This is 100% going to be the opposite case. The question is how, as a developer asked to do this kind of thing, you can defend against the subsequent inquiries.

(remember VW trying to blame two engineers for the "defeat device"?)

Why the assumption that this was some rogue developer? What would they have to gain? I am 110% convinced this was deliberate strategy from the company and not just a random malice from an employee.

> This goes to show you must have controls at all levels in your code integrity. A lone wolf developer in your organization can and will implement these kinds of things to curry favor with their management. While good intentioned, it’s every executive’s worse nightmare.

WTF is this comment? Hanlons Inverted Anticapitalist Razor clearly says to never attribute to stupidity that which can be more easily explained by greed. Therefore it's more likely management that's at fault here.

I don't think this particular case was a lone wolf problem.

Lone pawn, as in doing directly for the strong person at the top (owners family?) what the top would never dare to order through the regular chain of command would not be quite as impossible.

Multiple people had to be involved, not just programmers.

About as likely as dieselgate.

I think the above is actually well crafted sarcasm. But it does highlight why as an engineer/developer it is important to get requirements in writing and have a process that shows why you made the changes you ultimately made.

Seriously? I find it very unlikely this is the work of a "lone wolf developer". Newag management and executives knew about this. Some of these trains were configured (poorly) to "break" at a scheduled date that just so happen to line up with when those trains were scheduled to go get serviced[0]. Lone wolf developers usually don't have the ability to make builds/configurations for a particular deployment of the software...

[0]: https://badcyber.com/dieselgate-but-for-trains-some-heavywei... - Section "Checking the date is hard"

Nor the incentive. The one mentioned by OP sounds unrealistic.

Seems like you're recommending a system of scapegoating. It would be easy for executives to suggest such a change in a round-about way to managers (Gee I sure wish it was impossible for other companies to service our trains). The managers then field the suggestion to any programmer they know to be particularly "non political" and amoral. Then when the official investigation kicks off, all the blame is laid on the "lone wolf" programmer (who in fact was not a lone wolf because he was chided on by management and indirectly inspired by the executive) and the company itself is let off the hook?

In these situations the entire company needs to catch the blame, even if the commits can be pinned to one programmer. By all means fine or imprison the programmer, but also charge his boss because he knew or was criminally negligent for not knowing, and ditto the bosses' bosses up to the executives. And fine the hell out of the entire corporation; either they knew this happened and did it deliberately, or they were negligent for allowing something like this to happen. Either way the whole corp needs to pay.

Developers are likely to want to reject work like this, but are coerced into it by their employers (who threaten workers with loss of work, various punishments, loss of healthcare, reputation damage in industry if workers do not comply with tasks given to them). This was an ownership/exec level decision. Yes, we should be beware of "lone wolf" employers (hierarchies which allow the decisions of some isolated few to coerce many under them).

Managers could fish around for a mercenary-mentality programmer to do this without coercion. They have information on people's backgrounds, know about other morally dodgy things they may have coded before, and know the general temperament of their programmers. Find the guy who used to work for real scammy adtech companies before yours, who likes to espouse extreme libertarian talking points in the lunchroom, who maybe has a gambling problem or is otherwise looking to get a lot more money and seems like he would probably would steal from you if he found a way. Hint that doing the job will be good for his career or come with bonuses. Now you have a compatriot in crime instead of a coerced victim; this way he's more likely to keep his mouth.