[klodolph]

Big companies already spend a lot of time and money interviewing candidates to figure out if they should be hired. Credentialing will turn that into either a standardized test (which is known to be inferior) or simply require a degree (which will exclude too many good candidates).

[pizzaman09]

Under a hypothetical licensure system, companies would be more than welcome to hide rockstar Chad from the local CS department. They would just, for example, be more liable for damages or something. We can think of all types of licensure schemes, with all types of consequences. What makes you think software engineer credentialing will automatically work out poorly? Moreover, have you also considered its benefits? Oftentimes the world exists in shades of grey, where a system has good parts as well as bad parts. Lawyer credentialing, for example, isn't perfect, but it's better than nothing at all.

[klodolph]

Lawyer credentialing exists because individual clients are unable to vet lawyers otherwise. Same with doctors. In both cases, the consequences of getting a quack doctor or lawyer can be disastrous... death or imprisonment, for example. General contractors can cause quite a bit of damage to your home so they often have to be licensed and bonded, electricians can cause fires so they're licensed, and bad plumbers can do plenty of damage to your house too. All of these people are likely to be hired by private individuals.

A bad programmer could rack you up AWS charges, or leak your clients' credit card numbers to an attacker, or other things like that, but these are just financial losses for businesses that don't do their due diligence (nobody's dying, going to jail, or having their house burn down).

> Moreover, have you also considered its benefits?

I don't think the benefits have been adequately explained to me. Maybe I could consider them if you told me what they are.