>It doesn't sound like such a horrible position to be in; working for a multi-billion dollar company that was trying to force you to ship a part that could kill people.
It's probably not a case of some moustache twisting monocle wearing fiend who was the manager and the engineer was absolutely convinced that it was a faulty part that would ultimately be responsible for death and destruction. It was more likely one of a number of similar sub-assemblies, all having some questionable attributes and people trying to ship things under the guise of "perfect is the enemy of the good". At some points along this road, various people probably began realizing that there was a real problem, one that they might have some culpability in. Why the people involved continued to make poor decisions, I don't know.
>Whistleblowers get 1/3rd of damages, it's like wining the lottery for ethical people.
It's a nice theory. I've yet to see it happen consistently in practice (or pretty much ever). Engineering ethics case studies are littered with cases where engineers tried to alert management of problems and were punished for their efforts.
>How long does it normally take to design one of these switches, when you've been doing it most of your life?
Not very long given ample resources and nothing else to do. I doubt they were working under those conditions.
It's probably not a case of some moustache twisting monocle wearing fiend who was the manager and the engineer was absolutely convinced that it was a faulty part that would ultimately be responsible for death and destruction. It was more likely one of a number of similar sub-assemblies, all having some questionable attributes and people trying to ship things under the guise of "perfect is the enemy of the good". At some points along this road, various people probably began realizing that there was a real problem, one that they might have some culpability in. Why the people involved continued to make poor decisions, I don't know.
>Whistleblowers get 1/3rd of damages, it's like wining the lottery for ethical people.
It's a nice theory. I've yet to see it happen consistently in practice (or pretty much ever). Engineering ethics case studies are littered with cases where engineers tried to alert management of problems and were punished for their efforts.
>How long does it normally take to design one of these switches, when you've been doing it most of your life?
Not very long given ample resources and nothing else to do. I doubt they were working under those conditions.