I don't implement anything I can't/don't understand.
I'm a generalist, so I make it my business to know a bit of everyone else's business. If I can't look at a spec without seeing issues down the chain that the spec makes no mention of, I end up feeling that it is my duty to make sure to raise the question until I am satisfied with the answer.
I don't always get the most satisfying answer, and I haven't had to put the career on the line by doing so yet; but I'm prepared to do so nevertheless.
I will not be part of the next THERAC-25/MAX fiasco. And if I've learned anything from this decade, it is that engineers as a whole may need to organize against those that would seek to have us do unethical work.
It wouldn't stop the practice, and God help me, I don't want the field locked behind accreditation/licensure...
However, I don't see any other defense or measure that would allow for putting the kebash on bad work. There has to be a price for bad corporate behavior in terms of ruthlessly pursuing performance that can only be met through wink wink nudge nudge style inducement to unethical behavior. At least, no way besides publically outting a company's dirty laundry. That really isn't satisfying though, because that requires a sacrifice of somebody's integrity every time, and no one wants to touch you after that.
I just can't converge to a satisfying middle-ground with the right incentives. Besides maybe anonymous whistleblowing to an appropriate watchdog agency. Even then though, issues are raised in that you are leaving the regulation up to people who feel insecure reporting something when they have everything to lose.
For #3 I mean it's "we realize that failure has bigger repercussions than a fail-whale, but we can't afford to do any of the ISO processes that have been proven to work." Sometimes I feel like my only job on those sorts of systems is to bang the "Normalization of deviance is not okay" drum in every meeting.
All failures need to go to the PM and get signed off on, otherwise the PM has a false sense of the actual reliability of the system. If the PM wants to get more budget for safety concerns, they should be able to hand a stack of 100s of pages of papers to whomever controls the purse strings and say "These are the failures in the last N days" If all they can say is "some of my engineers have expressed concerns" then 0 change will happen.
I'm a generalist, so I make it my business to know a bit of everyone else's business. If I can't look at a spec without seeing issues down the chain that the spec makes no mention of, I end up feeling that it is my duty to make sure to raise the question until I am satisfied with the answer.
I don't always get the most satisfying answer, and I haven't had to put the career on the line by doing so yet; but I'm prepared to do so nevertheless.
I will not be part of the next THERAC-25/MAX fiasco. And if I've learned anything from this decade, it is that engineers as a whole may need to organize against those that would seek to have us do unethical work.
It wouldn't stop the practice, and God help me, I don't want the field locked behind accreditation/licensure...
However, I don't see any other defense or measure that would allow for putting the kebash on bad work. There has to be a price for bad corporate behavior in terms of ruthlessly pursuing performance that can only be met through wink wink nudge nudge style inducement to unethical behavior. At least, no way besides publically outting a company's dirty laundry. That really isn't satisfying though, because that requires a sacrifice of somebody's integrity every time, and no one wants to touch you after that.
I just can't converge to a satisfying middle-ground with the right incentives. Besides maybe anonymous whistleblowing to an appropriate watchdog agency. Even then though, issues are raised in that you are leaving the regulation up to people who feel insecure reporting something when they have everything to lose.
It is a frustrating issue to say the least.