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In civil engineering there is a responsible engineer. Nobody cares what management says - business takes a back seat to public safety, the engineer is in charge

by abduhl 3y ago

In civil engineering there is a responsible engineer. Nobody cares what management says - business takes a back seat to public safety, the engineer is in charge. Designs and products are required by law to be backed by an engineer who is personally responsible so the business excuse of “management told us” no longer carries sway: management cannot release a product without a responsible engineer by law so management MUST ultimately be subservient to the math. Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability and responsibility for engineers because, ultimately, it’s easier and more profitably personally to hide behind the excuse that “management” made the decision.

runnerup 3y ago
> Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability Yeah just gonna stop you there...none of us were given the choice to be accountable and hide behind "I will lose my license if I commit/deploy this." I'm also an actual engineer in addition to a software engineer, and being able to say "I'm not willing to go to jail for this" works when you have a P.E. license in an actual engineering project, but definitely does not work in the software industry. It doesn't even work in engineering if you don't have a P.E. outside of "No this will literally hurt/maim/kill someone" Yes, either way (software or P.E.) you might be fired for saying "I'm not willing to go to jail for this" but it's much less likely you'd be fired for it in "hard" engineering, because everyone else on the team understands that you're not being entirely hyperbolic when you say "I'm not signing this because I could go to jail." If you said that in a software project people would rightfully think you're fucking nuts and don't understand how the world works, because there's an infinitesimal chance a software engineer would go to jail. Even the criminals who deployed the Uber Greyball thing didn't face any consequences, which truly shocked me, as that was blatant obstruction of justice.
gumballindie 3y ago
> Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability and responsibility for engineers because, ultimately, it’s easier and more profitably personally to hide behind the excuse that “management” made the decision. I wish it was that easy. In almost all software companies, with the exception of one where we built software security tooling, management asked for cutting corners, to which engineers objected. Guess who got the blame when things went according to what has been said? The engineers. In one case it was so pathetic that the company lost tens of millions of pounds in revenue. There was a code freeze. Turns out a marketing director _told_ an engineer to apply a change. That change tipped everything over. Fortunately the marketing director was “freed” later on. Similarly in other companies people payments were either processed twice, not at all, accounts lost, user login details mixed or leaked and so on. Every darn time technical debt was raised someone would say that we should not over engineer things. But hey they did agile and unit tests. My invoices got paid. It is what it is.

by abduhl 3y ago

runnerup 3y ago

> Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability Yeah just gonna stop you there...none of us were given the choice to be accountable and hide behind "I will lose my license if I commit/deploy this." I'm also an actual engineer in addition to a software engineer, and being able to say "I'm not willing to go to jail for this" works when you have a P.E. license in an actual engineering project, but definitely does not work in the software industry. It doesn't even work in engineering if you don't have a P.E. outside of "No this will literally hurt/maim/kill someone" Yes, either way (software or P.E.) you might be fired for saying "I'm not willing to go to jail for this" but it's much less likely you'd be fired for it in "hard" engineering, because everyone else on the team understands that you're not being entirely hyperbolic when you say "I'm not signing this because I could go to jail." If you said that in a software project people would rightfully think you're fucking nuts and don't understand how the world works, because there's an infinitesimal chance a software engineer would go to jail. Even the criminals who deployed the Uber Greyball thing didn't face any consequences, which truly shocked me, as that was blatant obstruction of justice.

gumballindie 3y ago

> Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability and responsibility for engineers because, ultimately, it’s easier and more profitably personally to hide behind the excuse that “management” made the decision. I wish it was that easy. In almost all software companies, with the exception of one where we built software security tooling, management asked for cutting corners, to which engineers objected. Guess who got the blame when things went according to what has been said? The engineers. In one case it was so pathetic that the company lost tens of millions of pounds in revenue. There was a code freeze. Turns out a marketing director _told_ an engineer to apply a change. That change tipped everything over. Fortunately the marketing director was “freed” later on. Similarly in other companies people payments were either processed twice, not at all, accounts lost, user login details mixed or leaked and so on. Every darn time technical debt was raised someone would say that we should not over engineer things. But hey they did agile and unit tests. My invoices got paid. It is what it is.