If employees were personally liable for costs of mistakes, no one would do the work - too much personal risk involved. Also, the degree of blaming anyone-but-me would be off the charts, crippling the organization. Having some type of accountability is important - incompetent people should not be allowed to keep their job, and institutions should have some incentive to improve, but not sure putting all the burden on individuals is the right answer.

What if you had to pay the cost of every bug you created? I'm sure a lot of us developers would be digging ditches instead. :)

There are many jobs for which the doer is personally liable. They are required to be bonded and insured so that if anything happens, they don't go bankrupt or otherwise avoid compensating for damages. And there are still people to do the work.

Not sure that's the best solution here, but the assumption that "no one would do the work" is likely not correct.

Good point. Although if they're required to be bonded as part of the job requirements, that means they still don't feel the full effect of the cost of their mistakes which is what I think was being proposed. That said, it's a lot closer along that spectrum because I assume their ability to be bonded/insured will be affected by subsequent claims against the bond.

I'm also not sure exactly how bonding would work in jobs where blame is hard to determine, or not attributable to a single individual (ie systemic issue). Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's not done more commonly.

True. Collective responsibility is a much better solution - then it is in bosses' best interest to create such environment that mistakes have as low impact as possible. And it's up to the whole team to make that happen. Similar to how it is done in (properly managed) software development companies.

Except they are usually granted immunity by statute. It came up in conversation the other day with a group of friends, the question of 'citizens arrest'.

In my state, NJ, anyone can bring a disorderly person in front of a judge or detain someone who's suspected to have committed a major crime. However, it never happens because if we were incorrect then all sorts of civil and criminal claims could be made for injuries and/or false imprisonment.

We scoured the state's criminal law and found out members of law enforcement were relieved from liability if they were wrong about the above.

The other job that was exempt from liability was librarian. Apparently, a librarian can tackle someone suspected of stealing a book and it's ok under NJ law. [1]

[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2013/title-2c/sectio...

That might help. I am no expert on govt stuff so I will defer to those who are. But it does suck I don't have an ID right now. You never notice how often you use it (travel, bars, events) until you don't have one!

Passport card is something I recommend. When traveling in states out of the area, some don't like my license as primary ID. There's a second privacy benefit too, the passport card does not have your address on it for bars that scan licenses and keep the addresses in database.