make a difference if it was an engineer who had been promoted to be a team leader? Promoted to "chief engineer"? "Engineering manager"? At what point would the person's title be far enough removed from "engineer" that you would find it believable? Does having the word "manager" in one's job description automatically make one less trustworthy than someone who has the word "engineer" in theirs? Shall we just adopt a policy of "Engineer good. Manager evil."? Engineer is a title that comes with a whole bunch of responsibility. Manager and Engineer are not mutually exclusive titles. But clearly there is a line drawn on the VW org chart that supposedly insulates those higher up from any fall-out from this other than some 'formal responsibility' while using the old and tired 'but I didn't know about it' line. I don't buy that for a second, you just can't have a thing like this going on in a car company that has the ambition to be the worlds largest supplier of vehicles and not be in control of the product that is being produced. That spells 'corporate cultural rot' to me at a level that would be far more damning than outright malice. Of course outright malice might end with direct culpability for management which is why we get this other spiel. > You say that the compliance department should have audited the code. Yes. > Do other car companies' compliance departments audit their code? I would bloody well hope so. If they don't they ought to get other jobs. Reviews are there for a purpose, it is not that this stuff is so different from one version to another that you could not spot the commit that is tagged 'added test cycle detection and defeat code' (or even if it is mis-labeled on purpose to spot that someone inserted a bunch of code with a description that does not match). I worked for a bank for a bit and there was absolutely no way that I'd be able to get away with a trick like this without being caught. > I doubt they do. That could be right. > I suspect it would be cost-prohibitive. This would hold true for Morgan (who buys their engines from BMW and they're not diesels) but it certainly would not be true for VW, the cost of a thorough audit would be an extremely small fraction of the cost of the fines they are now incurring and on the budget of VW it would be next to nothing.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  What possibly happened (alternative version): "Shit, I don't think we can hit these performance targets and stay under the emissions limits." "Hmmmm... I think you're right." "The boss is not going to be happy. I guess no bonus for us this year!" "Hmmm... What if we wrote some code for the ECU to detect when the vehicle's being tested and dial down the performance? "What, are you serious?" "Yeah, that way it'll still meet the emissions standards, and hit the performance targets, right?" "No way, man. Das ist verboten, dude. The boss'll never go for it!" "He doesn't have to know! Nobody has to know. We just slip the code into the ECU when nobody's looking. Nobody's going to check it!" "I dunno, man..." "Come on! You want that bonus, don't you? Think of all the lederhosen you can buy!" Paul Kedrosky wrote about this type of scenario: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-th...
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I've worked with quite a few German companies, none as large as VW but this is absolute SF (entertaining though it is). The Germans have a word for their way of working 'gruendlich' ('thorough') and they (usually!) mean it. How this happened will be the stuff of endless case studies when - and if - the truth will finally be on the table. At a guess that will not happen before all the current board members and the former CEO are well in their graves. BTW the whole scenario outlined in your link is bunk. The code came integral from Bosch and was definitely not developed gradually. It basically is designed purposefully to do an end-run around tests and Bosch explicitly warned against inclusion in the production version of the software saying 'this would be a very bad idea'.
perlgeek 11y ago
If a single engineer developed the engine, including the software, it would be quite likely that he or she came up and implemented the cheating solution alone. But that's not how things work. Imagine being in the team that develops an engine. Some prototypes are built, measurements are done, way too high emissions are noted. Who gets the results from the measurements? The project lead, of course. Then the lead calls in folks from different parts of the team (or even different teams involved), and they brainstorm what to do. This becomes a big topic, because it puts the whole project at a risk. If at some point the problematic values simply disappear, any diligent project lead has to investigate where the improvement comes from, if only to make sure there's no regression. How would the scenario look like so that the project lead never even noticed? The environmental testing reports directly to a software developer (but why would they?), who implements the cheating part. Without first asking the rest of the team if there are legit ways to accomplish lower emissions. All documents regarding the first test runs vanish (but why would they? it's not the tester's job to make sure the emission standards are being met), and the problematic emissions never become a topic. Somehow that sounds not realistic at all. So, I'm pretty sure the project lead knew about it. the project lead might have been an engineer by training, but his role was that of a manager.

