>>doctors make mistakes that kill people all the time
Yes, but they make a lot FEWER such mistakes than would people who could not pass the exams and maintain a license.
The standard is not perfection; the standard is as good as practical and better than if nothing were done. Medical licensing definitely meets both of those criteria. Unless you are arguing that anyone who takes a ten-week "Medical Bootcamp" is ready to be a surgeon you would trust to operate on you or your children?
Would you also be happy to commute to work over a bridge designed by someone with a 10-wk bootcamp in civil engineering?
You have it exactly backwards — Credentialing RAISES the skill floor. It does not raise it to perfection, and "Certificates" in the computing industry are a joke, but real medical or engineering credentials certainly raise the floor higher than the software floor
> they make a lot FEWER such mistakes than would people who could not pass the exams and maintain a license.
I don’t know if that’s true. More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors. And I suspect some negative trait selection.
Milton Friedman wrote a PhD dissertation on the topic of medicine that I invite you to take a look at.
> than if nothing were done.
The alternative is not to invite people who have no experience to build bridges or perform surgeries.
There are no credentials to work at Google. But you’ll find very skilled and capable people running large projects.
Investors want capable people. Those people are vetted through their reputation in their professional circles.
> Would you also be happy to commute to work over a bridge designed by someone with a 10-wk bootcamp in civil engineering?
No. But I would like to drive over bridges from people with 30 years of bridge building experience over a 4-7 year degree.
If you live in Europe you drive over bridges built without credentials all the time.
> Credentialing RAISES the skill floor.
Correct. That’s my mistake.
The point is if cut off the bottom 20th percentile the field doesn’t get much better. Those people aren’t trusted leaders anyway.
You do however lose a significant amount of upside. Including countless top performers from non traditional backgrounds, which is characteristic of computer hackers.
You can maybe argue that the general public, unlike a corporation is not capable of vetting their own doctor, so the government classified those options for them. And that’s reasonable. But that does not apply at all to software engineers who don’t solicit public work.
I have all the traditional credentials and this is not a projection of my own career.
> I don’t know if that’s true. More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors. And I suspect some negative trait selection.
The medical boards are well aware of this, which is why the standards are far more than just about having more schooling.
I am familiar with Friendman's dissertation, and while the economic claims it makes are solid, it isn't a take down about the medical impact of the boards. It really doesn't say one thing or another about them. Let's put it this way: if you are going to inflate the cost of a service, it's hard if the quality of the service is terrible and easily replicated by someone else.
I appreciate your positivity. However it is difficult to reconcile your argument with the reality that executives at tech companies frequently behave in ways that satisfy the investors but clearly do not produce good results for the people using their technology. Indeed in numerous cases today the technology is openly hostile to its own users' interests. The regulations are there to protect the users (or customers or clients or patients). If anything they are there to prevent protecting the profit margins of the businesses - because hiring people to pump up the profits is often in conflict with the other objective.
What would credentialing software engineers do to curtail leadership incentive problems?
The same as in other regulated professions. It would give the people on the front line who can see the consequences of the corner cutting an effective right to say "No, we're not doing this user hostile thing". This would be a significant barrier because it wouldn't be legal to ship software without the required professional approval and the professionals would be heavily incentivised not to sign off any corner cutting because they would be personally and professionally responsible for any adverse consequences if they did.
That’s not how these systems work in reality. I’m actually an extreme pessimist.
What actually happens is that you as an engineer become paid to frame the desired leadership goals in compliant terms.
It’s similar to how lawyers and regulatory compliance rarely change the product. They change how the product is talked about and framed for the purpose of regulation.
This skill among engineers is highly sought after in large companies with political organizations and greater encouraging it changes the composition of the workforce.
In the physical engineering teams I've worked with the culture you just described is not what happens at all. There are always some people who seemingly live to circumvent the intention of rules lurking around the edges of regulated industries. But my own experience has been that real engineers very much value real engineering - it's often why they got into the field in the first place - and will push back hard against and if necessary refuse to sign off anything they consider inappropriate for the job. They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either. Some of these people have had pretty stellar careers so I think it's safe to say their professional conduct hasn't damaged them with their employers or clients.
Regulatory compliance is 90% social and 10% reality.
Again our experiences are on opposite ends of the spectrum. For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly.
I have certainly seen compliance become a box-ticking exercise in other contexts but usually this seems to happen when the professionals involved were not personally responsible for their own decisions.
Imagine a new grad telling their boss “we aren’t going to build it like that because I learned X in school”. They have the same credentials!
