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I'm going to have to invoke the Munger test [1] on this: rather than imagining an ideal regulatory body that works perfectly, talk to people in regulated professional fields (law, architecture, medicine) and see what they think about the regulators they have. You'll get a mixed bag. On one hand, it limits major acts of gross negligence where a practitioner really didn't know a thing about what they were doing. In trade, you get a hierarchical, rigid career path where the people at the top -- the professionals/partners -- extract economic rent from those below in trade for their exclusive ability to practice the trade as independent professionals, not under control of anyone else. Be careful what you wish for. Professionalization would probably benefit the old at the expense of the young, because salaries wouldn't necessarily track performance (or perception thereof) as directly as they do now, in tech. As controversial as it might seem, I really think there is a limit of how much value one can add as an individual practitioner software developer, and don't think people should necessarily get, or expect, raises for doing the same job year in and year out, just for showing up. So you can either plateau salary quickly, which is what we have now, or hit the same peak, but take a lot longer to get there. It's a complex issue either way but I don't think the status quo is actually that bad. [1] After economist Charlie Munger, invoked when people mention "the free market" or "regulation" to the solution to any problem. Think about the business leaders/regulators we have, not necessarily ideal ones of our imaginations. |