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Comment by guraf | Hacker News Reader

In any other field, engineers would be held responsible and after so many "mistakes" they would lose their license.

Software engineers will fight tooth and nails to keep their privilege is being called engineers whilst having none of the responsibility when it comes to the harm they're causing.

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Really? Who lost their engineering license from Firestone tires? Toyota gas pedals? Hasbro easy-bake oven? Graco high chairs?

Stop trotting out the same baseless comment over and over.

In my country, engineers are legally responsible for their work to the point where insurance is required to do engineering. And yes, engineers that are negligent are held responsible. Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Certainly liability insurance exists.

Let me know if find answers to my questions.

You know any software engineers with liability insurance? Also, you would have learned of many examples had you gone to engineering school, we have whole courses dedicated to laws and ethics.

Yes many software engineering firms hold liability insurance.

And many software engineering contracts contain liability clauses.

In most fields with “real engineers” do they also get told by management to ship things broken and/or with arbitrary deadlines, or do they have the ability to push back on things, with some legal recourse or means to avoid the threat of losing their jobs if they say no to something, that software engineers lack?

I don’t think things will change until corporate management changes (via being forced to, or otherwise).

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