Not according to any of the industry quality surveys. VW is perennially near the bottom of the quality rankings, almost always lower than the US makers.
The penalties and lawsuits will quickly exceed VW's $126bn valuation.
No it won't. VW is a vital piece of the German economy and is part owned by the German government. They are almost certainly going to get slapped hard over this but it isn't likely to drive them out of business. It will cost them billions of dollars in fines and recalls and probably more in lost sales but they'll probably survive. Hopefully they will get slapped hard enough that they'll serve as an example to other auto makers who might be tempted to pull the same stunt.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions.
No it depends on how you feel about fraud. The reason this is a big deal isn't the pollution though that is not a trivial part of it. No the big deal is that this company intentionally defrauded millions of customers. They promised their technology worked in a way that it didn't.
In my opinion the people who ordered and the people who carried out this fraud should see some time behind bars. They committed a crime that cost customers and taxpayers many millions of dollars.
If bricklayers often got wrong by 3-4x the number of bricks needed for a project something would be changed. But that happens every day in software and we just all carry on as if it doesn't matter.
Then software developers need to get better at estimating. I fully understand that it is considerably more complex than counting bricks but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter much. The only proper solution is to learn how to provide accurate assessments of resources required to do a project. It's no different in manufacturing, construction or any other complex field. I spend much of my time quoting work for complicated manufacturing assemblies, some of which I have very little experience with. I have to estimate the amount of time it will take our staff and allow for variation in productivity. If I overestimate the amount of work we risk not getting the job. If I underestimate the amount of work, we lose money and can be out of business very quickly. It's not really so different than with software.
Now if you are being asked to estimate the cost of a project where the scope of work is undetermined and/or not fixed to within reasonable bounds then you are probably screwed. When we get asked to do this we turn the work down unless they are willing to sign an open ended time-and-materials contract. Never had one of them do that yet...
As they saying goes: Fast, cheap, good - pick any two.
Not a useful saying for budgeting. HOW fast are we talking about? HOW good? HOW cheap? Fast/good/cheap are all relative values and can mean hugely different things depending on the scope and difficulty of the project.
Industrial engineer here. The problem with most schedules and by extension most estimates isn't the estimate itself. It is the failure to take into account the variability of the estimate. If you ask me how long a task will take for something that is a non-trivial task and you give me a point answer (like "14 days") then you are almost certainly wrong. The only question is how badly are you wrong. But if you tell me 14 days with a standard deviation of 4 days then the answer might have some credibility. Any answer without error bars is probably useless.
My first job out of college was doing statistical production simulations. Everybody in management wants a single answer for how long something will take. Problem is that if I give them a point answer I'm doing them a disservice because my answer will be wrong. Fortunately finance people actually do know how to deal with a standard deviation if you press them to be bothered because they have to do it for expected return calculations.
When I'm scheduling anything I care a LOT more about the variation than I do the averages, particularly if the averages are certified wild-ass-guesses.
There is no need to write special code to detect an emissions test. The cars emissions should meet legal standards at all times. The moment someone asked for such code alarm bells should have been going off right then and there. Especially given the not-a-secret decision to not install a urea injection system. These aren't engineer who write code without any knowledge of the effects of their code and they don't work by themselves and never talk to others. Plus there appears to be evidence that the engineers were WELL aware of the problem because when it first came up they engaged in all sorts of delaying tactics.
No, there were engineers at VW who knew what was happening and it wasn't just one guy with a beard.
Somebody knew, somebody high up knew, but I rather doubt that everyone on the engineering bench knew, and that means that they had to be fed plausible stories along the way.
Spare me. The engineers were the ones that eventually spilled the beans on this. They weren't fooled by some clever management strategy. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew or should have known that it was illegal. While maybe not every engineer involved knew, more than a few certainly did without question. The engineers at VW aren't dumb. I know a few personally. Please stop with the attempts to find clever ways to not have to blame the engineers who were guilty of helping to commit fraud. Management may have ordered the crime but the engineers were the ones that carried it out.
