No. Actually, professional engineers have a legal responsibility to do their work correctly and can be held personally accountable for failures to do so. This problem was not a failure of a management.
Its just a lack of respect on the part of management for engineering. The engineers clearly stated that the new system was necessary. The managers just refused to respect their expertise or the integrity of the technology.
It sounds from the above comment that even if engineers raise this issue, their legal department dismisses it. I find it bizarre for any serious company.
In civil engineering there is a responsible engineer. Nobody cares what management says - business takes a back seat to public safety, the engineer is in charge. Designs and products are required by law to be backed by an engineer who is personally responsible so the business excuse of “management told us” no longer carries sway: management cannot release a product without a responsible engineer by law so management MUST ultimately be subservient to the math.
Software “engineers” cling to their management driven paradigm and resist true accountability and responsibility for engineers because, ultimately, it’s easier and more profitably personally to hide behind the excuse that “management” made the decision.
I find that engineering vs management is not a very useful discussion point. Management is composed of engineers too and engineers are responsible for the output of their work. Production of something that doesn't work is an engineering failure.
It's depressing that everyone went along with this. Clearly there's a lack of impartial checks and balances in the process.
It's lack of training I think. A good engineer should think about the consequences of her actions. People in the industry, it seems, just don't. Very disappointing.
Typical of management to shut down engineers with superior cognition, integrity and foresight.
If you have the ability to do so, don't let business types control your products. Engineers should stick together and build in their own. The investor and executive class, that doesn't do actual problem solving but just focuses on using other people to collect more money regardless of all else, should not be rewarded.
Regardless, there's this contentious relationship between decision makers and engineers because the former can't properly evaluate the work of the latter. Because of this, they either a) let bad engineers get away with stuff they shouldn't, or b) over-compensate and refuse to trust good engineers. It's a lose-lose.
Because they place little value on the expertise of their engineering staff, as evidenced by the comical restrictions they inflict on intelligent professionals.
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