And there we go again. 'optional activity'. And people wonder why there are few women in tech and the situation is not improving. The post above is your answer.
Have a family, it's the end of your career, because you engaged in productivity limiting 'optional activities'. Yes, the tech sector IS that toxic.
If you have a family it's more important than your career. If you don't feel your family is more important, you may abandon it or never have one to begin with.
Just because you have a different stack of priorities than another doesn't mean you can blame them for ranking theirs differently than yours.
Analogy is; you wouldn't protest at the Buddhist temple door because you feel that your time availably is less to become a full fledge Buddhist monk because you have a family.
It has nothing to do with women in tech, try and keep on topic please.
I was not uncivil. This kind of belittling of family has to stop. Software development has a major problem hiring women, older people, and minorities. People in the sector belittling things like children and families by using terms like 'lifestyle choices' ARE part of the problem, and the industry has a very serious one. These people need to be called out for the poisonous garbage that they're spouting, and that calling out rarely happens.
The gender gap is not going to get better while these attitudes are accepted. Women avoid tech to a large degree because it is rational to do so. The entire sector is so immersed in brogrammer culture that half the participants aren't even aware of it.
Telling someone "you are part of the problem" is a kind of personal attack. That counts as uncivil. I don't think I misread you, because phrases like "these people" and "need to be called out" are also markers of incivility.
Regardless of how right you are, how wrong someone else is, and how big of a problem the industry has, all commenters on HN need to follow the site guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
My basis is long experience trying to cajole this forum into not degenerating completely. "Need to be called out" is the kind of thing users say to justify hurling invective at one another, and we ask everybody not to do that on HN.
Users frequently express views similar to yours without violating the site guidelines, so I don't think the moderation question has anything to do with subject matter.
Ageism is so rife in the tech sector in the US that people don't even notice it because it's omnipresent. I would go so far as to say that in the Bay Area, actively discriminating against anyone with the appearance of being over 40 is the default behavior for tech companies.
For example, if you look over 40 and not a tech lead/manager and haven't been one, you won't be hired, as you will be seen as having a lack of career trajectory. The entire 'career trajectory' premise is inherently ageist.
There are vast amounts of land, even within American cities, that is very cheap. The amount of usable land for urban purposes might as well be infinite.
Land is only expensive in a few select locations that have specific infrastructure and industries. It is the infrastructure and industries that provide the value; even the most picturesque accessible fertile land is quite cheap if it's not in a city.
Nope, definitely systemic within the company. The engine is a system that must meet certain requirements. The standard way of meeting those requirements is to have a urea injection system. That's what the competitors in the US do; it's also what Subaru, for example, don't do, and they don't sell into the US market.
In order to pull off this little 2-person hack that Horn alleges, those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit. This little hack ONLY makes sense in the absence of other major engine components.
The company culture is clearly absolutely rotten and their execs are liars. Employee morale, especially in engineering, must be through the floor.
> those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit.
I agree. Developers wouldn't take that amount of corporate risk on for such a hack without having significant backing from management.
Even if they were completely on their own, which is impossible for me to believe, at some point another developer would have noticed and said something. Developers are smart enough to know anything that can go wrong will go wrong and that such a hack would be exposed, taking a lot of people down with it.
The "individuals" VW is claiming are responsible are 10 managers and 3 top engineers, which include the head of R&D, the head of engine design and the head of Audi.
The definition of "individual" might be different between what VW claims and what you read, though.
Michael Horn, CEO of VW America: "This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason." That sounds nothing like what you're describing. The article alludes that many were suspended, but it doesn't directly attribute blame to them.
I find it impossible to believe any software engineer at the implementation level would assume that level of risk. This is obviously scapegoating. I really hope they set those engineers up for life, because they'll never be able to find another job again.
Well, I’m extremely disappointed with VW US. VW Germany instantly had CEO resigning and taking full responsibility and in days started suspending top managers.
In contrast, VW US seems to be even more a bunch of liars.
Well, he's kind of a dead card anyways, so why not use him through all the Congressional hearings. Replace him with someone else when the blizzard is over.
Isn't that sort of like a company president blaming "unauthorized excesses by employees" while neglecting to mention that the "employees" were actually all VP-level?
It sounds to me like they're either casting the blame on the rank-and-file, or they're heavily bending the truth by trying to make it seem like the culprits were "merely" regular employees.
It's also what another VWAG member, Audi, does on the TDI's in America.
These were also very high level engineers.
I can also totally believe that, in order to not seem like a they wasted billions on engine development that they literally would not be able to sell without significant changes, that people in charge of the project would just figure out a way to make it seem like a success.
Contrary to what you say, this doesn't require an entire corporate culture be rotten. It's like branches of a tree. The fact that one branch is diseased does not mean the entire tree is bad.
I've seen this happen in other companies before just in my little open source licensing world.
(some group head and his group lie to me about what they are doing, skirt the rules, etc. right up until i catch them. His boss then asks him what the fuck he was thinking and demotes or fires the group head)
As you get higher up, one of your biggest problems is, fact, people don't want to tell you bad things. My VP used to have a sign on his desk that said "no surprises". Because he wanted to know everything, whether it was good or bad.
"Branches on a tree" makes more sense if VW didn't drag their feet for a year and a half when the report of the failing vehicles first came out. I agree that the whole company cannot be rotten, because it would have leaked to the public long before now, but upper management may be far too ok with rules skirting.
Look into the VW / Porsche infinite share squeeze. These people aren't affable fools. They didn't just accidentally let engineers write code to skirt around international rules by a factor of 10-40.
The current scandal is only about the "EA189" engine family with NOx traps for exhaust treatment. The new "EA288" engine family with urea injection was designed from scratch, and, I hope, doesn't need cheating software.
