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How do we let someone fly hundreds of people through the upper atmosphere with a certificate, but you can't make a login page with javascript without a unique m

How do we let someone fly hundreds of people through the upper atmosphere with a certificate, but you can't make a login page with javascript without a unique multi-day interview for each distinct company?

supernewton 2y ago
For air transport in the U.S., it's not just one certificate, it's many. You get your private license, instrument rating, multi-engine rating, commercial certificate, instructor certificate, and finally the air transport certificate. And you're not allowed to even think about that last step until you've accumulated 1500 flight hours on the previous steps. Being allowed to write a Javascript login page is easy pickings compared to that.
elicksaur 2y ago
what do you think the interview process for airline pilot looks like? >“Hello, I am a certified pilot.” >“Great! You start tomorrow!”
vunderba 2y ago
I'm sorry, are you serious or being deliberately obtuse? Even the most minimal pilots license, a.k.a. the PPL, still requires approximately 40 hours give or take of instruction, taking the ground school exam, and finally passing a check ride with a certified flight instructor. Flying a passenger airliner as you seem to be alluding to basically means that you have a commercial license and likely an ATP - we're talking hundreds if not thousands of hours of flight experience. Unbelievable.
- evilduck 2y ago
  Pilots have it easy because they actually have a series of tests they can take to prove they can do something. Once they have it then that's done, proof acquired. I have around thirty thousand hours working as a software engineer and have been part of many successful product deliveries, have progressively greater accomplishments, and hold a degree in computer science and all of that is worth almost zilch to the next interviewer.
drumdance 2y ago
My dad was an airline pilot. To hear him talk he was surrounded by morons. That said, at least with airplanes you have to put in the flight hours and they have to be documented. Most commercial pilots start off at very low pay doing puddle jumpers and regional jets. Military experience might give you a leg up because it shows you've spent a lot of hours going through a very regimented program. My dad was fortunate to get in the industry right before it became an option for the masses rather than luxury and business. It was high paying, glamorous job.
joshuahedlund 2y ago
Every airplane flies pretty much the same way, and pilots all get paid pretty much the same* Every website stack, and the level of complexity under it, is unique, and there's also a huge pay differential. *could be false assumption on my part
- theideaofcoffee 2y ago
  Maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing to software what has been done with other professional fields: licensing and checking out of various levels. If I have to spend 30 hours or so learning, practicing and demonstrating my knowledge about aircraft instrument procedures before I can attempt that as a pilot in real airspace, maybe it’s not that big of a jump that we’d license different software features, and going outside of those bounds would be subject to loss of license. Then we’d know this set of language features you’re familiar enough with to hold that cert. It might cut down on the waste and proliferation of useless tech that seems to be strangling the industry because people just want it on their resume. It would do enough to dissuade companies from hiring non-licensed engineers (hey you could actually call yourself and engineer and not feel like an imposter), and would put a hard liability on things that definitely need it: financial and health data, which seems to be ripe for exploit and disclosure. One way or another the insanity of the current system needs to stop.
  - shagie 2y ago
    I have interviewed people who have attested to having a Java certification from Oracle that while they were able to pass that test, they were unable to use their knowledge to develop solutions or solve problems. I could ask about how the class loader worked or the syntax associated with a particular construct (that that language level - not anything later) and get the correct answer. They could pass tests and follow instructions. Licensure for problem solving is difficult. Extend that to different domains and it is an even harder problem to solve. https://www.nspe.org/resources/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncees-ends-software-engineering-pe-exam https://www.nspe.org/resources/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncees-en... > The Software Engineering PE exam, which has struggled to reach an audience, will be discontinued by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying after the April 2019 administration. The exam has been administered five times, with a total of 81 candidates. > NCEES’s Committee on Examination Policy and Procedures reviews the history of any exam with fewer than 50 total first-time examinees in two consecutive administrations and makes recommendations to the NCEES Board of Directors about the feasibility of continuing the exam. > In 2013, the software exam became the latest addition to the family of PE exams. The exam was developed by NSPE, IEEE-USA, the IEEE Computer Society, and the Texas Board of Professional Engineers—a group known as the Software Engineering Consortium. Partnering with NCEES, the consortium began working in 2007 to spread the word about the importance of software engineering licensure for the public health, safety, and welfare. > This collaboration was preceded by Texas becoming the first state to license software engineers in 1998. The Texas Board of Professional Engineers ended the experience-only path to software engineering licensure in 2006; before the 2013 introduction of the software engineering PE exam, licensure candidates had to take an exam in another discipline.
ElevenLathe 2y ago
Obviously the current situation is crazy, but part of the issue is that the specific asks for a particular developer job are dependent on 1) the stack in use and 2) the org chart at that company. 1 is obvious: if you need JS devs, most hiring managers won't want to hire Pascal devs and hope they figure it out. We can question the wisdom of this, but it is the reality. 2 is less obvious but not super obscure. Depending on how you structure your teams, similar positions at different companies might require more full-stack knowledge, or better people skills, or something else. IME there is little to no standardization here for developer roles, especially compared to something like HR or Accounts Payable, or even very similar IT-adjacent industries like game development. Fix both of these issues and we would be able to have something more like a formal apprentice/journeyman/master system for various classes of software developer. As it is, each role actually is pretty much totally unique, at least compared to similar roles in other companies (there tends to be more standardization within the same company).
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  To (1): this is true, and more true than it should be, but I think this falls into the category of "trying to optimize expected value" moreso than "a hard requirement" at most employers. There's usually only like...maybe 1-2 hard tech requirements even for pretty picky roles if they're confident someone is good. It's just that they don't know ahead of time who is, so they may as well bet on the better-matched candidates.

