Seven Engineers Suspended After $2.3M Bridge Includes 90-Degree Turn

Bad engineering or impossible constraints?

Why not both?

potentially both, driven by misaligned incentives

misaligned incentives between different government fiefdoms led to nearly impossible constraints, which led to a design silly from an engineering perspective

meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers had to choose between refusing to design something silly, vs putting food on the table for their family

I periodically get told by my Product Manager that I’m thinking with my managerial hat on, again.

I joined a company as lead [software] engineer because I prefer that track while I have experience in management and C-Suite. dumb product and marketing decisions impact some engineering work, and I know the solutions for

I mostly avoid saying anything except when solving those things is the answer to the goals the PM keeps asking me about. When I do say things I’m told not to.

Enjoy your proverbial 90 degree turns!

Potentially both. If there are impossible constraints, then at a certain point you do _not_ build the impossible bridge, you say no instead.

I have this problem two, in both directions!

When I don't bring things up, I wind up sitting in a tedious and insulting retrospective meeting about "what went wrong"

When I do bring things up I get told "don't worry too much about that, that's the PMs job and they have it all figured out"

I am at a loss with all of the “well they were forced into it” comments. Don’t build it.

"Seven Engineers fired for refusing to design bridge"

Unemployment is a different constraint, but still a very real one. Doesn't matter now principled you are, there's always someone who'll take the money that isn't. Maybe these seven were the scabs and the heroes who said "no" are just forgotten.

Is it possible that the people who set the constraints are different from the people who design the bridge, who again are different from the people who approve the design? Yes, that's how it works in the real world.

As a design engineer, all you can do is explain to the stakeholders how the constraints will affect the outcome and suggest alternatives.

Ultimately, the engineers will have to work with what they are given, and as long as the outcome is safe and its limitations are communicated, they can't be blamed.

It is not a 90 degree bridge but more of a 120 degree bridge as seen here: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/action-taken-against...

It is most definitely bad engineering as having a more gradual curve would’ve made it completely acceptable. Elements of corruption and “not my job” mindset.

Have you never worked on projects where the management wants to do things a certain way but you know it’s just plain wrong. The only option sometimes is to let the slow rolling disaster unfold or risk your own job. Obviously this only applies where you aren’t risking people’s lives, but there is an entire subreddit dedicated for this. (r/maliciouscompliance)

Part of the problem with the insane cost of living in first world countries is that saying no often means you probably don't get to live inside for the next few months. It tends to turn engineers into yes men.

The ones who plan ahead tend to not end up in these organizations to begin with since they have leeway to say no much earlier.

This comes up all the time on HN about terrible, failed software projects, and the same excuses get brought up. "But engineers are forced to build it!" "It's really the Manager's fault!" "It's really the PM's fault!"

The job of an Engineer implies a capacity for technical judgment and willingness to not do something if it's unsafe or doesn't make sense. Even if we're not official, licensed "Professional Engineers," we still need to make these calls and stop projects like this from happening. Whether it's building a ridiculous, unsafe bridge, or building ridiculous, defective software, if the engineer doesn't have the agency to stop it, who does?

Just letting it happen and letting it fail with a "malicious compliance" smirk on our faces is passive aggressive, and doesn't elevate our profession.

No one is going to pay you to work on something nice. They'd just do it themselves.

That is why I build a "paper trail" via email or chat when I predict things might go wrong and managers still insist to doing things.

It's still bad engineering. "They made me do it" isn't an excuse.

The day landlords start accepting "integrity" and "elevating the profession" as payment for the rent is the day that engineers will do what you're saying.

The only way to make this kind of thing work is by threatening to send people to jail. Like building-engineers having to report asbestos, or electricians being forced to report code violations and authorities actually following up on it. Of course regulation is like kryptonite for the engineering/HN crowd, so let's keep building shit on thoughts and prayers.

The results weren't safe, so the engineers definitely can still be blamed.

That it's bad engineering isn't in dispute though. My point was that framing this as an "engineering decision" at all relies on context not included in the story. Someone who followed your Sound Engineering advice to the letter might be starving in the background of that photo. The problem is elsewhere.

I mean say no, get fired, and somebody else will sign off on it. The broken bridge will get built regardless of you bravely taking a stand and destroying your career.

You think the corrupt politicians didn’t know about the design of this bridge? It doesn’t take a genius engineer to see it’s fucked.

That engineering signoff is a rubber stamp on a corrupt project. Fire the politicians not the person who has to rubber stamp it (because again, they’ll find somebody to signoff on it… the signoff is a mere formality on a project like this)

> The day landlords start accepting "integrity" and "elevating the profession" as payment for the rent is the day that engineers will do what you're saying.

i don't think that's necessarily the case. civil engineering implies personal responsibility. we get to pretend like our bad choices don't have real-world impacts because we don't have a universal standards board or mandated ethical guidelines for computer engineering (in the vast majority of cases).

You answered this yourself. We’re not talking consumer products. We’re talking civil engineering for bridges. You also can’t just ship medical device software with no basic testing that could injure people in the software world. If someone asked me to ship regardless I’d get it in writing and ensure my objections were clearly stated and also in writing.

But you’d still ship… and that’s my point.

Also, depending on the org, you may or may not come out unscathed on the other side.

Sounds good, but doesn’t work. I still have bills to pay and a family to feed. If the cost of saying no is that I lose my job or get put in the doghouse without a promotion because a person with more influence got upset, I will put up with it and do whatever is asked of me. I may leave the company later if I find another job and they might also find another person to replace me, but that project is moving forward one way or the other.

Again, if I’m being asked to risk people’s lives, I’d push back harder and resign if I can’t change minds, but I’m not doing any of that to “elevate our profession”.

A soldier in combat deals with life or death in ways which are far more direct than a Boeing aircraft sometimes having its door blown off. Soldiers in combat may choose for people to die as a product of moral vision, not accidents.

But we all know the reality of whether we expect moral pushback from the armed forces for just about anything.

Was it a good deal when hundreds of thousands of bystanders died in Iraq? It doesn't matter. It's not the place of the rank and file to question authority, regardless of constitution this or moral that. The same is true for rank and file engineers.

You just repeated my example. GP was talking about software. Even you are. As I already said, Civil Engineers have responsibilities either because of regulation and professional guilds, not because they just "want to elevate the profession".

As long as software engineers can be fired for denying to do things asked by people in power, "standards" and "ethics" take second place. This applies to virtually every profession, so maybe start making bad bosses and bad managers take actual responsibility for their irresponsibility before blaming on engineers.

In life there is no responsibility when there is no autonomy. And as much as certain crowds love to say "just walk way", giving away your means of survival is also not real autonomy. This is not WW2.

I believe you meant more of a 60 not 120.