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> Everywhere else in the world, when you hire someone, you ask to see their previous work. It is universally the best signal, you don't have a carpenter build a chair on site, you look at what they've built and talk to them about it. And you certainly don't ask them to build a chair in a style they have never done before, you just see if you like their style. This analogy is flawed. Software engineers work in teams on any project of worthwhile complexity, even open source ones. It's not simple to parse out what your contributions are. To validate expertise, universally, everywhere else in the world, many professions have licenses, certifications, and governing bodies. They rarely take your word for it. See lawyers, doctors, civil engineers, dentists, architects, etc. etc.. Software engineering has none of these things, and until the field matures, we use adhoc methods. From prior experience, I disagree that the best method in finding competent engineers is to simply talk to them about projects. This is easy to fake, and you may even have colleagues you've suspected of doing so. |