I've been in the real world a long time. Frequently the real world it is actually that black and white. Not always but quite often. This VW thing seems to be pretty clearly in the black and white camp. It is REALLY hard to imagine a credible scenario where the engineers who implemented this were not fully aware (or should have been) that what they were doing was against the law. They (almost certainly) knew it and they went ahead anyway.
Make sure to get it in an email form? How are you going to do that?
Easy. You start asking questions in email. Act innocent or ignorant if necessary. Unless the person is ordering you to do something obviously illegal (in which case you should quit or get legal representation) they aren't likely to act all cloak and dagger. If they do, do you really want to work for that person anyway?
I did get an email verifying that I had questioned it, but then I found out that all our emails are automatically deleted after 6 months or something like that.
Nothing prevents you from printing emails of instructions to implement dubious decisions. I've done this from time to time just to protect myself when I worked at a large company.
You get fired now, or you implement something dubious - what do you choose?
If it is clearly illegal or will be very likely to cause major problems then you should seriously consider walking. If it isn't so clear then you get them to document their instructions to you and you keep a copy (print if you have to) for your records to cover your ass should it be a problem down the line. Make sure you document your objections and make it clear that you have taken every reasonable effort to ensure that what you are doing is legal. If the decision is merely dumb but legal, same thing but don't worry so much about ensuring legality.
You get requirements that you aren't sure are a good idea or the right thing to do, and you question them - but PHB assures you that it's all been approved and cleared by the people on higher floors, and you may even contact some of them and hear their agreement.
Then congratulations you are a rube who got used and have now committed a crime. But frankly I have a VERY hard time believing that the engineers involved did not know that what they were doing would violate the law. They wrote code specifically to determine when an emissions test was being performed and to adjust the emissions substantially. The ONLY reason to do that is to cheat a test which they damn well ought to know is illegal. So was it negligence or fraud? Either way they basically engaged in the functional equivalent of dumping toxic waste and should be accountable.
I wonder whether someone actually gave the order to implement a 'test defeat device' or they just started to optimize the engine to comply with regulation and to pass the test and then they went too far.
Someone in management made the decision to not install a urea injection system which is necessary to keep emissions to legal levels but costs a lot of money. Reportedly something like $400/vehicle. So it seems pretty clear that their "solution" to the problem was simply to cheat. This wasn't a case of optimization gone awry. They flat out knew what they were doing and went ahead with it anyway. As soon as they made the decision to not install urea injection, they effectively decided to cheat at that time because they were asking for the technologically impossible. There is no way they didn't know that their decision to leave off such a key piece of equipment would not result in unacceptable emissions. The engineers at VW aren't dumb. The decision was made for financial reasons (not surprising) but was aided and abetted by a bunch of engineers that should have known better.
The only real question seems to be who made the decision and who was responsible for executing it and covering it up.
It's been a while since I watched my car being tested but do they hook up the car to a computer terminal of some sort? Could those be used to trigger test mode?
The test mode was triggered by monitoring which wheels were turning, position of the steering wheel, etc.
Basically they wanted to avoid the cost of installing a urea injection system so they cheated instead. Honda engineers were reported to be perplexed about how they managed to do this miraculous feat of engineering.
Lots of vital unreplaceable/unrepairable parts would probably be well beyond their design specification and thus prone to failure.
What on it cannot be repaired or replaced? Why would they design it that way? It's basically modular in construction as far as I can tell so it's not clear to me why they couldn't replace any given portion of it. Is it that we don't/won't have an adequate lift vehicle? Just terrible design?
Is there some technical reason the ISS will no longer work after the mid-2020s or is it merely a budget issue? Why are we not keeping it up there if it is still serving whatever purpose it was designed for?
I stopped going to the cinema when the price of two tickets became more than the price of the DVD (and that's before you add snacks / drinks). I bought a projector and a reasonable surround-sound system...
Sounds like you don't go on a lot of dates...
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "how much do you NOT want to spend an evening with that guy?"
Can you afford to walk away from your job right this minute?
Yes I can. In fact I have done just that on two occasions.
Knowing you'll get no unemployment compensation, no welfare, no assistance of any kind?
Nice strawman you have there.
