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Why stop at bankers, lets extend this to all sorts of job titles that should be held liable for their actions (or the actions of their subordinates).
by candiddevmike 4y ago
Why stop at bankers, lets extend this to all sorts of job titles that should be held liable for their actions (or the actions of their subordinates).
- ekianjo 4y agoHow about politicians?
- s1artibartfast 4y agoHow about voters, and now we come full circle
- Lev1a 4y agoProblem with that is, politicians promise all kinds of things for their election campaigns, then do whatever TF they want anyway once they're elected and sitting pretty effectively untouchable by the peasantry that elected them, getting rich and fat for a few years before "retiring" to a cushy board position of some company they "incidentally" helped during their political "career". Politicians are mostly professional parasites and most political systems seem to attract, apart from the odd once-in-a-while genuine idealist, exactly that type of people.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoIt seems like the electorate prefers those who promise the moon over honest idealists. I find it very hard to imagine that there is a lack of honest grass-roots idealists in a country of 350+ million people, so it must be a lack of people willing to vote for them.
- esalman 4y agoProgrammers are not held liable. If you go to another industry, such as construction, it's not the case.
- mr_00ff00 4y agoMan, the crazy future where programmers are punished for bad code. The sheer amount of trails would break our legal system.
- mikrl 4y agoA lawsuit against the author, the intern who +1d the PR, the senior who approved the PR, the engineer who ran the linter, the engineer who changed a variable name, the engineers who got it into prod, the engineer who fixed it (and introduced a new bug)
- throwaway173738 4y agoThat can actually happen in medical devices, especially if you’re liberal with commentary.
- jsemrau 4y agoThat's not fully correct. If you look for example at the case of James Liang who got sentenced to 40 months in prison. O https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-month-prison-term-in-diesel-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-...
- CommitSyn 4y agoThat was a fraud scheme.
- usui 4y agoUh, no? The parent was talking about software engineers, whereas this guy was closer to the hard-engineering and construction aspects, and on top of that, he was involved in wire fraud... Huge difference versus just being a smaller actor with no intent to concoct a big scheme.
- drewcoo 4y agoAnd it will stay that way until there are serious lawsuits because software is killing children.
- throwaway894345 4y agoIt makes more sense for some professions to be high-risk/high-reward—e.g., a startup executive. But banks are innately conservative institutions—depositors need to be able to get their money on demand, so it makes more sense to take measures that make banking professionals more conservative.
- vladd 4y agoJust to remember that there are different sorts of liabilities and punishment. For example, losing one's net worth might be an example. Shareholders are already subject to it, while for employees, even when fired, they just lose the potential of future earnings, leaving their accumulated net worth untouched. Wikipedia calls this the principal-agent problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble... ). Should employees in a position of power be agents that are putting up some collateral as a guarantee to be forfeit in case things go south? Or otherwise would unwarranted risk-taking behavior in their job be enough to go to jail when the results of their actions impact others in the world at large negatively?
- schemester 4y agoBanks are a specific situation where employees can get one-sided rewards for increasing exposure to tail risks with other people’s money. It’s to avoid misaligned incentives with delayed (by years) feedback.
- humanrebar 4y agoEngineers (or at least engineering firms) also get rewards for exposure to tail risks. As do many other professions. I'm not convinced bankers are special in that regard.
- schemester 4y agoHow much more money do engineers or engineering firms make by designing dams that fail and boats that sink?
- riffraff 4y agoI'm not sure how we can quantify it but we've had the car emissions scandal, the Boeing scandal, perhaps a self driving one.. It seems engineers screw up on purpose often enough that the monetary incentives must be there.
- ISL 4y agoCan be quite a bit -- the low bidder gets the job and gets paid. The higher bidder doesn't get paid and gets to continue looking for work.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoSoftware engineers can make quite a bit at projects and companies that ultimately fail. Should we hold developers at uber criminally liable if the company fails? management? where does it stop?
- UncleEntity 4y ago> Should we hold developers at uber criminally liable if the company fails? Apparently not even if they design a system for thwarting regulators from doing their job.
- xracy 4y agoIt's a fair question. I think the necessity of this tends to drop off with power. So I don't know if it's really necessary for a grocery bagger... But it probably wouldn't hurt. Feels like a fine broad brush policy.
- frogpelt 4y agoRight on. If the waiter brings me salmonella, he should pay the price.
- xracy 4y agoI think this would more likely fall on the cook.
- gadders 4y agoPoliticians every time there is a recession.