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by galoisscobi 784 days ago
> What is needed is skin in the game. Misdiagnosis should have financial penalties like speeding tickets

By this logic, would you say that software engineers should be financially liable for any bugs they cause along with people who misdiagnose those bugs in the process of root cause?

2 comments

> By this logic, would you say that software engineers should be financially liable for any bugs they cause

Yes. Professional engineers are held ethically, professionally, and in some cases financially responsible for the work they sign off on. Personally, I agree with Dijkstra who pointed out in a speech in 1993 that the term "software engineer" is a hollow sham:

> And also the programming manager has found the euphemism with which to lend an air of respectability to what he does: “software engineering”...

> In the mean time, software engineering has become an almost empty term, as was nicely demonstrated by Data General who overnight promoted all its programmers to the exalted rank of “software engineer”! But for the managing community it was a godsend which now covers a brew of management, budgeting, sales, advertising and other forms of applied psychology.

> Ours is the task to remember (and to remind) that, in what is now called “software engineering”, not a single sound engineering principle is involved. (On the contrary: its spokesmen take the trouble of arguing the irrelevance of the engineering principles known.) Software Engineering as it is today is just humbug; from an academic —i.e. scientific and educational— point of view it is a sham, a fraud.

From https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/E...

I don't think we have a market failure around that. If I introduce bugs that matter the company loses money. If that happens the company will penalize me by not getting promoted or a raise our even getting fired. Both the company and the individual are already held accountable.

In contrast, how do I even know my medical diagnosis was wrong? How do I know it could have been better given the facts at hand at the time? There also seems to be no market function at all that gives market feedback to the medical institution

Edit: procedures going wrong is of course already highly penalized and insurance for this is a significant cost of our health care.