It's one thing to voluntarily follow orders, quite another when the person giving the orders is holding the welfare of your family hostage against your good behavior. In my book people who refuse to recognize this are complicit with management in the act, they directly help management perpetuate the conditions that let management get away with these crimes.
Then you gather evidence of the crime and how you are being ordered to commit an illegal act under duress and you leave as soon as you can manage it. This crime didn't happen overnight though and your argument is a strawman really. This took months if not years. The engineers who did it were well paid and educated people with options and most likely a social safety net. The notion that they were anything but willing participants strikes me as absurd. And frankly even if they were in a tough situation it STILL doesn't excuse their actions. What they did was a fraud and a disgrace to the profession and I strongly believe those responsible should see time behind bars for it.
You really need to tone it down a bit. Your black and white, absolutist, perfect world assertions are starting to undermine some of the points you're making.
I disagree. I think this situation is very clear and I think attempts to defend the engineers who did this is a disgrace to the profession. I think these engineers should be in jail for their actions and I make no apologies for that stance. If you think this was in any way justified by the engineers then you and I have an irreconcilable difference of opinion.
We don't know, yet, whether there was an official directive, threats of termination, a group of engineers slipping one past management or what. It's very easy to sit back and say "resign" without understanding the situation that the engineers were in.
I don't care what their situation was. This action was very clearly a fraud. If they did it under duress that might be a mitigating factor in sentencing but it doesn't excuse what they did at all. Is it ok to dump toxic garbage because you were afraid of losing your job? Is it ok to lie about what your product can do because you are afraid of losing your job? No it isn't. This is very clear.
Also, the comparisons to Nazi Germany, and other examples of "just following orders" coming from some posters are way out of line.
Again I disagree. The consequences and grotesqueness of the crimes are different but the defense being put forth ("just following orders") for illegal and immoral acts is identical and equally wrong in both cases. You would think that lesson would have been learned long ago in VW given their history and especially since they are part owned by the German government.
If you can't tell the difference between genocide and a fraudulent product, you need to get help.
And if you can't understand an analogy and a rhetorical argument then you need to grow up. If you can't understand that performing an illegal act that will harm others (through pollution and deceptive financial gain) cannot be defended by saying you were just doing what you were told then you need to get a clue. Nobody including me is saying they were committing a crime on the level of genocide or that the punishment should be the same. But the basic lesson is that it is never ok to do something illegal just because you were ordered to by a supervisor.
It's not actually clear if it was a cover up or merely incompetence. You can argue that the difference shouldn't matter and I might agree with you but it isn't clear that anyone acted with deliberate fraud in mind. Maybe they did but the point is that the initial engineering wasn't a fraud, only subsequent actions once there was evidence of a problem.
I seem to recall that GM was/is in hot water because there was some internal communication that pointed out the cause of the problem but that management chose to `downplay' (nice way of saying `cover up') the problem. Recalls cost money, ya know.
Right but that's not necessarily so weird. You issue a recall if the problem is of a certain severity and if you have hard proof but it's not hard to see how for a rare condition (a few out of millions) management might draw the conclusion that there isn't enough evidence to warrant a recall. Easy to see the decision as wrong in hindsight but at the time it may not have been so clear. Of course it is just as possible that it was very clear (or should have been obviously clear) that a recall was warranted and they tried to cover up the problem rather than fix it.
Your boss tells you to do something, you refuse to do it, you get fired and they get someone else to do what they want anyway.
If your boss is ordering you to do something that you damn well know is illegal then you should refuse. If they want to fire you for that then so be it. This is not a complicated scenario. Having a family to feed is not adequate justification for fraud and frankly weren't not talking about the sort of workers who cannot ever get another job. These are well paid engineers with options.
it was the decision of someone in a suit, not the author(s) of the code in question.
Bullshit. That's the "I was just following orders" defense. The order may have come from up high but the decision to execute that illegal order makes the engineers every bit as culpable. The guy executing the crime is just as guilty as the guy who plans the crime.
There might not be a 'proper engineering' solution to the emissions problem.
That's not an excuse to commit fraud even if true.
