"I solve practical problems. Like where all the necessary holes should be on passenger aircraft, and when they should appear."
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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"If I refuse to build a deathtrap, they'll just get someone else to do it, so I might as well get paid to murder people."
That's your fucking concept of ethics? Really?
And you go ahead and bring up nazi Germany. It disturbs me that you're also basically saying "well, we all know that most people totally will just go along with sanctioned murder." Maybe it's true, but I'm condemning that truth. You're just accepting it. Almost cheering it.
My dude, the basic standard for humanity IS supposed to be "no, I won't participate in murder." I don't have to build a time machine to condemn people who went along with the fucking nazis and I don't have to show you an engineering degree to say that ENGINEERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR UPHOLDING THE BASIC ETHICS OF THEIR PROFESSION.
Yes, I will demand ethical behavior. I WILL judge anyone who fails to uphold the most basic and simple ethical principles. I will not just throw my hands up and say "whattayagonnado? It was the corpos that killed all those people. Don't even worry about it, engineer guy. You probably did your best, as far as I know."
Fuck that attitude. Like I said, the CEOs can't design the fucking aircraft themselves. If all the engineers refuse to make deathtraps, then there won't be deathtraps. Once again, it's called fucking responsibility. No two ways about it.
EDIT: It is MESSED UP that I'm this many replies deep into this conversation, and I'm not seeing anyone chiming in to say "yeah, I'm an engineer, and I do think we have a responsibility to uphold basic ethics."
Instead, I'm just getting downvoted and casually insulted by edgelords, who think they "kn0w H0w teH r3al w0Rld w3rks"
Professional ethics and standards are a thing. I am categorically NOT the weirdo, here. Can an engineer PLEASE back me up, on this?
Buddy, I'm an engineer, and let me tell you: You don't know shit about what you're talking about. You can have the highest ethics in the entire world, it won't weight shit opposed to management.
I worked on a project that was constantly rushed and forced to add things that neared the computationally impossible. Every single engineer on my team was BEGGING the management to not ship into production as it was, because there was no way in hell it would work without causing serious problems. They did not care, and when we said that it was impossible to meet the deadline, what was management's solution? Lay off the entire team and hire a batch of juniors that did not know better, and the product was still shipped, and even if the juniors hadn't, they'd still find someone that could make it barely work enough to be delivered.
Surprise, surprise, the product failed on a critical time and it cost MILLIONS (not thousands, not hundreds of thousands. millions) of dollars. And you are saying that I should be held responsible for my moronic supervisors' actions? Fuck off and never come back, idiot.
Lack of workplace experience is no excuse for unethical behavior. I don't know if you took an oath at the end of your engineer's training, but there are a lot of colleges and training programs where they actively participate in that process. You go through a ceremony, where you swear a solemn oath to deal fairly and honestly, and never misuse your skills as an engineer.
Whether any specific engineer has actually taken one of these oaths really doesn't matter to me. I still hold you all accountable. If ALL of you refuse to do unethical shit, then the suits won't be able to do it themselves.
No matter how many times you hide behind the coward's whine of "you don't know anything about the real world, mate," I will still know what ethics actually are. Once again, all you're doing is regurgitating the old "I was just following orders" argument. That's where we came in, on this conversation.
That's not a valid excuse. The responsibility for fucked up engineering projects lies with the engineers who perform the work. You DO have a choice. "B-b-b-but my boss told me to do it" will never be an excuse, no matter how many times you repeat yourself.
EDIT: I realize you are contending that, in your example, the suits eventually would have found someone who would have been able to finish the project. That IS STILL NOT A VALID EXCUSE. At the very least, those people who finally did the task, even if they weren't qualified engineers, are indeed responsible for the fuck-up. Do you believe assassins should be let off the hook, and only the mafia bosses who hire them are responsible for those crimes? Sure, the person who hires the hit-man should be held responsible, but the trigger-man IS equally responsible for his own actions.
You're not a slave. You're not a robot. If you take an action, it is your own responsibility. I don't see how you can reasonably disagree.
Listen here, buddy. If you think I'm putting my ass on the line for the fuckers up in management, you're delusional. You're saying I should be criminally charged for decisions I didn't have any control over whatsoever? What happened at my previous company would have happened way sooner if I wasn't trying to hold the entire shit together, pulling all-nighters and going directly against direct orders. And I could have risked going to jail for it, because I cared about the innocents that would lose a lot of money should the program crash on them. And now you're saying my ethics are wrong, even after all I've done? You're completely delusional.
