Why should software companies, developers, product managers and executives remain immune from consequences of willful negligence, when that negligence results in real harm?

In college I took an Engineering Ethics class, where we studied engineering mistakes resulting in deaths, and learned about the investigation and prosecution of the engineers involved when there was negligence.

The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in particular will always stay with me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse.

I especially like the Therac-25 [0] as a good example for software engineers. A literal concurrency bug between the UI and radiation emitter caused at least 6 people to get massive overdoses of radiation. Think about that next time you're using a multi-thread/multi-process library!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

I want that. I think that refusing to fix a life-or-death bug for 8 months is criminally negligent. Especially when millions of Pixel 6s are out in the wild, as an essential utility for millions of people.

I don't know the specific law, but FCC does expect a phone to be able to reach 911 (e.g., 911 Act). There must already be a penalizing process or fines in place for manufacturers who fail to meet basic standards.

I'm not sure what criminal liability would look like, though. Who do we put in jail? The dev? QA? People who CR'd the bug? The TPM who proposed the feature? The manager who allocated time? The skip who initiated the whole project? Should they share blame and multithread a 7 month sentence together and do 1 month together?

I agree w/ you though. My company needs to alert me if any LOC I'm working on could land me in prison and I'll gladly switch projects. I definitely don't want that burden.

Why else are Googlers paid so much? (rhetorical)

They need to do their damn job.

As a pixel 6 owner, I'm disgusted.

I know it was rhetorical but Googlers aren't pad so much because the quality of the SW coming out of Google matches the pay, but because they work for the number one data scraping and advertising company in the world.

Yo can have the best leetcoders in the world, but if QA is not part of the company culture, then ...

Does anybody know at what point the FCC can revoke the radio license of these devices? Reaching emergency services seems a prerequisite for transmitting on the telephony part of the spectrum, so it might be surprisingly clear.

It's abundantly clear from the replies in this thread that people are thinking emotionally, not rationally.

They're pissed off at their phone, and reaching for the biggest stick they can find -- not to fix the problem, but to punish whoever caused it. Likely, they wouldn't even punish the right person, it would just be a scapegoat sacrificed to appease their wrath.

Your comment is right on the nose when it comes to thinking rationally, and not emotionally.

A smart phone is not like the flight computers on a 747. If you want guaranteed 911 access with the threat of criminal prosecution if it fails, I'll happily design you a device. It will cost $50k, and will have a monthly service fee of $1000 per user. It won't have any other features besides 911. But it will work!

People just don't know what they're demanding.

I would argue that you’re the one who’s having the emotional reaction , not the rational one, when it comes to involving authorities and legally mandated access to emergency services.

You are clearly unaware of the legal requirements here.

> You are clearly unaware of the legal requirements here.

I am definitely unaware. If you do know the specific law/infraction, please link to it as that would help the discussion.

It doesn't help to vaguely hand-wave (emotionally I would argue) "Someone should go to jail!!". As I asked above, which people? How much jail? And what are the clearly defined laws?

There are engineers that deal directly with code critical to public safety and the amount of verification, compliance, testing, authorization, permits, processes, legal reviews, etc involved in that pipeline increase costs and delays 10-fold, but they are extremely safe and reliable.

Not saying we shouldn't do this for an emergency device, but it most certainly will not be cost-free, few engineers would want to be involved and consumers will not want to buy it.

First of all…did you change to an alt account? I don’t see libria anywhere in my reply chain above but you’re responding as if you’re bjt2n3904

Secondly nobody mentioned jail. Criminal investigation doesn’t mean jail time especially for corporations. Criminal negligence can just mean fines and a requirement to resolve the issue

You’re also acting as if people are saying the whole device and all software should be infallible. That’s not the requirement. Legally any cellular device needs to be able to contact emergency services as long as there are no extenuating circumstances (dead battery, no connectivity).

This is federally mandated in many countries. That Google has repeated failures to do so, across multiple countries and across a long period of time means that they are in violation of government rules.

You’re being intentionally obtuse on these points.

