I can just see the posts on HN now: "Senior devs. Is anyone else insulted by the coding exams required for the dev license?". Or even better, have to log a certain amount of hours every year to keep that license.

What pilots do can be automated. I mean, it's not easy, but then again, planes nowadays can land themselves by themselves. As the automation gets better, you need pilots more and more just for emergencies, and maybe if you only use pilots for those cases, then a) your pilots don't gain the experience they need to be useful in emergencies, and b) you under-utilize them. And maybe that means you can't really automate pilots after all. But still, what pilots do is very machine-like.

What devs and mgrs do is less machine-like, and it follows that what works for "making sure you have pilots who can fly" doesn't quite translate to "making sure that you have managers who can manage".

I said there are things we can learn, not that we should adopt their pattern fully.

Actuaries, accountants, doctors, lawyers, even hair stylists all have qualifications that are required to do the job that says they can perform the basic tasks safely. What's so special about ours that we can't do the same? I hate needing to prove that I can fizzbuzz to each company individually.