Oh, so you're saying that everyone else with real experience on the field is completely wrong and you, who has never worked a day in the area and doesn't know shit about it, are the epitome of morality? Yeah, I'm siding with the engineers I know, who have been through the shit I know we have to endure constantly, rather than the idiot arguing that we are murderers for no clear reason.
If those assassins had the lives of their own families and their own on the line, yes, there are even laws for those cases, I wonder why. Maybe because people who actually studied ethics and worked with it for decades know that it isn't black and white.
In the situation I mentioned, I could either abandon the project entirely, which would have caused even more damage, or I could try to patchwork it until I was forced to stop. I chose the later. And you have the ignorance and the absolute nerve to tell me I am responsible for what happened? Get off your high horse buddy, because you and your twisted sense of ethics would have condemned many innocent people. Look no further than the British Post Office Scandal. Are the people who were condemned responsible for the error? Were the engineers? No, it was the suits that refused to admit that they might have rushed the engineers too much and the program was faulty.
Not necessarily. But you're still LYING when you say you don't have control over your own actions. Again: YOU. ARE. NOT. AN. AUTOMATON. You ARE responsible for your own actions. If you're not responsible for what your hands and your mind have done, who is? I am talking about right and wrong. If you do wrong, you do wrong. It's truly upsetting, how many times I'm having to describe the concept of ethics to you.
I don't need to show you any specific degree or experience to explain right and wrong. Ethics exist. It's not a matter of opinion. It's not a choice. If you participate in unethical behavior, you don't just get to say "but someone else told me to do it," and expect other people to accept that shit.
You accuse me of having a "twisted" sense of ethics. No. You have literally chosen to abandon the entire concept of ethics. You're the degenerate, in this situation. You're making excuse after excuse, not only for your own behavior, but for basically ANY person who has ever done anything wrong, in the entire field.
If you're even still reading this, please take note of something: I actually WILL admit that I don't know all the specifics of your personal situation. I am, in fact, NOT accusing you of anything.
We're only in this fucking argument because you are ready and willing to say "LOL, IT'S OKAY THAT THOSE BOEING ENGINEERS COULD HAVE KILLED TWO OR THREE PEOPLE ON THAT ONE FLIGHT. IT WAS ALLLLL THE BUSINESS GUYS' FAULT."
Fuck. That.
Maybe your little penny-ante, we-designed-some-cheaped-out-brackets situation, with your not-Boeing, low-stakes-ass company was totally not a big deal. And not something you should have risked going to prison for. Whatever. Fine.
The following statement is the only thing I want you to agree with: "WHEN AN ENGINEER KNOWINGLY CHOOSES TO SIGN OFF ON A DESIGN THAT IS LIKELY TO LITERALLY KILL PEOPLE, HE OR SHE IS COMMITTING A SERIOUS BREACH OF ETHICS."
That's it. I'm not saying the suits aren't also to blame. Of course they share the blame. But that doesn't excuse the engineer abandoning his or her own ethics. I'm also not saying the situation is "easy." I'm just saying, when it comes to the point of GETTING PEOPLE KILLED, you absolutely do bear the responsibility of your own actions, and I fucking expect you to do EVERYTHING in your power to prevent the death, report people to the authorities, refuse to get paid for killing people, etc.
I really and truly don't think I'm being unreasonable. People only get one life. Real people have families who grieve for them, until their own deaths. You can't undo death. So, yes, I expect EVERYONE to go to whatever length they need to, in order to avoid participating in murder. THAT'S NOT AN INSANE DEMAND.
Alright. Then imagine I am a kitchen knife manufacturer. I make a kitchen knife and sold it. Someone uses that knife to murder someone. Am I responsible for the murder? Because I just reduced the argument you've been making this entire time, except I removed the engineering part from it.
I make programs. I make them according to a specification, which is defined by the client AND the management. After I make the program, it's out of my hands how the fuck it is handled. If one of those two parties use or modify the program in ways they didn't tell me, and which eventually result in disaster, because they didn't fucking tell me that they wanted to use it for those actions and I couldn't possibly predict it, should I be blamed when the program fails? Normal glass bottles weren't made to hold lava, why should I be blamed when someone uses the bottle to hold lava and ends up melting their hands?