You seem to be (intentionally?) missing the point, which is that a known-dangerous bug was not promptly fixed.

The mental gymnastics required to turn this into something other than criminal negligence are ... olympic.

All phones likely have bugs which could lead to crashes which means it could in theory just happen to experience an issue concurrently with the users attempting to call 911 resulting in a failure. However your base image should have few to zero such bugs and such failures just happening to coincide with an emergency call are or ought to be statistically very unlikely.

The issue is not that a crash could happen its that a specific crash happens specifically when the user tries to place an emergency call triggered by the code that is supposed to run when the user makes such a call making failure statistically much more likely. Worse this has been a known issue since 2021.

People aren't asking for space shuttle quality engineering they are asking for the same statistical probability of failure as any other good quality phone. It is deeply ironic that while you insist others don't know what they are demanding you clearly have no idea what they are demanding.

>A smart phone is not like the flight computers on a 747.

You're right. They're about as reliable as the flight computers on a 737 Max instead

There is a difference between initial product design (also needs to follow regulations, but not the main topic of discussion), and failure to act on repeated bug reports spanning years that clearly describe software bugs which disrupt emergency calls on Android phones. There is not much to defend in their conduct.

It's really disgusting to see someone argue that people don't want to pay for quality, when old phones worked. Now, the pilpul here will be to claim that those old phones totally didn't actually work, they just appeared to basically always work, so it's totally the same thing; it's not.

The fact of the matter is that old phones may not have been formally-proven to work, but basically worked. The new phones aren't formally-proven to work, and basically don't.

> People just don't know what they're demanding.

As a programmer, I want the cretins claiming to be programmers to face justice for their disgusting work, about which they're so smug and condescending.

Fine the company $1 per unit sold per day until the 911 feature is fixed.

$1 per day per user maybe might get someone's attention

I think it's important to hold people responsible for negligence that causes harm to others, even in the tech industry.

> It's unlikely that actual people weren't hurt because of these bugs.

Do you want criminal prosecution for actual harm, or for potential harm?

America has this habit of reaching for the biggest gun it has to solve problems, or make a statement.

It always backfires.

> Do you want criminal prosecution for actual harm, or for potential harm?

Do you only want DUI to be illegal if it results in an accident?

Then who do we crucify as a criminal for HeartBleed? Or Spectre? Gosh, the potential harm those could have done!

Nobody. None of those have any such obvious signs of negligence.

Criminal reports for negligence that can cause death are a thing around the world.

Pray tell, how would it backfire to make sure emergency services are always available ?

They are scared that such standards would then be applied to their work.

After reading their other comments I think they’re more of the mindset of “regulations mean higher cost and I don’t want to pay more to meet standards I don’t immediately care about“

You're speaking in generalities that can hardly even be mapped to the situation at hand. What, specifically, are you saying is the correct recourse here? What are you saying would go wrong if Google were prosecuted for intentionally shipping a nonfunctional emergency feature?

As a developer, I worry about this. However, I also don't work on systems that could cause anyone a level of harm resulting in criminal damage. If I did, I'd like to think I'd increase the care I put into my craft 1000x. I realize that's not doable in many companies, and that's the problem. Too many companies taking the "move fast and break things" attitude towards people's lives and safety. This is how you invite the big foot of government regulation.

I am reminded of this article [0] on how NASA develops software. For things that absolutely must work, standard development practices do not apply. Real Engineers do not get to leave off testing for the big red emergency shut off button.

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

It highly probable that you are incapable of increasing the care you put into your craft by 1000x as you no matter your intentions because there isn't 1000x more of you to give.

In anything better processes and consistency beats try harder 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.

By care I'm thinking more disciplined approaches and moving very slowly with a significant increase in QA and verification. Most of us, regardless of the framework, time in the industry, or what letter we put in our xDD methodology of choice, are flying by the seat of our pants compared to most disciplines.

You mean it’s better to cover your devs ass instead of people in an emergency?

Why not? I like the laws that have been passed to ensure that people are able to contact emergency services. I think enforcing those laws is logical, given that they exist and imho they exist for good reason.