Pretty sure the million dollars was not meant seriously. There are plenty of regulated fields in which people still participate, despite various risks of liability. Professional engineers, doctors, every Uber driver in the US, who could potentially be punished for negligent driving while on the job. The point, I think, is that the current level of responsibility for writing bad code is essentially zero, but should probably be higher for some applications.

> the current level of responsibility for writing bad code is essentially zero, but should probably be higher for some applications

I agree that e.g. working on an OS should require guild-type credentials. But I don't know if most SWEs understand the professional-standards requirements such organisations are empowered to enforce on their members.