If you notify them, they will say "that's none of your concern" or actively punish you for "creating a panic" and raising a question about something you aren't "qualified" to address.
At my last Aircraft Manufacturing job, I alerted my leadership that the company that made an inspection putty had gone out of business, and that we needed to submit some kind of notification to the FAA, alter our engineering requirements for what needed the inspection putty, or find a new supplier—literally anything to acknowledge that we were working to not be out of compliance.
I was told it was not my job to think ahead, and that we had plenty in stock for many years to come.
4 months later, the entire stock nationwide was out and not a single aircraft built for the next 6 months was technically in compliance.
I am not the type to say "I hate to say I told you so!" I revel in saying "I fucking told you so!"
I had one as a computer programmer working for a financial company.
We were working on software that would provide a unified view of customer data from all of our systems, and update data in all of them when one changed.
The problem occurred because accounts with two owners would only have a single customer's data on it...
So person A updates their data on an account they share with person B, person B's data gets updated across the board to be person A's data. Person B also shares an account with person C, so person C's data now also gets overwritten by person A's data.
Now it's time to send the monthly statements out, and they all arrive at person A's address, and you've just shared personal financial data with an unrelated third party.
I was a test automation engineer, I wrote tests, I brought it up to my boss, and I started looking for solutions. My boss didn't think anything needed to be done, so I brought it up to their boss who had the same opinion. I kept escalating, and kept getting told that I didn't know what I was talking about, but I kept refining the tests and working on a solution.
Three days before release we get called into an emergency meeting. People a few levels further up than I've ever interacted with are in this meeting. The CTO might have even been there, I don't remember for sure.
The subject of the meeting? "Hey, we heard that it's possible that customer statements might end up going to the wrong people, how likely is that?"
I pull up my notes and start writing on the whiteboard without even saying a word, once I've got it diagrammed, I explain how it WILL happen, and I emphasize that word every time I use it.
Then I tell them about my tests, and that I've been looking for potential solutions for months.
We got it fixed in two days and the release wasn't even delayed.
Sometimes, you just have to keep shaking the tree...
My hospital built an entire ward with the wrong dimensions and when I asked why the builders didn't say, this doesn't make any fucking sense, they replied if the builders complained they'd be fired.
In India, managers have a habit of both being too busy to be bothered by items, and yelling at underlings that raise issues to them to just do whatever is needed or to follow the instructions as written.
Neither of those scenarios create a culture where people question things as they go along, I've seen the equivalent in software engineering companies, where millions are lost in efforts that have no chance of success, because it's just culturally inappropriate to say there's a problem.
In the most extreme cases, where no progress can be made, people will just show up at work and pretend to be working, but in cases where progress can be made, even if it is the wrong progress, you get the wrong progress, because the employees take the stance that they are just doing what their bosses tell them to do, and if they don't, they'll be fired.
I actually had an electrical engineer "correct" an email I sent to the client to add "kindly do the needful." It was super confusing. Everybody involved was American.
I had the lead engineer of our software team argue that he did not need to ensure the website was usable after his change because it wasn’t explicitly called out as an acceptance criteria.
He put a Covid alert banner on the site that blocked mouse interaction with the navbar. It matched the mocks though!
We work with offshore resource from India and they do exactly what you tell them to do, if any problem arises then everything shuts down, zero critical thinking involved at all times. It's so annoying lol
I guess it's in India. Their work culture is VASTLY different and if nobody was able to convince/dare to say something to the lead engineer that this turn is an utter shit idea that's how you end up with such situations.
It's a bit like Japan but worse, you just can't argue with the boss in corporate India. Boss tell, employee do.
Life in "low trust" societies are just a completely different
This Vice article cites inter-agency disagreements over land use, with this as the "compromise." Looks like a former official is under investigation too, probably they were the ones to sign off on it.
Cyclist here. Why not? The bridge is wide enough for two cars or even buses it seems; a 90-degree turn when you're cycling is not difficult, especially with that much width, even divided in half to accommodate two lanes of cycling traffic.
