Before the city officials left, they commended LeMessurier for his courage and candor, and expressed a desire to be kept informed as the repair work progressed. Given the urgency of the situation, that was all they could reasonably do. "It wasn't a case of 'We caught you, you skunk,'" Nusbaum says. "It started with a guy who stood up and said, 'I got a problem, I made the problem, let's fix the problem.' If you're gonna kill a guy like LeMessurier, why should anybody ever talk?"
I was waiting for this line throughout the first 2/3rds of the story. The story began almost framing LeMessurier as criminally incompetent, failing on a flourish and retiring to his private island to consider it, but he not only acted with incredible responsibility but discovered flaws in NYC's building test codes and typical practices concerning joint construction while building an effective response team to fix it.
I suppose it makes the whole thing more dramatically structured to insinuate a little bit of character transformation and reveal, but that guy deserves the kind of acclaim that was reserved until the last few paragraphs.
And this is why I dislike the way that software people misuse the word "engineer".
Engineer means something. It means, "The person who signs off on the design and who is liable if the design sucks." If you're not legally liable for your software, you shouldn't be called a software engineer.
In fact in some states misusing the word engineer is against the law. For instance see http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/eng_req.htm where it says that using the word engineer in your title is against the law if you are not, in fact, an engineer.
Engineering is reportedly the world's second oldest profession, yet licensing has only been around since the mid-19th century, so I don't think it's particularly fair for the licensing regimes to make a claim of exclusivity on the word.
I've met many Electrical Engineers over the years. Some of them are licensed PEs, many are not. The vast majority of the EE projects do not involve a risk to human life and therefore are not required to use PEs. I've never noticed any angst on one side or the other over the use of the word "Engineer" to describe EEs who don't have their PE.
I also have met computer programmers who do write software that involves a risk to human life. They are every bit as meretricious and dedicated to building defect-free systems as engineers in any other discipline.
Arguably, there's no pressure to enact a licensing regime because there have been so few incidents in which software has actually hurt people. That's a testament to the professionalism of the computer engineers who write life-critical systems.
> They are every bit as meretricious and dedicated to building defect-free systems as engineers in any other discipline.
I think you may have meant "meticulous."
Meretricious: 1. alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry. 2. based on pretense, deception, or insincerity. 3. pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute. [1]
I don't know if engineering is the world's second oldest profession, but its interesting to know what google says is the world's oldest profession: prostitution!
A gripping read indeed! I like how the engineer went to use the story as a case study to his students to show that you have an obligation to do the right thing and that there doesn't have to be harmful consequences for the whistleblower.
It seems to me, that everybody involved including the Citicorp executives demonstrated huge amounts of character and integrity which says a lot about the corporate culture of 1978. I don't imagine the current top ranks at Citicorp would be so exemplary in their behaviour.
It also demonstrates the view people had of commercial banks in the late 1970s that the public would buy an explanation like "we're the type of people who wear a belt and suspenders."
If any bank tried to claim today that they're so incredibly, overbearingly cautious, they'd mocked as being obviously full of shit.
I agree. We've been subsidizing some pretty cancerous behaviors in banking. People with real character don't get rewarded the way they used to. Its sort of incompatible with a culture now focused on figuring out ways to assign risk to the taxpayer.
One nuance of the story that I think is the most interesting is that the problem wasn't discovered until LeMessurier decided to look back on his completed design and re-review some parts of it out of intellectual curiosity.
Sometimes when I'm nostalgic, vain, or super-bored I'll go back and read code that I've written. Sometimes I find something that I've forgotten and once in a while I'll find bugs. Having that curiosity (or is it just excessive pride?) is a good thing in my opinion.
I was waiting for this line throughout the first 2/3rds of the story. The story began almost framing LeMessurier as criminally incompetent, failing on a flourish and retiring to his private island to consider it, but he not only acted with incredible responsibility but discovered flaws in NYC's building test codes and typical practices concerning joint construction while building an effective response team to fix it.
I suppose it makes the whole thing more dramatically structured to insinuate a little bit of character transformation and reveal, but that guy deserves the kind of acclaim that was reserved until the last few paragraphs.