World News

22311 readers

8 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

Musk Overruled Tesla Engineers, And Now They Are In Serious Trouble (medium.com)

submitted 2 years ago by lysy@szmer.info to c/news@beehaw.org

83 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

This is true, but when safety is on the line it actually goes further than that. As an engineer you have an ethical duty to say no to making a product unsafe for end users or the general public.

It doesn’t matter if you get fired, if your boss goes to the media to bitch about you, if your boss threatens to sue you, you as an engineer hold a position of public trust to keep the people that use your product safe. If you don’t respect that and take it seriously, well we see where oceangate ended up.

[–] EthicalAI@beehaw.org 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah my boss has been going back and forth with me on this for months. Wanting to release unsecured products to the general public. I’m getting exhausted with him. I hold the keys and frequently I’ve told him no, and threatened to quit. Each time they just retreat back and hold a meeting how it will “stay on dev for now”. The features aren’t even feasible to release in the near future but I know they will force the issue. My resignation letter is on the table.

[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I’ve been there, my boss once interrupted me to ask me to turn our product into a quadcopter

[–] sparkl_motion@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t believe turning a commercial diesel filling station into a quad copter doesn’t seem feasible.”

[–] Deestan@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

It tracks with the zoomers. Make it happen.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t believe turning a commercial diesel filling station into a quad copter doesn’t seem feasible.”

You just need to think outside the box. like these lads did: https://youtu.be/ReAa2WFm8Vc?t=16

[–] realChem@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This is the most management-ass "feature" request

[–] dark_stang@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The number of times I've rejected something because of security flaws (usually database injection), only to see other engineers later approve and merge the pull request is infuriating. There seems to always be an engineer who is willing to make an unsafe product.

[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

Yep, it's a damn shame, but we're gonna let them do that because we don't want to be responsible for deaths or security flaws and ultimately there's organizations and people out there who value that if our current jobs don't

[–] chrisn@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That value is instilled in many types of engineering, but not as much in software engineering.

[–] RandoCalrandian@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

And the people paying the engineers are highly motivated to keep it that way