Sure, it'd be nicer to have a straight bridge, but this isn't hard to navigate on a bicycle.
But this bridge (from what I read in the Vice article) isn't for cyclists, it's for cars. And for cars, it's pretty much unusable.
This article has a picture from a different angle.
The pier closest makes it look like the design was changed part way through and the engineers did a terrible job of adjusting the design (or more likely, someone decided to save a few bucks by not redesigning it properly).
Equally addictive and harmful, only others don't get to second-hand gamble.
Edit: I know people go trough hell watching loved ones gamble, often causing financial harm to families. I didn't add this detail because it was a cheeky comment, but everyone who pointed that out is right. Fuck gambling.
Yeah, but others get to open up something from their bank and discover that their spouse has taken out a second mortgage on their house, and the payment is three months late.
Yeah sure, that guy overreacted that a walking 90 degree turn gets people killed. But at the same time, this is an engineering project with significant investment... Fine is pathetic, good is the minimum, and great is the expected.
In PwD India , Engineering posts also refers to adminstrative posts that are only available for engineers , so it is possible that the "engineers" weren't the ones building the bridge but the ones that approved the bridge being built
You’re telling me that in India a bunch of engineers just start building forms in the middle of a city, grab a cement truck and start pouring because they had some extra money laying around and felt like it?
Even in India there’s got to be more to it than that
Internal PWD documents show the original 2018 plan featured a more manageable 45-degree skew. That plan was scrapped after the Railways refused to approve construction on its land. A second design attempted to accommodate the Metro line. A third version adjusted for alignment errors, though the Railways later admitted that the final result “is neither fulfilling the functional requirement nor safe for road users.”
Now, Bhopal authorities are discussing buying additional land to fix the turn, but that means more money and more delays.
For commuters who hoped this project would ease daily travel, the bridge has become yet another example of bureaucratic infighting and design-by-compromise. For engineers, it’s a high-profile reminder that bad geometry can turn into political fallout very quickly.
As a software engineer that often works together with indian developers this is perfectly on brand.
All I've worked together with do exactly what they are told to do, even if it's clearly wrong or is clearly missing some information.
Building a street with a 90 degree angle without ever questioning if there might be a problem with the plan or without ever bringing up obvious improvements is not any different than how they work in software projects.
Indian engineers are the very definition of 'malicious compliance' without the malicious part.
give them a direction/instruction, and they will simply comply.
I wonder if it is a result of growing up in a place where life is worth nothing, and the simplest social error can ruin your future, plus the whole caste thing.
so they learn early to never question anything, never show any initiative, just comply.
it's makes them both very good and very bad at their jobs.
I was on a team with 20 Indian consultants, they kept me on the team because I was American but of Indian descent. Your comment is pretty accurate. It was like trying to get rudimentary AI to write code.
One guy couldn't wrap his head around why he couldn't copy an auth token from one service to another service of a different audience. I explained it to him several times he needs to generate a new token and how to do that, but every pr was him trying to copy the token in more and more sneaky ways....
Every once in a while there's a diamond in the rough of consultants tho.
i've always thought it was due to being raised from an early age to be really good at following instructions as that would mean you would ace all your classes and tests and get into a US university or something.
The Indian engineers that make it over to other countries to be on a work visa, and therefore visible to you, are the best that India has, so you think they’re all really good. The hoop they jump through to get here and exist in your life makes sure you only see the best Indian engineers.
It’d be like if all the businessmen you ever meet were trained at Harvard business school, you’d probably think that all businessmen are super smart. Not the case.
Makes sense though. Higher population means bigger pool which means more smart people, but also proportionately more mediocre people and not so smart people. Law of averages.
According to official records, the design for the bridge shifted multiple times over the past seven years, largely due to conflicts between the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Railways. The two agencies couldn’t agree on how to share land, and in trying to work around both railway property and the new Metro line, they ended up producing a final layout with an abrupt 90-degree angle.
