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Let out the engineers and workers. The management always justifies its salaries with their responsibility, then at least when it comes to that, they've got to s

Let out the engineers and workers. The management always justifies its salaries with their responsibility, then at least when it comes to that, they've got to stand for it. Also it's important that the penalty is no cash fine in any way. They usually got an insurance for the case. Yes, this might be driven from a punishment thought of justice but it is important that there is an educational correction in the business to no longer calculate human life in terms of money which one may balance against.

sofixa 2y ago
No. "Just following orders" is not a valid excuse. Your manager being a piece of shit forcing you to skip on safety does not invalidate your guilt in skipping on safety. A whole team circumventing the official process and forgetting to put back bolts they took out isn't something that can be brushed aside as "they were just pressured by management". They made a very serious mistake and all of them deserve at least a suspended sentence for it - it literally could have killed 100+ people. A whole team of engineers designing a critical system that can crash a plane with optional redundant inputs on inputs that are known to get blocked/fail are irresponsible.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelt 2y ago
  In my experience, large corporations that want to get away with breaking the law have a structure something like this: * An "everyone was doing it, and everyone knew" layer of junior employees aged 20 or so. * An obfuscation layer, comprised of several levels of middle manager who regularly shift roles, companies and countries. * An "I had no idea this was going on, and would have stopped it if I'd known" layer. This is the CEO and suchlike. If the criminal behaviour comes to light, the top-layer employees pretend not to have known about it; the bottom-layer employees say (accurately) that everyone was doing it and they thought it was normal; and the middle layers split themselves between the two, relying on forgotten e-mails, miscommunications, and placing the blame on people who aren't around any more.
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    This works for some things, but not for everything If it was your job to tighten the bolts and you didn't, that's one easy slam dunk coming your way. And they're right. Any engineer with AoA failure information (which I assume in Boeing is an easily obtainable information) should have designed/reviewed/approved MCAS in a different way. See the VW emissions case. Documents get names and signatures for a reason.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      > Any engineer with AoA failure information (which I assume in Boeing is an easily obtainable information) should have designed/reviewed/approved MCAS in a different way. Hell, I'm not anywhere close to aviation, just have an interest in it, and even I know that AoA sensors are prone to failure (relatively, for an aeronautics component), can easily get blocked by external stuff, and multiple crashes and accidents have happened due to that. It's nothing short of criminal negligence to design a system using only one. That's why aviation has very strict reporting and documentation requirements, everything should be traceable. Of course Boeing failed at that too, with them being unable to say e.g. who actually worked on the famous missing bolts. Send them all to prison for egregious negligence, and maybe the other workers will start refusing to do subpar and deadly work.
  - ordu 2y ago
    Theoretically, I believe, it is not hard to tackle this schema, just don't accept "I had no idea" as an excuse, not from CEO at least.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Yes, I believe the legal criteria is "known or should have known" that it was happening. If the C-level knew, they were criminally culpable. If they didn't know, they were criminally negligent.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  The trick is to not work at Boeing.
- nickserv 2y ago
  Boeing employees are penalized and threatened for reporting safety and quality issues, and whistle blowers are retaliated against. In that kind of situation, it absolutely is a management responsibility.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  And this is how executives escape responsibility when they are being paid specifically to be responsible. The case against the test pilot goes through court, and the test pilot is convicted and goes to prison, and now fewer people are willing to be test pilots. Meanwhile, the CEO ends up settling with the justice department, maybe has to sell a mansion, maybe wears an ankle monitor for a while.
slavik81 2y ago
As a licenced professional engineer, I disagree. The whole value of my licence is that I have the power to take responsibility for my work. If you strip me of that power by making excuses for irresponsible engineers, it errodes the value of a responsible professional.

sofixa 2y ago

No. "Just following orders" is not a valid excuse. Your manager being a piece of shit forcing you to skip on safety does not invalidate your guilt in skipping on safety. A whole team circumventing the official process and forgetting to put back bolts they took out isn't something that can be brushed aside as "they were just pressured by management". They made a very serious mistake and all of them deserve at least a suspended sentence for it - it literally could have killed 100+ people. A whole team of engineers designing a critical system that can crash a plane with optional redundant inputs on inputs that are known to get blocked/fail are irresponsible.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
michaelt 2y ago
In my experience, large corporations that want to get away with breaking the law have a structure something like this: * An "everyone was doing it, and everyone knew" layer of junior employees aged 20 or so. * An obfuscation layer, comprised of several levels of middle manager who regularly shift roles, companies and countries. * An "I had no idea this was going on, and would have stopped it if I'd known" layer. This is the CEO and suchlike. If the criminal behaviour comes to light, the top-layer employees pretend not to have known about it; the bottom-layer employees say (accurately) that everyone was doing it and they thought it was normal; and the middle layers split themselves between the two, relying on forgotten e-mails, miscommunications, and placing the blame on people who aren't around any more.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  This works for some things, but not for everything If it was your job to tighten the bolts and you didn't, that's one easy slam dunk coming your way. And they're right. Any engineer with AoA failure information (which I assume in Boeing is an easily obtainable information) should have designed/reviewed/approved MCAS in a different way. See the VW emissions case. Documents get names and signatures for a reason.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > Any engineer with AoA failure information (which I assume in Boeing is an easily obtainable information) should have designed/reviewed/approved MCAS in a different way. Hell, I'm not anywhere close to aviation, just have an interest in it, and even I know that AoA sensors are prone to failure (relatively, for an aeronautics component), can easily get blocked by external stuff, and multiple crashes and accidents have happened due to that. It's nothing short of criminal negligence to design a system using only one. That's why aviation has very strict reporting and documentation requirements, everything should be traceable. Of course Boeing failed at that too, with them being unable to say e.g. who actually worked on the famous missing bolts. Send them all to prison for egregious negligence, and maybe the other workers will start refusing to do subpar and deadly work.
- ordu 2y ago
  Theoretically, I believe, it is not hard to tackle this schema, just don't accept "I had no idea" as an excuse, not from CEO at least.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Yes, I believe the legal criteria is "known or should have known" that it was happening. If the C-level knew, they were criminally culpable. If they didn't know, they were criminally negligent.
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
The trick is to not work at Boeing.
nickserv 2y ago
Boeing employees are penalized and threatened for reporting safety and quality issues, and whistle blowers are retaliated against. In that kind of situation, it absolutely is a management responsibility.
nerdponx 2y ago
And this is how executives escape responsibility when they are being paid specifically to be responsible. The case against the test pilot goes through court, and the test pilot is convicted and goes to prison, and now fewer people are willing to be test pilots. Meanwhile, the CEO ends up settling with the justice department, maybe has to sell a mansion, maybe wears an ankle monitor for a while.

slavik81 2y ago

As a licenced professional engineer, I disagree. The whole value of my licence is that I have the power to take responsibility for my work. If you strip me of that power by making excuses for irresponsible engineers, it errodes the value of a responsible professional.