I think the argument here is that the dressing-down is done in hindsight, which the developer didn't have. It's not fair to vary the punishment by the cost of the mistake, if the person didn't intentionally make the mistake (and thus didn't take the cost into account), as that's just revenge.

What you want instead is corrective action, which is achieved fine by saying "this cost us $X million in recall costs because we don't want a copyright infringement lawsuit", and then counting on the employee to now know not to make that mistake again.

You could, I guess, argue that if you yell at an employee, they're less likely to make that mistake again, but then you'd have to be yelling at them for every mistake, since they didn't know which mistakes would end up being costly (otherwise they wouldn't make them).

What's weird is that even this developer seems to disagree with people here. It's not complicated, I don't think: we just have a rooting interest in IC developers, and in Easter eggs. I'm really only here to keep saying that 1995 was nothing like 2015, nothing at all like it.

I agree with you on that, I'm just saying that yelling at people is rarely productive. Even firing should be something that's done after multiple issues, not because of one mistake, even if it's sizable. That's just my opinion, though.

I'm 100% on the same page with the "don't freak out at the early-career developer who accidentally drops a table" people; seems like a good management lesson (it also makes me glad I don't manage people). I just read this thread and the Jamiroquai and Sublime started playing in my head and I was teleported back to cubicle culture, which I am here to report is totally different than modern dev culture. :)

Yeah, we really had to make sure software didn't have too many backs back when we'd have to issue a patch release a year later. I'm not sure I miss it.