Nobody ever said, "go forth and flaunt the law" maybe $Engineer did not even realize what he was doing violated the testing rules.
I have spent a good portion of my career as an engineer in the automotive industry. There is NO WAY the engineers doing this were not fully aware that what they were doing was in violation of the law. To program this they would have to be aware of what the rules were and so they cannot argue that they didn't realize what they were doing. They weren't stupid, they weren't naive. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time they did it.
No, this was a deliberate fraud. Probably ordered by management but executed and carried out by engineers who damn well knew or should have known what they were doing was illegal as hell.
This is what happens when you exempt corporate engineers from licensing standards. There are no repercussions, no sense of proper conduct, and no accountability?
You think a license makes people honest? There are plenty of doctors and lawyers and other licenses and bonded professionals that behave unethically and even criminally. A license doesn't solve this problem. All a license does is attempt to ensure a base level of functional competence. It doesn't ensure honesty one bit.
Why do we allow engineers to practice engineering without a license if they work for a corporation?
Well, speaking as an engineer, it's probably because for most types of engineering a license would serve no meaningful public interest and would not improve the quality of engineering. It simply doesn't matter for what I do. Certain types of engineers (notably civil and sometimes in areas like aviation and others where bodily harm can result) ARE required to be licensed and have to pass appropriate examinations. For others like the type of engineer I am (industrial) it doesn't matter at all. The worst thing that happens if I screw up is the company makes less money. My wife is an MD and if she screws up, people can die. See the difference?
The one who caused the GM ignition switch problem hasn't even been charged.
The GM fiasco was at core an engineering mistake which was later (apparently) covered up. The mistake isn't worthy of charges. Nobody at GM set out to make a defective part. The cover up that (maybe) happened later might be worthy of charges depending on whether it was deliberate or not.
The VW case however was a fraud right from the start. They clearly did this intentionally and it clearly meets the definition of fraud. People at VW should go to jail for this.
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VW make better cars than American companies.
Not according to any of the industry quality surveys. VW is perennially near the bottom of the quality rankings, almost always lower than the US makers.
The penalties and lawsuits will quickly exceed VW's $126bn valuation.
No it won't. VW is a vital piece of the German economy and is part owned by the German government. They are almost certainly going to get slapped hard over this but it isn't likely to drive them out of business. It will cost them billions of dollars in fines and recalls and probably more in lost sales but they'll probably survive. Hopefully they will get slapped hard enough that they'll serve as an example to other auto makers who might be tempted to pull the same stunt.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions.
No it depends on how you feel about fraud. The reason this is a big deal isn't the pollution though that is not a trivial part of it. No the big deal is that this company intentionally defrauded millions of customers. They promised their technology worked in a way that it didn't.
In my opinion the people who ordered and the people who carried out this fraud should see some time behind bars. They committed a crime that cost customers and taxpayers many millions of dollars.
If bricklayers often got wrong by 3-4x the number of bricks needed for a project something would be changed. But that happens every day in software and we just all carry on as if it doesn't matter.
Then software developers need to get better at estimating. I fully understand that it is considerably more complex than counting bricks but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter much. The only proper solution is to learn how to provide accurate assessments of resources required to do a project. It's no different in manufacturing, construction or any other complex field. I spend much of my time quoting work for complicated manufacturing assemblies, some of which I have very little experience with. I have to estimate the amount of time it will take our staff and allow for variation in productivity. If I overestimate the amount of work we risk not getting the job. If I underestimate the amount of work, we lose money and can be out of business very quickly. It's not really so different than with software.
Now if you are being asked to estimate the cost of a project where the scope of work is undetermined and/or not fixed to within reasonable bounds then you are probably screwed. When we get asked to do this we turn the work down unless they are willing to sign an open ended time-and-materials contract. Never had one of them do that yet...
As they saying goes: Fast, cheap, good - pick any two.
Not a useful saying for budgeting. HOW fast are we talking about? HOW good? HOW cheap? Fast/good/cheap are all relative values and can mean hugely different things depending on the scope and difficulty of the project.
