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

Bad engineering or impossible constraints?

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

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

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)

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.

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 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).