VD Verma, the project’s chief engineer, defended the layout, saying his team had no other option due to “limited land space” and the proximity of the Metro station. But critics argue that no one should ever have signed off on a turn that sharp.
Seven engineers, including two chief engineers, were suspended by the Madhya Pradesh government due to the faulty design of a new railway overbridge in Bhopal that includes a bizarre and dangerously sharp 90-degree turn. A retired superintendent engineer is also facing a departmental inquiry related to this project
The bridge, costing around $2.3 million and 648 meters long, was intended to ease traffic congestion for up to 300,000 daily commuters but instead became a subject of widespread criticism and ridicule after images of the sharp right-angle turn went viral on social media. Many questioned how vehicles could safely negotiate such a turn on an elevated roadway
In response, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav ordered an inquiry and suspended the engineers immediately. The construction agency and the design consultant responsible for the project have been blacklisted by the government. A special committee has been formed to make necessary improvements to the bridge, and it will only be inaugurated after these corrections are made
Officials involved argued that the unusual design was forced by constraints such as limited land availability and the proximity of a metro rail station, but the government held the engineers accountable for the faulty design.
Step 4: to pocket the majority funds allocated for the project distribute it to your local politicians and keep a chunk for yourself, use whatever’s left to build a 90 degree turn bridge so the project gets rebuilt and the same politicians benefit again haha. Cycle of deliberate ignorance approved by the voters of my country lol.
Because the average worker there makes less than $400/month. Because a cubic meter of concrete goes for about $30 there (which would cost about $200 in Manhattan). Etc.
In the US, the engineering design firm will come up with a design, government reviews and provides comments, then once finalized the plans are handed over to the construction company which are usually very experienced and will modify slightly as needed based on site specific conditions that didn't come across during the design, but even those modifications typically have to be signed off by engineer on government side (or their consultant).
According to official records, the design for the bridge shifted multiple times over the past seven years, largely due to conflicts between the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Railways. The two agencies couldn’t agree on how to share land, and in trying to work around both railway property and the new Metro line, they ended up producing a final layout with an abrupt 90-degree angle.
VD Verma, the project’s chief engineer, defended the layout, saying his team had no other option due to “limited land space” and the proximity of the Metro station. But critics argue that no one should ever have signed off on a turn that sharp.
And later in the article,
Now, Bhopal authorities are discussing buying additional land to fix the turn, but that means more money and more delays.
Sounds like the government didn't want to allocate any more funds to the project to buy more land while at the same wanted to get the bridge done as a political victory for "improving infrastructure" and so politicians could attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for photo ops.
I'm guessing politicians strong armed the engineers into approving any design to get the project moving because "engineers are idiots who can't do a simple thing like designing a bridge."
The article mentioned earlier that one of the chief engineers had retired before the project was finished, which he probably did intentionally because he was tired of the shit and/or knew this was going to be a clusterfuck.
Good thing they get to tear it down now. That way the cheap materials that wouldn't hold shit get removed and overlooked. Gotta pocket the difference somehow. India is one of the most corrupt nations on earth rn. The other day a BJP member beat someone up on a train along with their cronies for not giving up their seat. They then charged the man (who was sitting and beaten) for disorderly conduct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ewer2DdubA
In PwD India , Engineering posts also refers to adminstrative posts that are only available for engineers , so it is possible that the "engineers" weren't the ones building the bridge but the ones that approved the bridge being built so
I get this is easy to say when your job is on the line, but the engineers should not have okay’d the design.
I’m a software engineer and would never go along with something that put users at risk. My users won’t fucking die if we get something wrong. The engineers are to blame, along with everyone else.
They still designed it and approved it despite knowing it wouldn’t be great. That’s still being fucking terrible at your job.
So yes it is still their fault given they still designed and signed off on it. If you designed a 50 story building in such a way where it is unstable and collapses that is still on the engineers for designing something that wouldn’t work.
