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56 points mooreds | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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em500 ◴[] No.45413365[source]
Valid points, but I think the most obvious reason is that (at least the recognizable) employers are swamped with applications that all look great on paper, which likely got much worse with the rise of good LLMs. Compared with similar high paying carreers, like medicine (multi-year residency) or high finance (solving math and probability problems on the spot), the hiring process for software engineers isn't especially gruesome.
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silvestrov ◴[] No.45413497[source]
"multi-year residency" in medicine is part of the education.

We don't have that for software development.

I'd say that the problem is that the diplomas (degree certificate, ...) are useless when hiring software developers.

A doctor who has a diploma is much more likely to be a useful/good doctor than a person with a "computer science" diploma will be a good developer.

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1. gwbas1c ◴[] No.45413823[source]
> A doctor who has a diploma is much more likely to be a useful/good doctor than a person with a "computer science" diploma will be a good developer.

A few things to consider:

What we practice is "software engineering." Computer science is closely related to software engineering; but not the same thing. (It's like the difference between a degree in physics vs mechanical engineering.)

Doctors still have to be board certified, which requires self-study of topics that aren't taught in class. Some people do get their medical diploma and fail their board certifications, in which case they can't practice.

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2. gwbas1c ◴[] No.45416417[source]
I should add: One of things, for doctors, that board certification does is make sure that doctors know topics that aren't covered in school.

My computer science degree overlooked a lot of topics that are very important when developing an industrial strength application; specifically, an application that is not an academic exercise, which gets back to:

> A doctor who has a diploma is much more likely to be a useful/good doctor than a person with a "computer science" diploma will be a good developer.

If we, as an industry, had something similar to doctors getting board certified, we could put pressure on ourselves (and academic institutions) to make sure that ample opportunity is provided in schools to learn how to be a good developer.