supernewton 2y ago

For air transport in the U.S., it's not just one certificate, it's many. You get your private license, instrument rating, multi-engine rating, commercial certificate, instructor certificate, and finally the air transport certificate. And you're not allowed to even think about that last step until you've accumulated 1500 flight hours on the previous steps. Being allowed to write a Javascript login page is easy pickings compared to that.

elicksaur 2y ago

what do you think the interview process for airline pilot looks like? >“Hello, I am a certified pilot.” >“Great! You start tomorrow!”

vunderba 2y ago

I'm sorry, are you serious or being deliberately obtuse? Even the most minimal pilots license, a.k.a. the PPL, still requires approximately 40 hours give or take of instruction, taking the ground school exam, and finally passing a check ride with a certified flight instructor. Flying a passenger airliner as you seem to be alluding to basically means that you have a commercial license and likely an ATP - we're talking hundreds if not thousands of hours of flight experience. Unbelievable.

evilduck 2y ago
Pilots have it easy because they actually have a series of tests they can take to prove they can do something. Once they have it then that's done, proof acquired. I have around thirty thousand hours working as a software engineer and have been part of many successful product deliveries, have progressively greater accomplishments, and hold a degree in computer science and all of that is worth almost zilch to the next interviewer.

drumdance 2y ago

My dad was an airline pilot. To hear him talk he was surrounded by morons. That said, at least with airplanes you have to put in the flight hours and they have to be documented. Most commercial pilots start off at very low pay doing puddle jumpers and regional jets. Military experience might give you a leg up because it shows you've spent a lot of hours going through a very regimented program. My dad was fortunate to get in the industry right before it became an option for the masses rather than luxury and business. It was high paying, glamorous job.

joshuahedlund 2y ago

Every airplane flies pretty much the same way, and pilots all get paid pretty much the same* Every website stack, and the level of complexity under it, is unique, and there's also a huge pay differential. *could be false assumption on my part

theideaofcoffee 2y ago
Maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing to software what has been done with other professional fields: licensing and checking out of various levels. If I have to spend 30 hours or so learning, practicing and demonstrating my knowledge about aircraft instrument procedures before I can attempt that as a pilot in real airspace, maybe it’s not that big of a jump that we’d license different software features, and going outside of those bounds would be subject to loss of license. Then we’d know this set of language features you’re familiar enough with to hold that cert. It might cut down on the waste and proliferation of useless tech that seems to be strangling the industry because people just want it on their resume. It would do enough to dissuade companies from hiring non-licensed engineers (hey you could actually call yourself and engineer and not feel like an imposter), and would put a hard liability on things that definitely need it: financial and health data, which seems to be ripe for exploit and disclosure. One way or another the insanity of the current system needs to stop.
- shagie 2y ago
  I have interviewed people who have attested to having a Java certification from Oracle that while they were able to pass that test, they were unable to use their knowledge to develop solutions or solve problems. I could ask about how the class loader worked or the syntax associated with a particular construct (that that language level - not anything later) and get the correct answer. They could pass tests and follow instructions. Licensure for problem solving is difficult. Extend that to different domains and it is an even harder problem to solve. https://www.nspe.org/resources/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncees-ends-software-engineering-pe-exam https://www.nspe.org/resources/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncees-en... > The Software Engineering PE exam, which has struggled to reach an audience, will be discontinued by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying after the April 2019 administration. The exam has been administered five times, with a total of 81 candidates. > NCEES’s Committee on Examination Policy and Procedures reviews the history of any exam with fewer than 50 total first-time examinees in two consecutive administrations and makes recommendations to the NCEES Board of Directors about the feasibility of continuing the exam. > In 2013, the software exam became the latest addition to the family of PE exams. The exam was developed by NSPE, IEEE-USA, the IEEE Computer Society, and the Texas Board of Professional Engineers—a group known as the Software Engineering Consortium. Partnering with NCEES, the consortium began working in 2007 to spread the word about the importance of software engineering licensure for the public health, safety, and welfare. > This collaboration was preceded by Texas becoming the first state to license software engineers in 1998. The Texas Board of Professional Engineers ended the experience-only path to software engineering licensure in 2006; before the 2013 introduction of the software engineering PE exam, licensure candidates had to take an exam in another discipline.

ElevenLathe 2y ago

Obviously the current situation is crazy, but part of the issue is that the specific asks for a particular developer job are dependent on 1) the stack in use and 2) the org chart at that company. 1 is obvious: if you need JS devs, most hiring managers won't want to hire Pascal devs and hope they figure it out. We can question the wisdom of this, but it is the reality. 2 is less obvious but not super obscure. Depending on how you structure your teams, similar positions at different companies might require more full-stack knowledge, or better people skills, or something else. IME there is little to no standardization here for developer roles, especially compared to something like HR or Accounts Payable, or even very similar IT-adjacent industries like game development. Fix both of these issues and we would be able to have something more like a formal apprentice/journeyman/master system for various classes of software developer. As it is, each role actually is pretty much totally unique, at least compared to similar roles in other companies (there tends to be more standardization within the same company).

rachofsunshine 2y ago
To (1): this is true, and more true than it should be, but I think this falls into the category of "trying to optimize expected value" moreso than "a hard requirement" at most employers. There's usually only like...maybe 1-2 hard tech requirements even for pretty picky roles if they're confident someone is good. It's just that they don't know ahead of time who is, so they may as well bet on the better-matched candidates.