Balancing that out, of course, is that professional engineers (I'm talking about PEs here, not programmers) can be held liable if they sign off on something the

Balancing that out, of course, is that professional engineers (I'm talking about PEs here, not programmers) can be held liable if they sign off on something they knew, or should have known, to be defective. They would be held liable even if their boss ordered them to do so. It's a very different set of incentives than we have in software, but maybe its time we introduce real PEs into software development.