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Re:The technical interview practice gap by josephg on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @03:02PM (#26403393)
In other industries, it’s mostly about credentials. The reason a surgeon doesn’t have to prove themselves when they switch hospitals is because a medical degree means something. Getting a medical degree is brutal. The failure rate for exams is very high (60+% for specialist exams). The whole process is effective at weeding out anyone who won’t be able to do the job.

In comparison, software has no equivalent credentials. Universities, collages and bootcamps have no incentive to fail anyone. As a result plenty of weak students pass - only to discover that they’re largely unemployable. This does a disservice to lots of people - companies can’t trust degrees, and need expensive interviews. Good candidates have no way to reliably demonstrate their strengths. And weak students waste tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives failing to learn to code.

But the benefit of our system is that we allow programmers to be self taught. If you can’t afford to go to collage, or you are from a poor country, or you just don’t like school, that’s no barrier. You can learn programming in your own time and still get a great job. There’s lots of great programmers with the aptitude to become lawyers or doctors - but who would never be able to get the piece of paper they need to get those jobs. That’s something we as an industry should be proud of.

Re:The technical interview practice gap by grumple on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @04:52PM (#26404832)
I'd prefer credentials, honestly. Something like the bar for law (but with no specific academic requirements - a test anyone can take) would be useful. If whiteboarding works, that can be done once and become an accreditation. Repeating the process with every job application makes it harder to change jobs, because you either have to do serious prep before a slew of interviews or keep those interview-specific skills up. It also makes the minimum time to get a new position very high.
Re:The technical interview practice gap by PragmaticPulp on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @05:09PM (#26405042)
> I'd prefer credentials, honestly.

Most well-credentialed people would.

Most under-credentialed people are thankful for skills-based testing because it levels the playing field.

Re:The technical interview practice gap by grumple on Thursday March 11, 2021 @08:43AM (#26423915)
I'd say I'm under-credentialed. I don't have a CS degree.

I'd like a way to prove my skills once, rather than with every interview I have. I bet CS grads would as well. The interview process is just so... tedious. And in a field where you get significantly more money by changing jobs, that's a problem.

It's a market inefficiency imo - people get stuck in jobs where they aren't paid enough for at least some amount of time. People can't hire new employees quickly because the process takes forever. I've been on both sides of the interview process many times and it's extremely inefficient on both sides. We're developers... this should be streamlined and automated.

Re:The technical interview practice gap by the_only_law on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @08:27PM (#26406719)
Not only that, but isn't law a field where the quality of the jobs you can get is dependent on the prestige of the school you went to? I.e. you wont ever get a job at a top firm with a law degree from University of State