Edit: the EA288 is/was -- at least in Europe -- also sold with NOx trap, but VW still claims it's free from cheating software.
Considering all we've learned in this saga about the industry in general and Volkswagen in particular, I would say it's more than likely that it had cheating software anyway.
I think this is part of the problem. The EA189 without AdBlue needed the cheating software. The Passats with AdBlue also had the EA189 and likely could have been tuned to work without the cheating software, but likely have it anyway.
It's a bit of a shame that EA288 cars are stacking up at dealers nationwide and will apparently never be certified for sale (VW said they would not ask for certification), even though they almost certainly don't need the cheat. (Although it's possible that it's still present, which is of course still illegal, need it or not).
Having a lot of say in design, and keeping secret an intentional violation of government regulations from your entire international company are two pretty different things.
I'm making assumptions, and I believe this story is pure, unadulterated bullshit from top to bottom.
Is it likely that the heads of R&D and engine development at VW are hands-on and writing code themselves? No, its extremely unlikely. Having worked in several large companies, there are 0 people at that level of management that perform hands-on work.
It is likely that those particular positions benefit and are motivated to cheat on regulations for the benefit of the company? No, the bottom line of the company is affected, and it is far more likely that business people are applying pressure.
Is it likely that they could make those changes in a company that size, without anyone noticing? No, not really. Software in a large organization leaves trails everywhere and requires explanation, they had to interface with other systems, and people had to interface with theirs.
Is it likely that the same narrative structure that our government attempted to use to excuse torture, is something VW is also trying? "Oh, we had no idea, it was one deranged guy who did this." Yes, it is highly likely that prominent executives are scrambling to get out of the way, and highly likely that the company is trying to come up with a story that makes it look less corrupt than it is.
> It is likely that those particular positions benefit and are motivated to cheat on regulations for the benefit of the company? No, the bottom line of the company is affected, and it is far more likely that business people are applying pressure.
I agree with most of your comment, but not with this point. Being the Head of R&D who is able to boast about bringing a "breakthrough" new diesel engine to market is bound to come with some personal perks.
You can re-define this as "business people are applying pressure" if you like, but that does not change the responsibility of those position - and besides, it's kind of a cop-out. With that thinking, you can re-define everything as being down to market pressure.
Somebody made a decision to do this, and I can easily see an unethical head of R&D making that call for personal career reasons - just like unethical researchers cheat by making up data. I'm not saying that that's necessarily how it happened, but it's a definite possibility.
The thing is, you are currently defending the prominent executives.
We’re talking about the heads of R&D and the head of engine development – both more business people than engineer.
Additionally, 2 CEOs have resigned over this (in just 6 months!)
And it’s known that the first of these CEOs tried to focus on engines without Urea injection – which did get 280mpg, though – because he personally was invested into their development and tried to push the heads of R&D and Engine development to do this.
That’s why the CEO originally responsible even resigned before it became public. And why the second CEO resigned: because, despite not believing he himself did it, taking the responsibility for it.
“Having a lot of say in design, and keeping secret an intentional violation of government regulations from your entire international company are two pretty different things.“
But the difference between intentional benchmark optimization (which the whole industry is doing) and illegal certification manipulation is a rather subtle one. The former would a perfect front for the latter and the intersection of all employees who sufficiently understand the legal situation and those who sufficiently understand the engine could theoretically even be the empty set. (in which case blame would default to those high enough in the org-chart to have members of both groups under them)
The two heads who lead the R&D and engine development are not software engineers. But they would certainly require software engineers to help them carry out the deception. I highly doubt that only 2 people are involved.
perhaps 2 people who were intentionally intending to mislead. the software engineers could have been told the software was for factory testing only and it would have been their job to produce it. The actual program itself was not illegal just the fact that it was used to mislead official testing.
This ain't no 'independent contractors on the Death Star' issue here.
Not only that but by finding themselves a scapegoat, management has ensured that in the future, honest mistakes will go completely unreported. These execs are clearly more interested in CYA than actual results.
Also, although it's not proof, the simple "follow the money" principle should hint at the truth here. I can't see what 2 engineers would gain from putting so much time and effort into independently creating "defeat devices". In comparison, VW had a lot to gain from fudging the figures (if they hadn't been caught).
If I were an engineer at VW I'd be hunting for a new job right now. The company seems to have no problems pinning systemic failure on individual scapegoats, and I wouldn't want to hang around to be caught in the next round of ritual sacrifice.
Yup. You being born in a state that is not California and moving to Portland makes you very superior to those living in Portland but born in California. You should put on your very superior hat and feel good about your total authenticity and unquestionable non-yuppiedom.
Overly loose credit, the decisions of companies to centralize, and NIMBYism is driving up the cost of pretty much everything. People just move to where the work is.
I have coworkers from Oregon in the Bay Area. Some would say that by moving here they're 'driving up the price of everything'. At this juncture if they move back, they'll then be 'driving up the price of everything' at home. It's meaningless.
Virtually all communication is open to interpretation. Focus on what you know. Can you tell the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism? Can you appreciate the difference in motives? If you can, then you'll basically know everything you need to know in order to understand what's being asked for.
Rah Rah Rah! If your startup is not winning, just pivot, and be positive enough, and you will inevitably win. Selection bias doesn't exist and was made up by negative Nancys.
Seriously though, stick a fork in HN. It's over. Enjoy the echo chamber that this place will inevitably become.
There are echo chamber aspects of HN... Especially Sam's AMA, which I was hoping would be a discussion of Sam's life, philosophies, interesting anecdotes, etc. like it is over on Reddit, but instead was predominantly questions about how to get into YC :(.
Even so I'll take the good with the bad, you still get great insights on technology. It just morphs for the worse when YC companies post, or the topic turn to getting into YC.
