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> Deliberately going forward with something in spite of knowing for certain that it's not fit for purpose is called engineering malfeasance, not arrogance. An

> Deliberately going forward with something in spite of knowing for certain that it's not fit for purpose is called engineering malfeasance, not arrogance. An argument can be made for both. Malfeasance in that it was a significant and potentially catastrophic engineering tradeoff due to unknown failure modes, and arrogant in that the decision valued company vision over potential consumer safety risks as well as over the expertise of the component manufacturers.

MobiusHorizons 5y ago
+1. This is something software engineers (of which I am one) often miss-understand about other engineering disciplines. You can totally ship software that you know will run into problems down the line, because you can reasonably expect to solve those challenges and ship updates before they come into play. But when you sell someone a durable good that is expected to last 10-20 years (eg a car) there are a whole host of things that go into designing that thing that are not ok to fix later. The result is that these engineering disciplines have practices that are much more rigorous. If you think about it, a recall is essentially a hardware patch, and they are typically highly embarrassing and costly. There is also the whole separate aspect of professional licensure which certain engineers get. Licensed engineers are expected to hold their work to certain standards regardless of the business needs of the company they work for. Now i'm not saying what Tesla did falls in this category, but it certainly looks like designing a product below the standard expected for that product. (what most people would call shoddy engineering). In software we often get away with this, because we can put in the work later on, and also because people often have insanely low expectations of how well software will work.
- oarsinsync 5y ago
  > This is something software engineers (of which I am one) often miss-understand about other engineering disciplines. You can totally ship software that you know will run into problems down the line ... because people often have insanely low expectations of how well software will work. I feel like this is the self fulfilling prophecy. We definitely didn’t use to ship software we knew would break, because we literally shipped it on disks, and delivering updates was hard. The internet has been good for many many things. Software reliability hasn’t been one of them.
- spockz 5y ago
  You can still replace parts in physical products. For example, the yellowing screen of the Tesla could have been replaced no questions asked with an automotive version once available. It is just so more expensive due to logistics and assembly.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
Selling something you know breaks within a short amount of time in the lifetime of a car and then not wanting to replace it is fraud.

MobiusHorizons 5y ago

+1. This is something software engineers (of which I am one) often miss-understand about other engineering disciplines. You can totally ship software that you know will run into problems down the line, because you can reasonably expect to solve those challenges and ship updates before they come into play. But when you sell someone a durable good that is expected to last 10-20 years (eg a car) there are a whole host of things that go into designing that thing that are not ok to fix later. The result is that these engineering disciplines have practices that are much more rigorous. If you think about it, a recall is essentially a hardware patch, and they are typically highly embarrassing and costly. There is also the whole separate aspect of professional licensure which certain engineers get. Licensed engineers are expected to hold their work to certain standards regardless of the business needs of the company they work for. Now i'm not saying what Tesla did falls in this category, but it certainly looks like designing a product below the standard expected for that product. (what most people would call shoddy engineering). In software we often get away with this, because we can put in the work later on, and also because people often have insanely low expectations of how well software will work.

oarsinsync 5y ago
> This is something software engineers (of which I am one) often miss-understand about other engineering disciplines. You can totally ship software that you know will run into problems down the line ... because people often have insanely low expectations of how well software will work. I feel like this is the self fulfilling prophecy. We definitely didn’t use to ship software we knew would break, because we literally shipped it on disks, and delivering updates was hard. The internet has been good for many many things. Software reliability hasn’t been one of them.
spockz 5y ago
You can still replace parts in physical products. For example, the yellowing screen of the Tesla could have been replaced no questions asked with an automotive version once available. It is just so more expensive due to logistics and assembly.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

Selling something you know breaks within a short amount of time in the lifetime of a car and then not wanting to replace it is fraud.