[austincheney]

> They are often weak signals of actual competence

I disagree. They are weak at separating the top 10% from the rest of the qualified people, but they are excellent at removing the people who have no business being there in the first place.

The first two that comes to the minds of most people are law and medical licenses. These licenses don't exist as a job qualifier. They exist as a legal qualifier. That means a gross abuse of the license requirements are cause for law suits and serious criminal offenses even though most lawyers and doctors are corporate employees.

If programmers had the realization that gross negligence could land them in jail or cause them to lose their career and property in a lawsuit I suspect they would take their jobs more seriously than merely writing code.

Programmers don't just write code just like doctors don't just prescribe painkillers and soldiers don't just shoot people. They make numerous critical decisions that have real world implications. Examples of gross failure are simplistic known security breaches that allow confiscation of millions of credit card numbers and PII. Other examples include discriminatory and accessibility violating software products.

These are basic foundational qualities of competence. In any other industry negligence of this magnitude would put in prison. Since the base line is so ridiculously low for hiring developers these are considered advanced qualities often transferred to third party firms and only after threats of pending legal actions. All we care about when hiring developers is whether they are literate and have a pulse.

Be serious, no change to any hiring process will fix that.

> They are not accessible by everyone.

Don't care. If a person want to achieve access to a given career they will find a way through their own internal motivation. If the industry wants to make the careers more accessible they will promote a desirable education path. This isn't a secret legendary arcane black magic.

[Cyph0n]

Law and medicine are not relevant examples at all.

In both cases, licensing did not arise because of hiring issues, but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods.

Any field where this can be the case on a day-to-day basis ends up having strict licensing and/or training requirements. Examples include civil engineers, pilots, soldiers, sea captains, heavy machinery operators, and so on.

[lr4444lr]

The guys who work at Lockheed Martin programming vehicular data sensors, or who work for medical device manufacturers on MRI machine interfaces - they aren't directly involved in human lives and livelihoods? What about the massive security failures at Equifax? That's not putting people at risk?

[Cyph0n]

Once again, these kinds of industries adapt to the kind of work they do. There are numerous bureaucratic and access-control procedures in place at defense contractors. The FDA has a ton of requirements for anyone working on medical devices.

Equifax was a monumental shitshow. I think SSNs are also a shitshow, but I digress.

[austincheney]

> but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods.

How does that not describe software? When was the last day you were completely without software? Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter. It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities. Soon all of these will be part of the internet of things if they already aren't.

> Any field where this can be the case on a day-to-day basis ends up having strict licensing and/or training requirements.

Except software.

[Cyph0n]

It seems like you're not understanding my point at all.

> Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter.

The automotive sector has its own complex procedures and policies in place for working on vehicular control software. You and I would likely not even be able to land an interview for an automotive firmware design position without prior experience and/or certification.

In many cases, there are entire programming standards that dictate how such systems need to be written.

In other words, the software that runs inside your vehicle is nothing like the software powering our favorite websites.

> It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities.

The chance of a kitchen appliance endangering a human is much lower than a car going haywire or a doctor making a mistake due to inadequate training.

[austincheney]

> The chance of a kitchen appliance endangering a human is much lower than a car going haywire or a doctor making a mistake due to inadequate training.

The chance of any device on the internet of things leaking your personal habits online is not low. Furthermore, the risk of death or injury from electrical devices is only due to regulation upon such devices before commercial software was ever imagined. I would also say the hiring and performance of truck drivers is far more regulated than the firmware developers who write the code that powers that very truck.

> the software that runs inside your vehicle is nothing like the software powering our favorite websites.

So website software doesn't need to be written by competent people with regard for your privacy or security? Is insecure online software not harmful? Are credit card data breaches not harmful?

[Cyph0n]

> Is insecure online software not harmful? Are credit card data breaches not harmful?

Harmful, yes. Life threatening, no. There is a world of difference between losing a kidney due to incompetence vs. losing money.

[austincheney]

So lawyers shouldn't have to be licensed or certified? They cannot take a kidney from you. Neither can truck drivers, real estate agents, or police officers.