[nemo44x]

It's conjecture at this point to say anyone who programmed the ECU to do this knew what they were doing.

Saying that, it is likely they did know but this comes from above. There's a few psychology experiments that show many humans will do things they know are wrong or immoral when an authority figure tells them to do it even though they don't want to do it. The Milgram Experiment, for instance, comes to this conclusion, among others.

Peer pressure and obedience of authority are real phenomenons and that starts with the leadership that needs to be held accountable. Hearing an authority figure pass the blame to someone at the bottom is disgusting and barking up the wrong tree I believe.

[seivan]

Is that the experiment that showed that "assholes" are the ones who wouldn't do what they were told if they found it immoral?

While the "nice" and "obedient" always did as they were told? Then we're told never to hire "assholes".

[nemo44x]

I am not a psychologist, nor did I even take 101 in college, but I don't know if the Milgram Experiment came to a conclusion about perceived personality types. I did have a passing interest in these types of experiments for a few hours and read overviews and conclusions to them and I believe I recall "agreeableness" being something humans strive for to get accepted into a group. The Asch experiment in the 1950's showed people will purposely give the wrong answer if others in the group gave the wrong answer to a basic perception question. [1]

"Assholes", in your context would be people that don't fit the "culture" of the companies "group". Possibly off topic, but it's one of the reasons I always get a bit nervous when companies define their "culture".

[1] https://explorable.com/asch-experiment