jacquesm 11y ago

> At some point, somebody came up with the idea and a decision was made, either individually or through consensus, to use the defeat device. What should have happened: Hey boss, there is no way that this engine is going to pass emissions. What should we do now? Manager: sorry, but if there is no way, there is no way, I'll communicate that up the chain. What possibly happened: Hey boss, there is no way that this engine is going to pass emissions. What should we do now? Manager: let me confer with upstairs. Some time passes. Manager: there is no such thing as no way let's find a way, cheat if you have to (but don't tell me you did). Or something even more damning. Now, the big question is what happened during 'some time passes'. Whether the buy-in went all the way to the top or whether that person made this up all by themselves. VW wants us to believe the second. Knowing a bit about German corporate culture I sincerely doubt that. If there is one thing that Germans excel in it must be strict adherence to process and authority. > Why do you find it so unbelievable that it was an engineer (or a group that included engineers)? Would it make a difference if it was an engineer who had been promoted to be a team leader? Promoted to "chief engineer"? "Engineering manager"? At what point would the person's title be far enough removed from "engineer" that you would find it believable? Does having the word "manager" in one's job description automatically make one less trustworthy than someone who has the word "engineer" in theirs? Shall we just adopt a policy of "Engineer good. Manager evil."? Engineer is a title that comes with a whole bunch of responsibility. Manager and Engineer are not mutually exclusive titles. But clearly there is a line drawn on the VW org chart that supposedly insulates those higher up from any fall-out from this other than some 'formal responsibility' while using the old and tired 'but I didn't know about it' line. I don't buy that for a second, you just can't have a thing like this going on in a car company that has the ambition to be the worlds largest supplier of vehicles and not be in control of the product that is being produced. That spells 'corporate cultural rot' to me at a level that would be far more damning than outright malice. Of course outright malice might end with direct culpability for management which is why we get this other spiel. > You say that the compliance department should have audited the code. Yes. > Do other car companies' compliance departments audit their code? I would bloody well hope so. If they don't they ought to get other jobs. Reviews are there for a purpose, it is not that this stuff is so different from one version to another that you could not spot the commit that is tagged 'added test cycle detection and defeat code' (or even if it is mis-labeled on purpose to spot that someone inserted a bunch of code with a description that does not match). I worked for a bank for a bit and there was absolutely no way that I'd be able to get away with a trick like this without being caught. > I doubt they do. That could be right. > I suspect it would be cost-prohibitive. This would hold true for Morgan (who buys their engines from BMW and they're not diesels) but it certainly would not be true for VW, the cost of a thorough audit would be an extremely small fraction of the cost of the fines they are now incurring and on the budget of VW it would be next to nothing.

jackgavigan 11y ago
What possibly happened (alternative version): "Shit, I don't think we can hit these performance targets and stay under the emissions limits." "Hmmmm... I think you're right." "The boss is not going to be happy. I guess no bonus for us this year!" "Hmmm... What if we wrote some code for the ECU to detect when the vehicle's being tested and dial down the performance? "What, are you serious?" "Yeah, that way it'll still meet the emissions standards, and hit the performance targets, right?" "No way, man. Das ist verboten, dude. The boss'll never go for it!" "He doesn't have to know! Nobody has to know. We just slip the code into the ECU when nobody's looking. Nobody's going to check it!" "I dunno, man..." "Come on! You want that bonus, don't you? Think of all the lederhosen you can buy!" Paul Kedrosky wrote about this type of scenario: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-th...
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I've worked with quite a few German companies, none as large as VW but this is absolute SF (entertaining though it is). The Germans have a word for their way of working 'gruendlich' ('thorough') and they (usually!) mean it. How this happened will be the stuff of endless case studies when - and if - the truth will finally be on the table. At a guess that will not happen before all the current board members and the former CEO are well in their graves. BTW the whole scenario outlined in your link is bunk. The code came integral from Bosch and was definitely not developed gradually. It basically is designed purposefully to do an end-run around tests and Bosch explicitly warned against inclusion in the production version of the software saying 'this would be a very bad idea'.

perlgeek 11y ago

If a single engineer developed the engine, including the software, it would be quite likely that he or she came up and implemented the cheating solution alone. But that's not how things work. Imagine being in the team that develops an engine. Some prototypes are built, measurements are done, way too high emissions are noted. Who gets the results from the measurements? The project lead, of course. Then the lead calls in folks from different parts of the team (or even different teams involved), and they brainstorm what to do. This becomes a big topic, because it puts the whole project at a risk. If at some point the problematic values simply disappear, any diligent project lead has to investigate where the improvement comes from, if only to make sure there's no regression. How would the scenario look like so that the project lead never even noticed? The environmental testing reports directly to a software developer (but why would they?), who implements the cheating part. Without first asking the rest of the team if there are legit ways to accomplish lower emissions. All documents regarding the first test runs vanish (but why would they? it's not the tester's job to make sure the emission standards are being met), and the problematic emissions never become a topic. Somehow that sounds not realistic at all. So, I'm pretty sure the project lead knew about it. the project lead might have been an engineer by training, but his role was that of a manager.