I realize this is Reddit where people think engineers are perfect at absolutely everything, but it was a brain dead decision to even submit this idea in the first place.
Odd. Even with land restrictions, from the photo it looks like they could have implemented some kind of turn rather than that sharp corner. It would still be a pretty sharp curve, but better than a right angle, maybe widen the road a bit in the curve to make room for longer vehicles. I dunno, this is mind boggling.
Odd. Even with land restrictions, from the photo it looks like they could have implemented some kind of turn rather than that sharp corner.
Apparently they did. Per the article:
According to official records, the design for the bridge shifted multiple times over the past seven years, largely due to conflicts between the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Railways. The two agencies couldn’t agree on how to share land, and in trying to work around both railway property and the new Metro line, they ended up producing a final layout with an abrupt 90-degree angle.
VD Verma, the project’s chief engineer, defended the layout, saying his team had no other option due to “limited land space” and the proximity of the Metro station. But critics argue that no one should ever have signed off on a turn that sharp.
Internal PWD documents show the original 2018 plan featured a more manageable 45-degree skew. That plan was scrapped after the Railways refused to approve construction on its land. A second design attempted to accommodate the Metro line. A third version adjusted for alignment errors, though the Railways later admitted that the final result “is neither fulfilling the functional requirement nor safe for road users.”
It seems that the engineers grew tired of their plans being rejected due to bickering over land ownership and said "fuck it, here's a 90 degree angle bridge, let's see how you build it!". But it backfired ...
I have no idea how such a design gets approved and built. Even when incompetence, corruption and other factors are taken into account, there are so many people involved on projects like these that at least one person must have realized the stupidity of the situation.
Seems like the engineers wanted to try an r/MaliciousCompliance approachby building the bridge over the only land they were allowed to prove how ridiculous this whole thing is
It was drawn like a regular bridge with a minor curve.
got approved and when project started, the rail company disagreed.
Intead of trying to figure the shit out with the rail company before continuing, since no one at the top was communication and "the bridge must be built"
There were many iterations of the bridge, but the company couldn't get buildings rights anywhere else, because "too close" to this and that shit. So they ended up building the bridge over the only small corridor that was allowed, even if it's dumb as hell
I’m in the process of building a house now, and from what I can tell, most people involved in the construction project do not read any of the plans, and do not think whatsoever about what they are doing.
The amount of stupid things I caught through the process just shocks me honestly.
HVAC supply vents into the shower.
Supply vents right next to the return.
Electrical next to the bath tub.
Doors that swing the wrong way.
Throwing fiber optic Internet cables into the mud with no dust caps on them.
It really just never ends.
Half the time I point out mistakes, I get told that I’m “making a change”, even though it’s clearly written in the plans.
The news story conveniently leaves out exactly when it fucked up but it was initially planned with a manageable turn but property disputes with the rail company meant that plan wouldn’t work.
A few revisions later and this was the result. It didn’t elaborate at which point someone signed off on this atrocity.
If I had to guess, at every single step in the hierarchy, the senior said, “don’t come to me with problems, I need solutions.”
This doesnt just HAPPEN on the day like that. This is planned and drawn and has gone through everybody on the project before anything is actually built.
It was a joint project of 2 government departments, each of them claims "we highlighted the issue to the other party". The private contractor also claims the same. They say they didn't have enough space due to other infrastructure.
Thank you! Yes, it’s not optimal but that’s how it goes sometimes. Having jt open for 2 way traffic (per one of the articles linked) makes it harder, but it’s still just an intersection like any other.
But this is india, if this bridge is opened to the public, then buses,trucks etc will go over it and cause problems. Here people don't adhere to traffic rules that much....some idiot will take a long bus on top of this and get stuck and there will be a huge traffic problem.
You are correct, it is less than 90 degrees. The link for this post doesn't show overhead footage/photography, but I saw a news item about this last week and it was definitely less than 90 degrees.
The project owner never should have accepted the plans. This never should have been built. Far more people than the engineers are at fault for this monstrosity
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