>It’s as if in your mind one engineer makes the singular call and sees the entire picture of the project and its risks.

To a certain extent this is true. To extend the OP's example, a mechanical or civil engineer who stamps a building design takes responsibility for that design being safe enough for public use. The same could apply to the MCAS design, or the quality engineer who signs off on how the plane was put together. These are not "romatic notions"; the latter is already common practice in aerospace. Do you think if a QE stamped that the door bolts were installed should not bear responsibility for the bolts being missing?

In those cases where the engineer is supposed to be aware of the risks, there should be processes in place to account for, and mitigate, those risks. For the example of MCAS, the software was categorized as hazardous in the hazard analysis document. As such, Boeing processes required it to have redundant inputs as a default. It did not (the redundant sensor was sold an optional equipment); as such, I think the engineer who signed off on the hazard analysis may bear some responsibility. If, on the other hand, there were no business processes in place to require redundancy, that seems like a CEO responsibility.

I didn't read it as a "personal insult".

It's true that most software engineers never work on safety-critical systems. The nature of the products they work on, or the nature of their contributions to those products, limits the possible impact of flaws and mistakes.

Once you work on a product with safety-critical features and/or become responsible for one, there really is a marked psychological change that takes place. I've lived through that change in my own career, and many comments (including some I've written, I'm sure) now strike me as callous and trivializing important matters to an extent that grates.

It's important to hold engineers accountable for their work in proportion to their impact, which is typically very significant. If you build machines that can kill, stakes should exist for you as well.

I don't see a personal insult, but maybe SWEs should take the ethics of their work more personally. Maybe the shape of our epidemic of social and psychological dysfunction would be different (if not smaller).

When I worked at a retailer, we were told to push buy-now-pay-later schemes on our customers (on top of the corporate credit card, and insurance plans, and service plans). Most of my coworkers simply decided that they weren't going to - in part, because such schemes are nakedly predatory, but also because it was yet another dumb metric we knew we'd be held to if it were successful. I don't know of anyone who was fired or docked pay or denied a promotion because of it, and it's not worth luring someone into financial ruin over a TV and an entry-level sales position. Which leads me to another thought: if you're so low in the chain that you have no say in how and what you work on, is it a job that's worth sacrificing your morals for? Maybe take advantage of that increased earnings potential from job-hopping and get out of dodge.

To the contrary, there is usually _several_ engineers who see the ethical/safety problems and talk about them with colleagues. They just don't report it to the right authorities.

Nobody asks the engineer to see the entire picture. (Very few, senior, engineers see the entire picture - to the shock of many newbies. But that's for another discussion). The problem is when the engineer DOES see the problem and doesn't question the project, and stays on, and doesn't figure out a way to get it questioned, and in the end doesn't report anything. THAT is an ethics problem. And yes, in some companies it will cost you your job. That's where the other jobs come in - because there ARE other jobs.

> This is a noble goal but unrealistic and unfair at scale. It is in the current organisation of software development because it doesn't allow that.

In the building sector you can't build without your design being signed of by an engineering office and the engineer and its office take the responsability for it, both at the criminal and civil level.

If the same rule existed for the software industry, the organisation would adapt itself around it.