Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday May 15 2019, @11:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the did-you-see-that? dept.

In an observation piece at Scientific American, Ralph Nader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader) writes about the decades of struggles by conscientious engineers—whether employees or consultants—who strive to balance professional ethics with occupational survival.

Nader writes:

[...] today's engineers are working in an improved environment for taking their conscience to work. Yet much more remains to be done to safeguard the ability of engineers to speak truth to the powers-that-be.

For starters, the word whistle-blower—once popularly meant to describe a snitch or a disgruntled employee—now describes an ethical person willing to put his or her job on the line in order to expose corrupt, illegal, fraudulent and harmful activities. Indeed, in the aftermath of recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes, the media routinely and positively refers to disclosures by "Boeing whistle-blowers." Congressional investigating committees and federal agencies have called for whistle-blowers to come forward and shed light on corporate misdeeds and governmental agency lapses.

To put it mildly, this was not always the case.

LINK: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/when-engineers-become-whistleblowers/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday May 15 2019, @01:36PM (5 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday May 15 2019, @01:36PM (#843813) Homepage

    Whistleblowing is not an after-the-event practice. You whistleblow *as you notice* the problem, not after.

    Hence, there needs to be a new term: One that describes whistleblowing AFTER you've had reasonable cause to believe something might happen AND it actually does happen AND you then get blamed for not saying something earlier.

    That's not whistleblowing, it's buck passing.

    "Well, we told them". Did you? When? Where? Officially? Recorded? Do you have even a handwritten memo of what you said to whom and when? You made your concerns known to the FAA? No? Then it's not whistleblowing. It's grumbling, complying, and then having a later "oh shit" moment.

    Post-event whistleblowing is blame diversion. You knew it was dangerous, you continued to engineer it that way, you know it was being sold as an incomplete system, yet you didn't say anything until two planes worth of people died.

    I am absolutely 100% for whistleblowing, where problems exist. But you need to start it early, record your objection and be specifically overruled, not just nod along and get on the news a few years later when you can have an "I told you so" moment.

    I have had, one more than one occasion, cause to document exactly what I'm being asked to do, by whom, and their reasoning. Nothing that affected safety (that's just an instant refusal to comply). Nothing that affected the general public. But just "No, come on, that's not right and you know it" moments. People I work with *recognise* a certain tone of email from me. When they get them, they think about their request and - more often than not - back down and never mention it again. The ones who try to do it "on the sly", come and see me in-person, and try to convince me and not record anything? I assure you, I have a record of it. And it still won't happen without me being able to say "I raised objections, I documented them, they didn't acknowledge my concerns, so I raised them again, and person X specifically and deliberately overruled my objections... and here's the proof."

    Hell, people come to *me* and ask me to be their representative in some issues, over any union or HR consultant.

    You're not a whistleblower if you didn't raise noted objections at the time, and escalate them, and get a name of who you escalated them to, and proof that they took on the issue. Otherwise you're just a quiet grumbler who wants their fifteen minutes.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:45PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:45PM (#843883) Journal

    Well said. This is exactly the sort of training and wisdom that was (and still is?) not thought important in college engineering programs. Last I heard, education in engineering still focuses exclusively on the technical. Engineers have to deal with non engineers who don't really understand that engineering is not magic, and that engineers are not all powerful masters of this mystery who can make things work out any way they please. When told of problems and obstacles, they are perpetually suspicious that the engineers are lying to them, just making stuff up to give themselves excuses for slow progress and laziness, because engineers are geniuses who can make anything if only they try. More than once I've heard protestations of impossibility disbelieved, with the response that "if you can't do it, we'll fire you and hire someone who can." Many engineers are cowed by that and resort to telling management what they want to hear, to keep their jobs. It's a mistake to go that route, but it is very hard to take the high road when it seems your job and even your career could be on the line. And BTW, don't believe them when they hint otherwise, hint that your career could be negatively impacted by your refusal to go along.

    Bosses like that are often well versed in manipulating their underlings. It behooves the good engineer to understand that, and know of and be prepared for the common manipulations they will try. Like, how about accusing the engineer of being a wimp or a quitter? Or, they can take a more positive line, butter you up by praising your engineering skills to the sky, just before they hit you with the impossible request.

    Another thing the non engineers will do is embrace a stupid idea that will save a little money in the short term, but cause more trouble and damage in the long term than it's worth. They will want to cut corners, cheap out, cheat, violate safety standards, anything to boost that bottom line this quarter, and the heck with the future. And they will not understand or care about the risks that they are asking others to take, statistics and probability and "mathy" stuff is not their strength. And asking others to run the risks is very much a standard play of theirs. If they get their way, then when things blow up, they won't step up and take responsibility, you can count on that. By forcing them to accept the consequences of their decisions, making it impossible for them to weasel out, you will concentrate their minds and most of the time, they will back down and decide that the risk is too much after all. Don't count on one meeting to quash a bad idea. Very often, it will come back, in different clothes, but still the same underneath.

    It is not weak and not a distraction from engineering to record who said what, and get things in writing, with dates. It's essential. Don't buy any propaganda or bull about how the boss is hurt that by keeping records, you show that you don't trust him, or you're violating his privacy, and you're not being a team player and a good role model or whatever. The fools who make impossible demands, don't trust their own engineers, and get their way through bullying and intimidation absolutely will blame everything on the engineers when the eventual train wreck happens. And no, they will have convinced themselves that they aren't lying, that the engineers really did betray them. However, they will still be the first ones lining up at the paper shredder to destroy all evidence of their own malfeasance and incompetence. The wise engineer will shut that crap down before the train ever leaves the station. Refuse to get on board. However, it can be awfully hard to call it. If you get it wrong, you refused to board because you were sure it would wreck, and then it doesn't, and you didn't lose your job immediately, well, you may be one of the walking dead, just shuffling along until the next layoff. You need to line up another job.