We appear to live in different realities on this one too. In my reality new grads are not the people signing off major decisions in regulated industries and no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience and peer review that are typically required to reach a level of professional qualification where someone does have the authority to sign off those big decisions. Getting an undergraduate degree in a subject like engineering or medicine or law is just a foot in the door. The real work starts afterwards.
> For safety issues in particular getting an engineer to sign off some plan when they will be accountable for that authority later is often easiest if you simply design the thing properly.
That's exactly right. An engineer aims to build a safe and reliable product (not because the credentials tell him to)! The regulatory myth is that all products are death machines until being redeemed.
That's why I say it's 90% social. The engineer builds a reasonable product. With regulation they do the same, but now they need to do work to frame that same work in regulatory terms.
Real fixes are made. The value isn't 0, but it comes at that cost.
> no-one would seriously suggest that a new grad's degree was an equivalent credential to the years of demonstrable professional experience
That's exactly what I'm saying! Professional experience and reputation within the field is what:
1. gives someone influence and credibility.
2. results in safe and reliable engineering projects.
And note that those are actually informal defined qualifications. It's NOT the credential!
So trying to add credentials to software is an attempt to bump the quality of new grads and has little to no impact on the quality of engineering leadership. As you said, the recent undergrads already lack power and influence, and the credential is simply the bare minimum to participate.
> They won't be impressed at all by someone's big title and even bigger budget while they're exercising that professional judgement either. Some of these people have had pretty stellar careers so I think it's safe to say their professional conduct hasn't damaged them with their employers or clients.
It really depends on the status of the profession in society and the company. I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach.
I'd expect lots of software organisations to fire a bunch of people looking for people pleasers until this becomes an accepted part of the business approach.
No doubt. Imposing this kind of professional standards to regulate an industry as rich as tech would never work unless the penalties for cutting corners involved making the offending organisations significantly less rich very quickly. They would need to be taught a very clear lesson that hiring people pleasers had become an expensive mistake.
As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment.
I don't want people like them. I want the quiet, unassuming developer you've never heard of because they're the principal engineer of a team you've also never heard of that has been developing life saving medical equipment without a single significant failure in a live environment for the 15 years since their first device went into use at a local hospital. Get me those people to write the rules - starting with what is acceptable practice when developing software that really needs to work and letting the people who know how to achieve the most challenging results figure out how to tone everything down for applications where imperfections might be more acceptable - and then we can talk about whether regulating software development effectively is now a viable proposition.
> As I commented elsewhere - the problem then becomes who gets to define what the proper path is. For example destroying companies because they chose not to follow the latest sage advice from anyone who once signed the Agile Manifesto does not seem like a good way to promote better quality software to me. And yet it seems highly likely that those are the kinds of people who would initially be engaged as "experts" by those seeking to establish the regulatory environment.
This is why any such regulation is likely to end up in a much better state if it's driven by actual practitioners. However, given how many software people are wildly against this, it seems unlikely to happen and so we'll end up in the less good state you note above.
It looks like we agree here. I too think any useful regulation should be specified primarily by experienced practitioners who have been achieving demonstrably good outcomes. And I too think that in reality it would mostly likely be a very different type of person who got to write the rules - which is why I don't think our industry is ready for that kind of regulation and I believe introducing it now would be counterproductive.
> It’s similar to how lawyers and regulatory compliance rarely change the product. They change how the product is talked about and framed for the purpose of regulation.
This is true, and basically what tends to happen is that if the Head of some compliance function (e.g. internal audit) is causing problems for the business, then they are replaced with someone who won't cause such problems.
It's still better than nothing. Like, software basically runs our society now, so either software professionals get together on this, or regulations will be imposed on us, and they will be much worse than what we'd get in the first option.
Once again the alternative is not nothing. The most important factor is that they are stakeholders in a project with influence. That is the reality right now, even without credentials.
Yes the framing above is “business people don’t listen to engineers but if they had a credential they would legally be forced to”.
And I think both are false.
The top engineers on a project are collaborators with leaders in other areas like marketing, sales, IT, legal, etc. And all those have influence on a project. A business person who says “fuck what my engineer says” is not a good leader and won’t have that group’s trust or support. They all want to work together.
So by that process engineering has a seat of influence.
That exists without credentials, and credentials are not what gets you in that seat. Reputation and experience are.
Business leaders don’t do everything engineering says. They also don’t do everything the lawyers say! And having an additional legal backing would change some of these engineering conversation, but not fundamentally.
More credentialing and requirements would do plenty to curtail leadership incentive problems. First, as the sibling points out, it gives the licensed engineer a solid ground to stand on when refusing a stupid leadership order — "I'm not going to lose my license for that stupid idea", and a serious incentive to do so, as well as solid job prospects if he does get canned for it (because there's a limited pool of credentialed engineers).
