I mean, it's not like planes are falling out of the sky, we don't need standards and licenses.

737 max was coded to spec. So you are right - we need standards and licenses for managers and executives.

Unfortunately, it's hard to license or standardize integrity. I'd say what we're looking for is "accountability"

Literally all a license is in many cases is just making sure a contractor has insurance and a bond to cover any issues. Getting a license takes less than a day to get And is a matter of filling out a form where I live if you have the insurance in place.

Do you really think licenses would have prevented the 737 Max catastrophes?

Im pretty sure EE and AeroE engineers at Boeing have their FE and PEs

Planes do have standards

That's the joke. (Made more obvious by the fact that the 737 MAX controversy was over a software issue.)

The MAX is a system design issue... for reliability it should probably include at least a third AoA sensor.

No, it's not a joke.

If Aviation didn't have a lot of standards, considerably more planes would be falling out of the sky.

Not just a software issue in this case but a combination of software and non-redundant hardware in the default configuration with a single angle-of-attack sensor on each side. That missing sensor is far more likely to be related to bean counters than to software developers. Are bean counters licenced?