I get the point you're trying to make here, and the sarcastic undertone, but I'd have issues living with myself if people died because of something that I was able to identify and that was preventable, and I did nothing.
The whole case strikes me as odd. Not only did the higher ups know about the problem, they also left a paper trail about keeping a lid on it and getting rid of the guy. This opens them up to a lot of scenarios, like:
- As demonstrated by this case, the information came out because of the wrongful termination
- If an accident had happened there's a fairly high chance that the investigators would uncover it, either because the engineer in question came forward or because they think they should have known about this, and cracks appear when they start asking questions.
An unspoken rule in a lot of fields is that you make sure that this kind of information never reaches the people that could be held liable for it. The people that are likely to be held responsible at least have to make it appear that they're not trying to suppress information like this. You quickly lose that ability if you actively try to get rid of people that tries to raise an issue. So they surround themselves with middle management that knows to not bring things up to them, without being explicitly told so.
The point is that there are many people sleeping fine or not, that kept their livelihood by not whistleblowing. solely due to the misaligned incentives and lack of accountability
The whole case strikes me as odd. Not only did the higher ups know about the problem, they also left a paper trail about keeping a lid on it and getting rid of the guy. This opens them up to a lot of scenarios, like:
- As demonstrated by this case, the information came out because of the wrongful termination
- If an accident had happened there's a fairly high chance that the investigators would uncover it, either because the engineer in question came forward or because they think they should have known about this, and cracks appear when they start asking questions.
An unspoken rule in a lot of fields is that you make sure that this kind of information never reaches the people that could be held liable for it. The people that are likely to be held responsible at least have to make it appear that they're not trying to suppress information like this. You quickly lose that ability if you actively try to get rid of people that tries to raise an issue. So they surround themselves with middle management that knows to not bring things up to them, without being explicitly told so.