Industrial engineer here. The problem with most schedules and by extension most estimates isn't the estimate itself. It is the failure to take into account the variability of the estimate. If you ask me how long a task will take for something that is a non-trivial task and you give me a point answer (like "14 days") then you are almost certainly wrong. The only question is how badly are you wrong. But if you tell me 14 days with a standard deviation of 4 days then the answer might have some credibility. Any answer without error bars is probably useless.
My first job out of college was doing statistical production simulations. Everybody in management wants a single answer for how long something will take. Problem is that if I give them a point answer I'm doing them a disservice because my answer will be wrong. Fortunately finance people actually do know how to deal with a standard deviation if you press them to be bothered because they have to do it for expected return calculations.
When I'm scheduling anything I care a LOT more about the variation than I do the averages, particularly if the averages are certified wild-ass-guesses.
One team wrote code to detect an emissions test.
There is no need to write special code to detect an emissions test. The cars emissions should meet legal standards at all times. The moment someone asked for such code alarm bells should have been going off right then and there. Especially given the not-a-secret decision to not install a urea injection system. These aren't engineer who write code without any knowledge of the effects of their code and they don't work by themselves and never talk to others. Plus there appears to be evidence that the engineers were WELL aware of the problem because when it first came up they engaged in all sorts of delaying tactics.
No, there were engineers at VW who knew what was happening and it wasn't just one guy with a beard.
Somebody knew, somebody high up knew, but I rather doubt that everyone on the engineering bench knew, and that means that they had to be fed plausible stories along the way.
Spare me. The engineers were the ones that eventually spilled the beans on this. They weren't fooled by some clever management strategy. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew or should have known that it was illegal. While maybe not every engineer involved knew, more than a few certainly did without question. The engineers at VW aren't dumb. I know a few personally. Please stop with the attempts to find clever ways to not have to blame the engineers who were guilty of helping to commit fraud. Management may have ordered the crime but the engineers were the ones that carried it out.
The real world is never that black and white.
I've been in the real world a long time. Frequently the real world it is actually that black and white. Not always but quite often. This VW thing seems to be pretty clearly in the black and white camp. It is REALLY hard to imagine a credible scenario where the engineers who implemented this were not fully aware (or should have been) that what they were doing was against the law. They (almost certainly) knew it and they went ahead anyway.
And the email reply might be, "come see me in my office".
Then you know they are asking for something that you probably shouldn't be doing.
Make sure to get it in an email form? How are you going to do that?
Easy. You start asking questions in email. Act innocent or ignorant if necessary. Unless the person is ordering you to do something obviously illegal (in which case you should quit or get legal representation) they aren't likely to act all cloak and dagger. If they do, do you really want to work for that person anyway?
I did get an email verifying that I had questioned it, but then I found out that all our emails are automatically deleted after 6 months or something like that.
Nothing prevents you from printing emails of instructions to implement dubious decisions. I've done this from time to time just to protect myself when I worked at a large company.
You get fired now, or you implement something dubious - what do you choose?
If it is clearly illegal or will be very likely to cause major problems then you should seriously consider walking. If it isn't so clear then you get them to document their instructions to you and you keep a copy (print if you have to) for your records to cover your ass should it be a problem down the line. Make sure you document your objections and make it clear that you have taken every reasonable effort to ensure that what you are doing is legal. If the decision is merely dumb but legal, same thing but don't worry so much about ensuring legality.
You get requirements that you aren't sure are a good idea or the right thing to do, and you question them - but PHB assures you that it's all been approved and cleared by the people on higher floors, and you may even contact some of them and hear their agreement.
Then congratulations you are a rube who got used and have now committed a crime. But frankly I have a VERY hard time believing that the engineers involved did not know that what they were doing would violate the law. They wrote code specifically to determine when an emissions test was being performed and to adjust the emissions substantially. The ONLY reason to do that is to cheat a test which they damn well ought to know is illegal. So was it negligence or fraud? Either way they basically engaged in the functional equivalent of dumping toxic waste and should be accountable.
I wonder whether someone actually gave the order to implement a 'test defeat device' or they just started to optimize the engine to comply with regulation and to pass the test and then they went too far.
