[WalterBright]

Punishment is not the answer, you'll just drive out of the industry lots of competent people. Punishment also means that nobody will admit to mistakes, will not fix mistakes (because that implies guilt), and the covering up of mistakes.

Punishment for mistakes is what led to the Chernobyl disaster.

[neilv]

Flight safety works so well because the personnel are aligned with safety and professionalism, and the FAA has an important program in place to protect people from being punished for behaving professionally. And IIRC you're familiar with aircraft manufacturer alignment with safety.

But I'm concerned about the entire field of software, which doesn't have that sense of responsibility, and I don't see how it would get it. However, software industry -- both companies and workers -- are guided almost entirely by money. To the point that it's often hard to explain to many people in HN discussions on why it would be good to behave in any other way than complete mercenary self interest. So I don't see any way to get alignment other than to link money to it. If people see that as punishment, so be it.

[WalterBright]

Every business is guided almost entirely by money. The purpose of a business is to make money.

Organizations based on other incentives don't work, or work very poorly.