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> Are there any other ways to make hiring less risky? Professional licensing. Many other fields require professional licenses. I don't understand there's so m

> Are there any other ways to make hiring less risky? Professional licensing. Many other fields require professional licenses. I don't understand there's so much opposition in our field. (Ok, I do understand.) In general, licensing has some risks: The lemons will get excluded from the field. (Which is kind of the point.) Or, the lemons will decide what the criteria for a professional license is; which turns it into a BS hurdle. --- That being said, the article gets closer to the point of what a professional license is for: "An interview is like running 100m and a job is like a 10k.". If the license is more like running a 10k, then interviewers can rely on it to do a better screening than they could ever hope to do.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
The issue with professional licensing, is that it's very, very specific. In things like civil engineering, there's usually mandated context. You have to work within certain parameters, so it's not too difficult to test with real-world criteria. With software engineering, it's all over the place. In fact, one of the most exciting things that I used to look for, in potential candidates, was people who were not bogged down with dogma, and would bring alternative viewpoints to the team. Since anyone coming into my team would require a ton of training; regardless of their seniority, I always had a nice, long on-ramp, in which I could evaluate people.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  There can be a halfway solution that helps: A professional software engineering license that signifies an extremely basic, barebones level of skill. Companies would still need to interview candidates, but they wouldn't have to do FizzBuzz or "write a for loop" types of interviews with candidates who literally cannot write code at all. It wouldn't guarantee the person was an expert in inverting binary trees, but it would at least represent a minimal knowledge and skill bar that one would expect any software engineer to meet.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    It really, really sucks, that we have to be here. Maybe have online application pages, that can’t be submitted, unless you fizzbuzz. :(
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    One of my interview questions used to involve putting up a parameterized SQL statement on the whiteboard, (select userid, email from users where userid=?), give the candidate instructions on how to use a data reader, and then expect them to construct a "user" object. I did this because I was part of a project that failed because the leads did not know how to work with a database. They thought the ORM would just magically load objects. Without understanding the basic limitations of data readers, they painted themselves into a corner. Licensing basically needs to filter this kind of thing. IE, you don't get a license to work with a SQL database unless you can work with a data reader. --- The irony was that we very rarely touched SQL, but the question was one of the greatest filters out there! It showed who understood basic concepts, who was just BSing their way though, and who would get stuck in high-level abstractions.
accrual 1y ago
One additional downside to professional licensing is that it can be time consuming and costly. For example, to bring a new physician on board to a practice they must be: * Licensed (allowed to practice in that state) * Credentialed (degrees and experience verified) * Enrolled (able to be imbursed via insurance) * Priviledged (authorized to perform certain tasks/roles) This could take weeks or months per physician and there is usually an entire team (Medical Staff Office/MSO) dedicated to the work.
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  > This could take weeks or months per physician and there is usually an entire team That seems like a better alternative to what we have now! Some companies search forever for the "perfect" candidate, or otherwise have to sift through so much SPAM resumes that they are already taking "weeks or months."
mamonster 1y ago
Kind of like how the CFA used to be in finance.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

The issue with professional licensing, is that it's very, very specific. In things like civil engineering, there's usually mandated context. You have to work within certain parameters, so it's not too difficult to test with real-world criteria. With software engineering, it's all over the place. In fact, one of the most exciting things that I used to look for, in potential candidates, was people who were not bogged down with dogma, and would bring alternative viewpoints to the team. Since anyone coming into my team would require a ton of training; regardless of their seniority, I always had a nice, long on-ramp, in which I could evaluate people.

ryandrake 1y ago
There can be a halfway solution that helps: A professional software engineering license that signifies an extremely basic, barebones level of skill. Companies would still need to interview candidates, but they wouldn't have to do FizzBuzz or "write a for loop" types of interviews with candidates who literally cannot write code at all. It wouldn't guarantee the person was an expert in inverting binary trees, but it would at least represent a minimal knowledge and skill bar that one would expect any software engineer to meet.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  It really, really sucks, that we have to be here. Maybe have online application pages, that can’t be submitted, unless you fizzbuzz. :(
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  One of my interview questions used to involve putting up a parameterized SQL statement on the whiteboard, (select userid, email from users where userid=?), give the candidate instructions on how to use a data reader, and then expect them to construct a "user" object. I did this because I was part of a project that failed because the leads did not know how to work with a database. They thought the ORM would just magically load objects. Without understanding the basic limitations of data readers, they painted themselves into a corner. Licensing basically needs to filter this kind of thing. IE, you don't get a license to work with a SQL database unless you can work with a data reader. --- The irony was that we very rarely touched SQL, but the question was one of the greatest filters out there! It showed who understood basic concepts, who was just BSing their way though, and who would get stuck in high-level abstractions.

accrual 1y ago

One additional downside to professional licensing is that it can be time consuming and costly. For example, to bring a new physician on board to a practice they must be: * Licensed (allowed to practice in that state) * Credentialed (degrees and experience verified) * Enrolled (able to be imbursed via insurance) * Priviledged (authorized to perform certain tasks/roles) This could take weeks or months per physician and there is usually an entire team (Medical Staff Office/MSO) dedicated to the work.

gwbas1c 1y ago
> This could take weeks or months per physician and there is usually an entire team That seems like a better alternative to what we have now! Some companies search forever for the "perfect" candidate, or otherwise have to sift through so much SPAM resumes that they are already taking "weeks or months."

mamonster 1y ago

Kind of like how the CFA used to be in finance.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]