Yes, I would expect compensation to increase proportionally with accountability. What makes no sense is compensation that increases irrespective of accountability.

Being the CEO of a company that handles risky, sensitive things should be risky for the CEO, personally. And their compensation can reflect that.

In other words, they need to hire people whose job it is to “please”.

Provide Legal Exculpation and Sign Everything

https://how-i-met-your-mother.fandom.com/wiki/Provide_Legal_...

That could be outlawed as well as it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to show that person wasn’t actually making any of the decisions. Not that I expect any of this will ever happen.

In my experience civil engineers get paid less than software developers of equivalent experience or responsibility.

Yes, but they are good at what they do. Software is more conplex and has a culture of fix it in production that would make it far more risky to sign.

I wouldn't describe software as most people experience it as more complex.

And civil engineering projects are constantly fixing unforeseen design problems either during construction or afterwards.

I would distinguish the failure modes as different though eg analog vs digital. Real world engineering can absorb an awful lot of minor mistakes through safety factors etc. Failure can be gradual or just a matter of degree or even just interpretation of standards. Software failures are often more digital or only matter when "under attack"