A German court has sentenced two former Volkswagen executives to prison and handed suspended sentences to two others for their roles in the company’s diesel emissions scandal.
You can be both. Schmidt was general manager of VW’s U.S. Environment and Engineering Office.
As much as I like to see consequences, I would rather have just seen a very large fine put toward environmental purposes than prison time. Save prison for people who pose a direct danger to the public.
I would agree, but with one significant condition:
the fine would have to be large enough to be an effective punishment, and serve as a deterrent. A company as valuable as VW would have to pay an enormous fine.
But their scam did pose a direct health danger to society. If there are never consequences for executives, they won’t care if the company loses some money (or go bankrupt), they land another job elsewhere and live on.
Their subsidiary companies do, but VW is a German company, the “executives” are ALL gonna be there dude… and those US execs would be doing what THEIR oversea “executives” want them to, so there’s still people above those who may be overseas. So calling them “executives” would be wrong since there is people above them still.
These engineers clearly held executive roles, they just weren’t with the Volkswagen (germany) so they would have had to clarify their subsidiary. For journalism this was the correct wording. If they wanted to call them execs, it would have had to go into detail about Volkswagen (Us particular division and reasons)
If you’re talking about Fritolays, you don’t just go and say execs when talking about “lays” or “Doritos” subsidiaries, you would use “engineers” or whatever other work they held to simplify it.
It’s an unnecessary distinction for non mutually exclusive exclusive terms, to use “executives” would lead to more confusion and that would be shit journalism….
It’s an article about the German Volkswagen, why are you assuming it’s about the multinational subsidiary? You can be an engineer for Volkswagen, and their subsidiary, but that requires explaining if you want to call them that. Which is totally unnecessary since the article wasn’t about them.
Yes… the article is about the German company dude…… not the “Volkswagen group” and not “Volkswagen international” or whatever includes their multinational groups. To assume otherwise is just weird, they never mentioned anything but their German company.
Terms aren’t mutually exclusive… you don’t think those engineers held executive roles? They just weren’t executives of Volkswagen.
They would have had to say executives of Volkswagen (insert whatever specifics of the subsidiary), for it to be the correct term. Engineers is simpler and easier and is the proper way to express the situation.
Your “point” muddies the water and needs to bring on multiple additional pieces of information, which would also need to be described. Most people would know these engineers held executives roles, with some part farther down the “executive” chain.
You can be an engineer for Volkswagen, while also being the executive for Volkswagen US NW division, but it’s irrelevant to the article and requires more completely unnecessary information, so in the effort of good journalism and brevity….
The fallout forced CEO Martin Winterkorn to resign, although he denied wrongdoing. U.S. authorities issued an arrest warrant for Winterkorn in 2018, but Germany does not extradite its nationals.
When you don’t read the article ^
While I see your point, it’s important to note that the people jailed in the US were called “engineers”, not “executives”.
You can be both. Schmidt was general manager of VW’s U.S. Environment and Engineering Office.
As much as I like to see consequences, I would rather have just seen a very large fine put toward environmental purposes than prison time. Save prison for people who pose a direct danger to the public.
I would agree, but with one significant condition:
the fine would have to be large enough to be an effective punishment, and serve as a deterrent. A company as valuable as VW would have to pay an enormous fine.
But their scam did pose a direct health danger to society. If there are never consequences for executives, they won’t care if the company loses some money (or go bankrupt), they land another job elsewhere and live on.
<coughs out a bunch of diesel emissions> “hear hear!”
Would VW have many overseas “executives”?
I don’t know if they’d have many, but I’d expect them to have at least a few. North America is a major market.
Their subsidiary companies do, but VW is a German company, the “executives” are ALL gonna be there dude… and those US execs would be doing what THEIR oversea “executives” want them to, so there’s still people above those who may be overseas. So calling them “executives” would be wrong since there is people above them still.
The point is, your “note” doesn’t matter mate.
Every multinational corp has execs for each region.
President and VP of insert region operation is a common title given to EXECS of foreign corps.
Yes, what do you think subsidiary means…?
These engineers clearly held executive roles, they just weren’t with the Volkswagen (germany) so they would have had to clarify their subsidiary. For journalism this was the correct wording. If they wanted to call them execs, it would have had to go into detail about Volkswagen (Us particular division and reasons)
If you’re talking about Fritolays, you don’t just go and say execs when talking about “lays” or “Doritos” subsidiaries, you would use “engineers” or whatever other work they held to simplify it.
It’s an unnecessary distinction for non mutually exclusive exclusive terms, to use “executives” would lead to more confusion and that would be shit journalism….
It’s an article about the German Volkswagen, why are you assuming it’s about the multinational subsidiary? You can be an engineer for Volkswagen, and their subsidiary, but that requires explaining if you want to call them that. Which is totally unnecessary since the article wasn’t about them.
Oh. You’re only counting GERMAN execs as executives. Okay.
Yes… the article is about the German company dude…… not the “Volkswagen group” and not “Volkswagen international” or whatever includes their multinational groups. To assume otherwise is just weird, they never mentioned anything but their German company.
Terms aren’t mutually exclusive… you don’t think those engineers held executive roles? They just weren’t executives of Volkswagen.
They would have had to say executives of Volkswagen (insert whatever specifics of the subsidiary), for it to be the correct term. Engineers is simpler and easier and is the proper way to express the situation.
Your “point” muddies the water and needs to bring on multiple additional pieces of information, which would also need to be described. Most people would know these engineers held executives roles, with some part farther down the “executive” chain.
You can be an engineer for Volkswagen, while also being the executive for Volkswagen US NW division, but it’s irrelevant to the article and requires more completely unnecessary information, so in the effort of good journalism and brevity….
Great, fine, whatever, bye
Even if it’s not VW executives it would be nice to see any executives actually face jail here in the US.
Unless I misunderstood something?