Someone in management made the decision to not install a urea injection system which is necessary to keep emissions to legal levels but costs a lot of money. Reportedly something like $400/vehicle. So it seems pretty clear that their "solution" to the problem was simply to cheat. This wasn't a case of optimization gone awry. They flat out knew what they were doing and went ahead with it anyway. As soon as they made the decision to not install urea injection, they effectively decided to cheat at that time because they were asking for the technologically impossible. There is no way they didn't know that their decision to leave off such a key piece of equipment would not result in unacceptable emissions. The engineers at VW aren't dumb. The decision was made for financial reasons (not surprising) but was aided and abetted by a bunch of engineers that should have known better.
The only real question seems to be who made the decision and who was responsible for executing it and covering it up.
It's been a while since I watched my car being tested but do they hook up the car to a computer terminal of some sort? Could those be used to trigger test mode?
The test mode was triggered by monitoring which wheels were turning, position of the steering wheel, etc.
Basically they wanted to avoid the cost of installing a urea injection system so they cheated instead. Honda engineers were reported to be perplexed about how they managed to do this miraculous feat of engineering.
Here's a good article about what is known so far:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos...
Lots of vital unreplaceable/unrepairable parts would probably be well beyond their design specification and thus prone to failure.
What on it cannot be repaired or replaced? Why would they design it that way? It's basically modular in construction as far as I can tell so it's not clear to me why they couldn't replace any given portion of it. Is it that we don't/won't have an adequate lift vehicle? Just terrible design?
Is there some technical reason the ISS will no longer work after the mid-2020s or is it merely a budget issue? Why are we not keeping it up there if it is still serving whatever purpose it was designed for?
I stopped going to the cinema when the price of two tickets became more than the price of the DVD (and that's before you add snacks / drinks). I bought a projector and a reasonable surround-sound system...
Sounds like you don't go on a lot of dates...
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "how much do you NOT want to spend an evening with that guy?"
Can you afford to walk away from your job right this minute?
Yes I can. In fact I have done just that on two occasions.
Knowing you'll get no unemployment compensation, no welfare, no assistance of any kind?
Nice strawman you have there.
It's one thing to voluntarily follow orders, quite another when the person giving the orders is holding the welfare of your family hostage against your good behavior. In my book people who refuse to recognize this are complicit with management in the act, they directly help management perpetuate the conditions that let management get away with these crimes.
Then you gather evidence of the crime and how you are being ordered to commit an illegal act under duress and you leave as soon as you can manage it. This crime didn't happen overnight though and your argument is a strawman really. This took months if not years. The engineers who did it were well paid and educated people with options and most likely a social safety net. The notion that they were anything but willing participants strikes me as absurd. And frankly even if they were in a tough situation it STILL doesn't excuse their actions. What they did was a fraud and a disgrace to the profession and I strongly believe those responsible should see time behind bars for it.
You really need to tone it down a bit. Your black and white, absolutist, perfect world assertions are starting to undermine some of the points you're making.
I disagree. I think this situation is very clear and I think attempts to defend the engineers who did this is a disgrace to the profession. I think these engineers should be in jail for their actions and I make no apologies for that stance. If you think this was in any way justified by the engineers then you and I have an irreconcilable difference of opinion.
We don't know, yet, whether there was an official directive, threats of termination, a group of engineers slipping one past management or what. It's very easy to sit back and say "resign" without understanding the situation that the engineers were in.
I don't care what their situation was. This action was very clearly a fraud. If they did it under duress that might be a mitigating factor in sentencing but it doesn't excuse what they did at all. Is it ok to dump toxic garbage because you were afraid of losing your job? Is it ok to lie about what your product can do because you are afraid of losing your job? No it isn't. This is very clear.
Also, the comparisons to Nazi Germany, and other examples of "just following orders" coming from some posters are way out of line.
Again I disagree. The consequences and grotesqueness of the crimes are different but the defense being put forth ("just following orders") for illegal and immoral acts is identical and equally wrong in both cases. You would think that lesson would have been learned long ago in VW given their history and especially since they are part owned by the German government.
