Without commenting on the Toyota situation, yes, it is common to find embedded code written by an electrical engineer who does not seem to have the necessary sk

Without commenting on the Toyota situation, yes, it is common to find embedded code written by an electrical engineer who does not seem to have the necessary skills. However, the key word there is "seem." My anecdotal experiences with electrical engineers makes me think otherwise. One engineer I worked closely with was given the assignment to produce the embedded code in a single day. She completed the task including learning the platform and the buggy vendor compiler. Another engineer didn't care and couldn't be bothered to learn it. When he did code, he hammered it out only until it appeared to work and then signed off on it. Most engineers (any type) would never sign their name to a project finished like that. The same thing happens all the time with software, but software or hardware, the people I've worked with definitely have the ability and can easily produce great work as long as management is doing their job. I think firmware (like Toyota's) gets neglected precisely because nobody can see it or improve on it later. I am hopeful that more open hardware initiatives will indirectly result in open-sourced firmware becoming more common, resulting in better code quality. I realize I'm blaming management here. Effectively managing engineers is hard, and it's a topic I enjoy when it comes up on HN.