> I feel engineers likewise need to spend time in QA to learn what their ethics really are. QA is hard, and the pressure to pass is difficult to withstand You

> I feel engineers likewise need to spend time in QA to learn what their ethics really are. QA is hard, and the pressure to pass is difficult to withstand You really nailed it. The GM's position -- and he said this more than a few times -- was that the parts were designed with extra tolerances already, so if they were a little below spec it was OK. Engineers have to keep that in mind when designing products: production knows there's a margin for error and they'll take that into consideration when deciding whether or not they can get away with shipping something. (And the GM was a pretty OK guy, we got along fine otherwise. He in turn was just under a lot of pressure from further up the ladder to meet certain production goals.)