    But if you're right, and refusing to be a party to a doomed project costs you your job, it's for the best, it really is. Most of the time, if you stand up to the crap, you will discover that they were bluffing. But not always. You can't count on them not to be idiots either, and see that firing you is shooting themselves in the foot, if indeed it is. They may not see it that way, and will blow their foot right off.

    Yes, yes, without that paycheck, you may be looking at losing your car and home. That's also why another essential preparation a good engineer must make is save some money. As I heard it put many years ago: Kid, always keep some Fuck You Money. What's Fuck You Money? So you can tell your boss "Fuck You." On that point, another crappy thing some managers will try is ask that you "show commitment" by getting into debt up to your eyeballs so that your life will self-destruct if your pay is interrupted for even one month. And don't heed the bull about you being a "flight risk" for not being an idiot with your finances. I have had more than one boss who noticed I was not spending big. One saw that I had not bought a new car, and actually told me that was Bad, because that meant I could leave the job. They really seem to think they can have it both ways on that sort of stuff, find an idiot savant, a person who is a genius with engineering, but a total moron with money. And who do you think built the whole student loan system, making it a whole lot harder to keep some Fuck You Money? Managerial types who believe that workers perform best when their employer is holding guns to their heads, that's who.

    One other thing is, don't storm away from that job, screaming that all the managers are a bunch of treacherous, lying, idiot scumbags, no matter how true that is. We know. A lot of workplaces are like that. Those kind of managers have to be dealt with, if not at the current job, then all too likely at the next job, and the one after that. Keep them on a tight leash with your communication and record keeping, and most will behave themselves a whole lot better. It will also reassure them that you are competent and working hard, because, let's face it, there are plenty of bad engineers and fake wannabe engineers who try to get along by snowing managers, feed them a load of bull. Managers are right not to unreservedly trust engineers, not when there are plenty of bullshit artists trying to fake their way through a career in engineering.

    Yes, it would be a better world if managers were all fine, upstanding leaders who would never stoop to backstabbing their underlings. Even with such fine managers, you still want to keep records. And communicate, communicate, communicate. No, you may not zone out and focus on a project in a lab and go a whole week without saying anything to anyone. If you don't stay in touch and track things, you could still lose out over a misunderstanding, a mistaken assumption. No one did anything dirty, but you're out of a job anyway because you have nothing to show that you did your duty, made the best calls you could according to the information you had.

    There are circumstances in which quitting is best, there is the manager who is so awful he won't behave even when you have the evidence to get him fired and then you learn there some nepotism or something else going on that makes him untouchable. There are also appropriate places and times to air the dirty laundry, blow that whistle. As soon as possible, meaning, the first time some serious shit was pulled, well before the derailment has started, is one of the best times for whistleblowing. The longer you wait, the more you become complicit.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @01:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @01:47AM (#844069)

      Replying as Anonymous so i don't tip off my colleagues to the strategy.

      Whenever i am starting the interview process, i always buy one share of voting stock in the company i am interviewing with.

      Whenever i am starting a contract with a company, i specify that a single share of voting stock vests on day 1 of the contract.

      This is my right to sue.

      If the employee's of a company that i own, are following practises that can damage the value of my investment, then i will go out of my way to have them fired, as they are costing me money.

      If every engineer did this, along with getting everything in writing, then companies would be forced to be more ethical, using the existing levers of the law.

      when it's economically worth the extra effort, i will go as far as to get some pre-prepared injunctions, that can be set up in advance, in order to stop the specific forms of poor practises that i have observed.

      The short-term sociopaths that are unhappy with this, will be removed from the company, as i explicitly bar them from operating within the company i partly own while the lawsuit is taking place, and bar them from using company resources to defend themselves in a lawsuit, so it costs them personally.

      If they don't like it, then they should stop practising unethical and illegal behaviours.

      As Naseem Taleb says,If you don't have Skin-In-The-Game, then you won't really be motivated to get things right."

      By putting them in a situation where behaving unethically costs them personally, you can get them to behave ethically as it is more personally profitable.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 16 2019, @02:31AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 16 2019, @02:31AM (#844083) Journal

      Last I heard, education in engineering still focuses exclusively on the technical.

      You're not describing problems that can be solved via academic education. And my take is that a good portion of engineering faculty wouldn't be in academia, if they were making the right sort of ethical decisions in the first place.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:06PM (#843927)

    You whistleblow *as you notice* the problem, not after

    As long as you blow the whistle internally. Most whistleblower protections do not apply if you immediately go public with your findings. The law requires internal quality processes to be in place, including escalation paths. If you fail to follow those paths first (and yes, whistleblower protection does apply to employees who raise issues internally -- most companies don't like their dirty laundry aired at all, much less as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit) the law may not consider you a whistleblower at all.

  • (Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday May 17 2019, @03:43AM

    by DeVilla (5354) on Friday May 17 2019, @03:43AM (#844578)

    Hence, there needs to be a new term: One that describes whistleblowing AFTER you've had reasonable cause to believe something might happen AND it actually does happen AND you then get blamed for not saying something earlier.

    That's called CYA. I know several people who say they maintain CYA folders.