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> People just expect to be paid top dollar on their word.

And their education, previous employment, etc.

No one makes a neuro-surgeon perform a surgery before hiring them.



> No one makes a neuro-surgeon perform a surgery before hiring them.

True, but I also know that a neurosurgeon graduated from an accredited school, did an internship at an accredited hospital, and then passed a standardized licensing exam.

If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either.

When I was doing hiring, I would see resumes of people with 10+ years of experience who couldn't write a simple loop in their favorite language. If you've been coding for 10 years, you should be able to write a simple loop. That's the problem we're solving for here.


An engineer that did 4 years of college at an accredited engineering school isn't enough?

What you are asking for, is a surgeon to retake the boards every time they change hospitals. Or a licensed professional engineer to retake the PE exam everytime they change jobs.

The algorithms asked in interviews are rarely implemented in a job. All they prove is how much you studied and the author of the article proves that.

What our industry is missing, IMHO is required certification and training. Doctors and nurses have yearly training and related exams to keep their certification. That's why a hospital can hire staff based on a license...Not becsuse the items you mentioned. But our industry would never go that route, which is a longer rant.

Also if peope who can't write for loops are passing your phone screen... You might want to update your phone screen.


> Or a licensed professional engineer to retake the PE exam everytime they change jobs.

Yes, just as you retake your driving exams every five years, you should retake your engineering exams (unless you are an accredited engineering instructor, in which case the license becomes permanent) every ten years.


> just as you retake your driving exams every five years

Uhh... I haven't taken a driving test in 17 years (and two states ago, to boot).


> When I was doing hiring, I would see resumes of people with 10+ years of experience who couldn't write a simple loop in their favorite language. If you've been coding for 10 years, you should be able to write a simple loop. That's the problem we're solving for here.

While I agree with this, the FAANG interviews take it too far. Simple fizzbuzz is enough to weed out these completely incompetent engineers. If they pass that, accomplishments and experience are going to be a much better indicator of engineering ability imo.


> If you've been coding for 10 years, you should be able to write a simple loop. That's the problem we're solving for here.

That's the problem some interviews solve for. FAANG interviews take it to another level.


When everybody can solve a simple loop, a base bar, then the bar has to be raised.

The bar is being raised all the time as much as it is painful and hard for me to see/experience this :(.


> If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either.

We have that for "real" engineers. Doesn't stop many of them from being atrocious at their job. Doesn't stop doctors either, for that matter.


> True, but I also know that a neurosurgeon graduated from an accredited school, did an internship at an accredited hospital, and then passed a standardized licensing exam.

...and meets ongoing continuing education requirements.

> If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either.

We do have that for professional engineers.

We don't have it for people working in software whose job titles have become (but largely weren't for similar roles a few decades ago) "engineer".


> ...and meets ongoing continuing education requirements.

Which are a joke. Attending conferences and weekend workshops take care of this.


> Which are a joke

Sure, professional licensing provides fairly weak guarantees, but it's more than exist in software, hence FizzBuzz.


> If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either.

I think we will, eventually. Other fields of engineering already do, of course. Software is new and not that many people have been killed by bad software (unlike bad buildings), but I think we'll get there.


> And their education, previous employment, etc.

Unfortunately, this seems to be poorly correlated with whether people can actually code.


Actually it seems like motor skills are a part of neuro-surgeon evaluation - https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5976

There is also an experimental virtual surgery simulator for objective evaluation - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26153114




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