Nobody held a gun to the heads of the crew. The deliberately chose to put themselves and their passengers in a situation that was illegal and unsafe. This deliberate erosion of safety margins then made them fatally vulnerable to any malfunction, like the mis-rigged engine controls.
Pilots reading the report have a choice. They can say "other people" were responsible not the pilots, or they can use this as a wake up call on the fact that ultimately it is a pilots responsibility to resist the kinds of egregious work place pressures that reduce safety and vow not to make this kind of mistake. Learn from the accidents or be doomed to repeat them.....
Operators can always find junior pilots desperate for any flying job. The CAAs
nevercome down on operators where the culture encourages busting limits.
The dirty secret is that you
can get away with busting limits -- quite a bit of the time. But the odds do catch up with folks from time to time.