Comment by jeremyjh
6 years ago
With this power, comes serious responsibility. If an engineer signs off on a design that they know to be fundamentally unsafe, that engineer has liability regardless of the internal pressures placed on them.
6 years ago
With this power, comes serious responsibility. If an engineer signs off on a design that they know to be fundamentally unsafe, that engineer has liability regardless of the internal pressures placed on them.
The incentives just aren’t there though. Performance reviews are all about impact, and engineers who focus on quality instead of impact are worse off in career advancement. Likewise with the incentives on companies; companies that do slow but careful development get overtaken by faster moving competitors which reward impactful employees.
And it isn’t even clear to me that most consumers would prioritize security / stability over feature-sets when choosing software.
How does a software engineer know that something is safe? Do they need to be aerospace engineers as well? Do they need to go over the full schematics of the hardware their software is running on?
Yes!
If you are in a context where your software has significant implications on the state of a physical system, you must be willing to work with the other engineers to make sure you've accommodated all the eventualities you can.
Part of being an Engineer is knowing what you don't know, yet following through and making sure you connect with the people who do in order to ensure all relevant questions are asked and answered.
So if you contribute to the linux kernel should you be an aerospace, medical, vehicle, ... engineer as well?
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>>> If an engineer signs off on a design that they know to be fundamentally unsafe
The problem is you don't know its unsafe. It sometimes takes a disaster to shed lite on a problem. Engineering and design is hard.
Couldn't you make this argument about a mechanical engineer?
This is already the case for mechanical engineers, or any other Professional Engineer.