[stormbrew]

Honestly I think this is a poor analogy. It's considerably easier to verify the work history of a surgeon or an architect. Their work is prominent and difficult to plagiarize.

Trades might be more applicable, and in trades you likewise have certain kinds of certification or even a guild-like system to keep skills and performance visible and consistent. There's not really any equivalent in programming (though there is in IT more broadly). Even a university degree is not really any particular proof of an ability to code, a lot of programs can be taken without having to write much code solo.

Programming is usually done collaboratively, either implicitly (through the use of base libraries) or explicitly (coworkers, group projects) and there are definitely people who freeride on those collaborations to a great extent.