GM Head Barra Digs In Her Heels On The Hill

[ebacon]

Barra has a big turd to polish.

GM's ignition switch debacle should be a lesson to engineers everywhere. During college I had to take a course in engineering ethics. In that class we heard horror stories and I thought these must be rare occurrences and that maybe I would have to deal with such a situation once in my career at most.

That's not the case. Engineers are under constant pressure to cut costs. Looking over them are managers that get bigger bonuses if they can keep their costs down. Inevitably they push problems and costs into another department's court.

Software writers become all too familiar with the problem. They are the boots on the ground that managers come to as a first line of defense. The perception is that software is free and can fix almost anything.

"Brains are the cheapest cut of meat." -- Bill Davidson