The challenge that I've been trying to express is that individual excellence is hard to replicate at scale. Sure in sports, that works ok, the numbers are smal

The challenge that I've been trying to express is that individual excellence is hard to replicate at scale. Sure in sports, that works ok, the numbers are small and the rewards are great, the incentives are there for people to comb through thousands of people to find that one candidate who's truly excellent. But that's not the reality for most companies, they're not trying to hire the absolute brightest and best, realistcally not everyone can. They're looking for some measurable indications that a candidate has a baseline level of knowledge in a given field. Now I feel that a good certifiation can be part of that. So a valuable activity for the industry is to try and create better certifications to help companies who aren't in a position to judge for themselves whether someone is great at something or not, that there's a level of knowledge and understanding there. If current certifications are poor, then it should be possible to articulate why they are poor, and describe what would make them better. My references to other professions were designed to reference the fact that those professions have had to face similar issues as they've grown and in science, engineering, law, medicine, accountancy, etc etc they've pretty much all decided that some forms of professional certifications are the right way to go. Not to say that they're perfect, but that they could be better than the alternatives.