Engineers (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.
It seems engineers screw up on purpose often enough that the monetary incentives must be there.
Should we hold developers at uber criminally liable if the company fails? management? where does it stop?
Apparently not even if they design a system for thwarting regulators from doing their job.
I don't see the issue: that is part of being an Engineer: lives and livelihood of people depend on your work "working." That is how it works in all Engineering fields. Somehow in software engineering we give the title and forget the responsibility.
On the other hand, in a lot of jobs, engineers are overruled and treated as monkey typists, so...
Example: At Boeing, Engineers were overruled on 737 Max, and passengers paid the price. Time someone pays for that, in this case FAA included.
tl;dr: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering," # Steve Jobs (note: Rubicon is VP for him)
(See https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference....)
[Edit: P.S. Some of us gave a professional oath and take it pretty seriously. We should not hold our peers to lower standards.]
It's sort of the same as the question of whether soldiers should be held responsible for wars. There wouldn't be any wars if they all refused to fight. On the other hand, they are just carrying out orders. On a third hand, why the hell is "just carrying out orders" a good excuse for killing people? Why would anyone just "carry out the orders" without thinking about it themselves? Why should we be able to outsource our ethics? These are all questions that anarchists (the serious, intellectual variety), like to ask.