You glibly say "More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors.". Yet the schooling and credentialing clearly cuts off huge numbers of would-be doctors who never pass the exams, never graduate med school, or never even get into med school, or decide it is too difficult in the first place. In the software realm, those people just go to some boot camp and they're off to the races...
Another huge aspect of credentialing is required ongoing education, which REQUIRES physicians and engineers to take updated continuing education just to maintain their license. This again continuously improves the talent pool.
And, if your main concern is that they be "more trustworthy or careful", credentialing also helps that by finding the worst, least trustworthy and careful and cancelling their license, so they are NOT doctors anymore. The untrustworthy or careless SWE just gets a new job to ruin stuff elsewhere, probably taking one from the actual good engineer because their talent is not engineering, but bullshitting.
> it gives the licensed engineer a solid ground to stand on when refusing a stupid leadership order
I disagree to the extent to which this is real leverage. It changes the language and approach, but not the outcome, Ask a civil engineer the degree to which they can fight their leadership on these grounds.
> clearly cuts off huge numbers of would-be doctors who never pass the exams
Yes the fallacy is that more exclusive is better. You don’t understand the traits you select for.
> those people just go to some boot camp and they're off to the races
I don’t see any kids who just got off a boot camp running large software projects. Does this happen at your workplace? Why not?
> This again continuously improves the talent pool.
I just disagree to the extent to which the talent actually increases.
The people who excel already learn and study all time.
This slightly raises the floor by forcing the least curious person to be exposed to some PowerPoints and videos.
> The untrustworthy or careless SWE just gets a new job to ruin stuff elsewhere
They can only ruin the extent of responsibility and scope given to a new hire with no reputation.
> least trustworthy and careful and cancelling their license
Once again you assume the system works as stated. I think it actually selects against those who are bad at avoiding responsibility and not legally savvy.
The image that comes to mind is someone who made a mistake, cares a ton about medicine, and hates the organizational administration.
Wow you have a relentlessly unrealistic view of things.
>>Ask a civil engineer the degree to which they can fight their leadership on these grounds.
Both civil engineers and doctors both can and absolutely do refuse to sign off on unsafe situations.
That does not mean they detect them 100% of the time, or never cave to pressure, but they absolutely do. We just never hear about the incidents that didn't happen because a doctor or engineer forced the right solution or no action — precisely because nothing newsworthy happened. We DO hear about the ones that did happen, Therac-25, Mars Climate Orbiter loss, Cloudflare outage, it is endless
>>I think it actually selects against those who are bad at avoiding responsibility and not legally savvy.
You might think that, but clearly you have never read even the summaries of cases where doctors lost their licenses. Hint: it was not some mistake that could have been covered up by better schmoozing. If anything, the system is too lenient.
The rest isn't even worth the bytes to respond; just handwaving an attitude. There are very good arguments to not have licensing on software engineering but you are not making them
> Wow you have a relentlessly unrealistic view of things.
I noticed from your response that you didn’t really refute the claims, but that suggesting that systems don’t achieve their stated goal gives you a distasteful feeling.
> We just never hear about the incidents that didn't happen because a doctor or engineer forced the right solution or no action
And the same is true of software. I and my peers tell my bosses ideas are bad all the time. We don’t need a credential to do that. And the credential is not what gave us trust with that decision maker.
> If anything, the system is too lenient.
Correct. Bad doctors continue to keep their jobs all their time.
So that’s my point. What is the criteria that distinguishes those cases? Both doctors made a medical error. Which one gets off and which one gets fired? The doctor who is more focused on medicine is likely the one less skilled at navigating the legal problem.
The doctors making mistakes and keeping their jobs are a pathological minority that is reinforced by their credential giving them authority to operate.
Cold call job interviews are primarily for people early in their career to get established in the field. You don’t hire someone that way to lead the Golden Gate Bridge.
How do you think companies hire for key roles like CEOs?
Yes, but they make a lot FEWER such mistakes than would people who could not pass the exams and maintain a license.
The standard is not perfection; the standard is as good as practical and better than if nothing were done. Medical licensing definitely meets both of those criteria. Unless you are arguing that anyone who takes a ten-week "Medical Bootcamp" is ready to be a surgeon you would trust to operate on you or your children?
Would you also be happy to commute to work over a bridge designed by someone with a 10-wk bootcamp in civil engineering?
You have it exactly backwards — Credentialing RAISES the skill floor. It does not raise it to perfection, and "Certificates" in the computing industry are a joke, but real medical or engineering credentials certainly raise the floor higher than the software floor