In the civil engineering world, at least in Europe, the lead engineer would sign papers that would put him as liable if a bridge or a building structure collapses on its own. The civil engineers face literal prison time if they make a sloppy work.
In the software engineering world, we have TOSs that deny any liability if the software fails. Why?
It boils my blood to think that the heads of CrowdStrike would maybe get a slap on the wrist and everything will slowly continue as usual as the machines will get fixed.
Let's think about this for a second. I agree to some extend with what you are trying to say, I just think there's a critical thing missing here in your consideration, and that is usage of the product outside its intended purpose/marketing.
Civil engineers built bridges knowingly that civilians use them, and structural failure can cause deaths. The line of responsibility is clear.
SW companies (like CrowdStrike (CS)) it MAY BE less straight-forward.
A relevant real-world example is the use of consumer drones in military conflicts. Companies like DJI design and market their drones for civilian use, such as photography. However, these drones have been repurposed in conflict zones, like Ukraine, to carry explosives. If such a drone malfunctioned during military use, it would be unreasonable to hold DJI accountable, as this usage clearly falls outside the product's intended purpose and marketing.
The liability depends on the guarantees they make. If they market it for AV used for critical infrastructure, such as healthcare (seems like they do https://www.crowdstrike.com/platform/) - by all means, it's reasonable to hold with accountable.
However, SW companies should be able to sell products and long as they're clear what the limitations are, and it needs to be clearly communicated to the customers.
We have those TOS's in the software world because it would be prohibitively expensive to make all software reliable as a publicly used bridge. For those who died as a direct result of CrowdStrike, that's where the litigious nature of the US becomes a rare plus. And CrowdStrike will lose a lot of customers over this. It isn't perfect, but the market will arbitrate CrowdStrike's future in the coming months and years.
I guess it's caused by the "brogrammer" culture of Silicon Valley, where you would get hazed if you dared using a GUI-based tool.
Also, being more focused on open-sourcing their tools (because other companies do not open source them, therefore being un-cool), which begets a "simpler" and "engineeristic" approach to UX, which do not need UI experts and designers.
If everyone would reason like you, do you think Google won't raise premium prices even more, or put ads for "lesser" premium users, a-la Netflix base subscription?
Funnily, isn't it what happens with "disruptor" companies like Uber and Airbnb? first they revolutionize the taxi/hotel market, then they slowly become what they were supposed to revolutionize
Uber and Airbnb did not "revolutionize" taxis or hotels. They just used modern technology to skirt around dated labor/safety and zoning laws.
Edit: to be more clear - you have always been able to ask strangers for rides or to sleep at their place. It's just obviously impractical without a marketplace linking you cheaply and easily to willing hosts.
I concur that regulatory escape was key to both companies' success. (I think the term "regulatory entrepreneurship" was coined as well.)
However Uber did improve upon traditional taxi pricing by adopting the airport shuttle model of paying for the destination – rather than the perverse incentives and unpredictability of pay-per-mile or pay-per-minute. They also had better app-based dispatch and ride tracking.
The desire to disrupt almost always arises out of ignorance. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that if you know the complex reasoning and all the institutional baggage that explains why hotels, banks, or old-school tech companies operate in a particular way, it's hard to say "let's blow it all up."
On the flip side, if you can explain it away as "they just don't get it and I do," it's a lot easier to act. And the thing is, sometimes, you get good results. Sometimes, the old way of doing business is just a matter of inertia, and the justifications used by others turn out to be bad.
But about just as often, you end up reinventing the wheel or re-learning the lessons that others learned before.
As someone who just this year started to keep track of the money across the months, I can say that you get some sort of high when you get close to payday and you see the line going up.
If that would be the case, won't there then be the risk of creating a short-circuit which would benefit the actual money launderers/criminals?
Say, I have 3 millions somehow deposited in the $bank_where_i_put_my_shady_money, I want to take/move the money, but doing so will raise some eyebrows, so I deliberately try to debank myself so that I can get all my money cash OR move it to $partner_bank
In the software engineering world, we have TOSs that deny any liability if the software fails. Why?
It boils my blood to think that the heads of CrowdStrike would maybe get a slap on the wrist and everything will slowly continue as usual as the machines will get fixed.
People died for this bug.