Developers need to stop being so allergic to accountability. It's kind of pathetic
That being said, software development and civil engineering are very different in terms of risk management. There are strict regulations around what you do and if you play by the rules, you have minimum to no risk. Even if dozens of people die under a collapsing building you are not accountable if everything you had done was by the book.
Software development, on the other hand, is more like wild west. There are minimal regulations, only best practices. One developer can never know if the end product is free of any errors.
Pilots are a completely different story. The OP was talking about "causing company X to lose Y dollars", not human lives.
Nah, the opposite. Being paid $800k/year is a great carrot. It should come with a stick so fewer people do the cruise control.
You would have to pay CEO salaries since the responsibility lies on developers.
But ... would you then like to work in that area, if you fear every step you make, can be your last?
Do you think there would be much innovation, if the punishment costs are so out of balance?
* you, a programmer who coded something that caused company X to lose Y dollars because of a "mistake", have to be on a hook for Y dollars.
* you, a manager who managed a project that caused a company X to lose Y dollars because of a "mistake" by your programmer, have to be on a hook for Y dollars.
* you, a product owner who accepted the what the manager of ta project that caused a company X to lose Y dollars because of a "mistake" by your programmer, have to be on a hook for Y dollars.
* you, the CEO of the company that had a product owner who accepted the what the manager of ta project that caused a company X to lose Y dollars because of a "mistake" by your programmer, have to be on a hook for Y dollars.
Yes, I understand that the cost of a mistake is now higher than the loss suffered by X. That's the incentive to ensure that it does not happen because the wives or husbands or partners of the people who would now have to pay are going to ensure that they do not do take that whose wacky ideas and implement them -- wacky ideas are abstract but the loss of nice housing, nice organic food, nice daycare for the kids and nice scholarship fun is real.