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What's this about "engineering incompetence", "engineering ethics" and "“cultural laziness” within the software development community"? Do we have any reason n

by z5h 8y ago

What's this about "engineering incompetence", "engineering ethics" and "“cultural laziness” within the software development community"? Do we have any reason not to believe that management is at fault? That management forced engineering to do things quicker/cheaper and cut corners and hack out a solution in those interests?

slavik81 8y ago
Management pressure is not an excuse for faulty engineering. As an engineer, your first duty is to the public, then your client, then your employer. That's straight out of the engineering ethics handbook. Your boss comes third. When you sign-off on a design, it is your approval. Your name goes on the document. There's no passing that off as someone else's fault. If you are unable or unwilling to say "no" to your employer, then you do not meet the criteria to be a professional engineer. Your employer may find another engineer to sign-off, but perhaps that person will think on it carefully, knowing that someone else refused. If something later went wrong, it could not be passed off as a simple oversight.
salawat 8y ago
While management is definitely culpable, aviation is not like most software development shops in that legally speaking, your engineers do have final say. If they don't sign, nothing ships. An engineer is expected to do more than acquiesce to management's demands. It is, in fact, an engineer's job to say "no" to any implementation plan that jeopardizes the public. There is a case to be made whether it is reasonable to expect an engineer to branch their scrutiny beyond what small slice they are given, in which case there was a failure at a higher level to distribute appropriate units of work such that the entire thing was thoroughly vetted. The problem is, that is extremely difficult to prove in a court of law, and it is not uncommon for high level management to hide unethical practices behind indirect communication methods without committing them outright to paper. Call me a romantic, but at some point, as a bunch of engineers on a project, you need to be able to fully grok and model the entirety of the system as a whole. It seems that level of integration would have brought these problems to light much faster, and without the bloodshed. I can't imagine that work not happening unless it was being actively discouraged. If one or several engineers had pushed back, or a manager been thinking more about product quality/safety rather than delivery/profit, that work may have been done, and we wouldn't be talking about this now.

by z5h 8y ago

slavik81 8y ago

Management pressure is not an excuse for faulty engineering. As an engineer, your first duty is to the public, then your client, then your employer. That's straight out of the engineering ethics handbook. Your boss comes third. When you sign-off on a design, it is your approval. Your name goes on the document. There's no passing that off as someone else's fault. If you are unable or unwilling to say "no" to your employer, then you do not meet the criteria to be a professional engineer. Your employer may find another engineer to sign-off, but perhaps that person will think on it carefully, knowing that someone else refused. If something later went wrong, it could not be passed off as a simple oversight.

salawat 8y ago

While management is definitely culpable, aviation is not like most software development shops in that legally speaking, your engineers do have final say. If they don't sign, nothing ships. An engineer is expected to do more than acquiesce to management's demands. It is, in fact, an engineer's job to say "no" to any implementation plan that jeopardizes the public. There is a case to be made whether it is reasonable to expect an engineer to branch their scrutiny beyond what small slice they are given, in which case there was a failure at a higher level to distribute appropriate units of work such that the entire thing was thoroughly vetted. The problem is, that is extremely difficult to prove in a court of law, and it is not uncommon for high level management to hide unethical practices behind indirect communication methods without committing them outright to paper. Call me a romantic, but at some point, as a bunch of engineers on a project, you need to be able to fully grok and model the entirety of the system as a whole. It seems that level of integration would have brought these problems to light much faster, and without the bloodshed. I can't imagine that work not happening unless it was being actively discouraged. If one or several engineers had pushed back, or a manager been thinking more about product quality/safety rather than delivery/profit, that work may have been done, and we wouldn't be talking about this now.