If you can't tell the difference between genocide and a fraudulent product, you need to get help.
And if you can't understand an analogy and a rhetorical argument then you need to grow up. If you can't understand that performing an illegal act that will harm others (through pollution and deceptive financial gain) cannot be defended by saying you were just doing what you were told then you need to get a clue. Nobody including me is saying they were committing a crime on the level of genocide or that the punishment should be the same. But the basic lesson is that it is never ok to do something illegal just because you were ordered to by a supervisor.
How does one ``accidently'' engage in a cover up?
It's not actually clear if it was a cover up or merely incompetence. You can argue that the difference shouldn't matter and I might agree with you but it isn't clear that anyone acted with deliberate fraud in mind. Maybe they did but the point is that the initial engineering wasn't a fraud, only subsequent actions once there was evidence of a problem.
I seem to recall that GM was/is in hot water because there was some internal communication that pointed out the cause of the problem but that management chose to `downplay' (nice way of saying `cover up') the problem. Recalls cost money, ya know.
Right but that's not necessarily so weird. You issue a recall if the problem is of a certain severity and if you have hard proof but it's not hard to see how for a rare condition (a few out of millions) management might draw the conclusion that there isn't enough evidence to warrant a recall. Easy to see the decision as wrong in hindsight but at the time it may not have been so clear. Of course it is just as possible that it was very clear (or should have been obviously clear) that a recall was warranted and they tried to cover up the problem rather than fix it.
Your boss tells you to do something, you refuse to do it, you get fired and they get someone else to do what they want anyway.
If your boss is ordering you to do something that you damn well know is illegal then you should refuse. If they want to fire you for that then so be it. This is not a complicated scenario. Having a family to feed is not adequate justification for fraud and frankly weren't not talking about the sort of workers who cannot ever get another job. These are well paid engineers with options.
it was the decision of someone in a suit, not the author(s) of the code in question.
Bullshit. That's the "I was just following orders" defense. The order may have come from up high but the decision to execute that illegal order makes the engineers every bit as culpable. The guy executing the crime is just as guilty as the guy who plans the crime.
There might not be a 'proper engineering' solution to the emissions problem.
That's not an excuse to commit fraud even if true.
Nobody ever said, "go forth and flaunt the law" maybe $Engineer did not even realize what he was doing violated the testing rules.
I have spent a good portion of my career as an engineer in the automotive industry. There is NO WAY the engineers doing this were not fully aware that what they were doing was in violation of the law. To program this they would have to be aware of what the rules were and so they cannot argue that they didn't realize what they were doing. They weren't stupid, they weren't naive. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time they did it.
No, this was a deliberate fraud. Probably ordered by management but executed and carried out by engineers who damn well knew or should have known what they were doing was illegal as hell.
This is what happens when you exempt corporate engineers from licensing standards. There are no repercussions, no sense of proper conduct, and no accountability?
You think a license makes people honest? There are plenty of doctors and lawyers and other licenses and bonded professionals that behave unethically and even criminally. A license doesn't solve this problem. All a license does is attempt to ensure a base level of functional competence. It doesn't ensure honesty one bit.
Why do we allow engineers to practice engineering without a license if they work for a corporation?
Well, speaking as an engineer, it's probably because for most types of engineering a license would serve no meaningful public interest and would not improve the quality of engineering. It simply doesn't matter for what I do. Certain types of engineers (notably civil and sometimes in areas like aviation and others where bodily harm can result) ARE required to be licensed and have to pass appropriate examinations. For others like the type of engineer I am (industrial) it doesn't matter at all. The worst thing that happens if I screw up is the company makes less money. My wife is an MD and if she screws up, people can die. See the difference?
The one who caused the GM ignition switch problem hasn't even been charged.
The GM fiasco was at core an engineering mistake which was later (apparently) covered up. The mistake isn't worthy of charges. Nobody at GM set out to make a defective part. The cover up that (maybe) happened later might be worthy of charges depending on whether it was deliberate or not.
The VW case however was a fraud right from the start. They clearly did this intentionally and it clearly meets the definition of fraud. People at VW should go to jail for this.