Yeah, great move throwing software engineers under the bus. Who do they think is their customer base in the US?
Itâs not just engineers being thrown under the bus (theyâre cheap and plentiful, after all) but the idea of total quality control, ISO 9000 and all that stuff. Many giant multinational businesses will doubtless be thrilled with VW for their demonstration of its worthlessness. Iâm sure theyâll be lining up to shake Michael Horn by the something.
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Did it ever work as intended? I was involved in a few audits and certifications and QM was done more often than not as an end in itself.
I really hope any software engineer finding himself unexpectedly under the bus will have thought to save any relevant internal emails offsite, before heâs locked out of the company server. Ideally lodged with a friendly lawyer.
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It was never going to be anything as rigorous as actual science, but applied sensibly/thoughtfully it can do some real good and provide an internationally recognisable imprimatur which fellow emperors - especially unclothed ones - can agree to honour. Itâs the loss of this last aspect which will so endear Mr Horn to his peers.
Letâs see if I got this straight (which is sort of the rhetorical equivalent of âhold my beerââŚ)
- One Totally Ethical manager wrote the requirements âMinimize Emissions, Maximize Power, Maximize Efficiency, Minimize Costs, Minimize Development Time, Pass All Testsâ
- All of the engineers said things about fast, cheap, good, somebody elseâs department, vessels of fertilizer providing rapid growth for the company.
- One rogue senior requirements engineer refined the requirement to
IF (DetectWhetherItsATest) THEN CHEAT(); - Another rogue engineer wrote a âDetectWhetherItsATestâ module for the engine control software, with options for âNOx Testâ and âFuel Efficiency Testâ and âEngine Power Testâ.
- One engineer wrote a âRun as cleanly as possibleâ routine, while another wrote a âLudicrous Mode Speedâ routine, and both of them had teams of hardware, software, and integration engineers test that their routines worked.
- Another rogue engineer implemented the function
Defun CHEAT(): IF (NOxTest) THEN Mode=Clean ELSEIF (EfficiencyTest) THEN Mode=Lean ELSEIF (PowerTest) THEN Mode=Ludicrous - That engineer ran unit mode tests and had the QA department do integration testing.
- Another rogue engineer brought his dog to work on BringYourDogToWork Day, and his rogue dog ATE EVERYBODYâS HOMEWORK, err, requirements, development, unit testing, integration testing and process documentation.
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This is why, if you are an engineer, you document the hell out of everything youâve been told to do. A past manager of mine once wanted to do something I felt was wrong. It wasnât anywhere near this magnitude (i.e. it wasnât illegal, just really stupid). I made my case for doing it the right way. He said he understood what I was saying, but we were going to do it this other way anyway. I insisted he put down in writing that this was being done over my objection, and he did. Luckily, the project stalled and died for other reasons, but my ass was covered.
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So some software engineer knew that the engine wouldnât pass emissions so they decided on their own to surreptitiously reprogram the ECU code to fix the problem. I donât buy this for a millisecond.
Software development - especially embedded systems software development just doesnât work this way, especially at big companies in highly regulated industries with huge R&D divisions like VW.
I bet someone at the highest levels in the company said, âwe need these cars to pass emissions testing, make it happenâ and âspare the details about howâ for some plausible deniability.
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By knowing that it will work and no harm will come to them.
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Just a few bad apples, eh?
The sure do get aroundâŚ
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