Easy. They have a 15-30 minute chat over coffee or lunch, then they get hired.

Nearly every other industry is credentialed and a degree is enough to get hired? I don't think that matches reality at all.

In general, the undergrad degree is a filter. Unless someone for, say, a marketing role has a lot of experience, a BS/BA is probably a requirement and a better known school probably gives you a bit of a leg up as may a graduate degree.

You're still going to have some interviews. In my experience, HR passes promising resumes through, there are 5 or so half hour interviews, and then there's a thumbs up/down by the people who did the interviews.

But for most roles there's no specific non-negotiable credential like there is for an accountant or lawyer.

But outside of medical, legal, and certain financial roles, you're more likely to see formal non-academic licensing for truck drivers and hairdressers than for white collar professionals.

Software engineers making 150K with only a four year degree and some leetcode have nothing to complain about. Take homes? Whiteboards? Cry me a river. Try to pass the bar or get through residency instead.

You maintain a current law license, which requires having passed the bar once, continuing education requirements, and the absence of professional mal-, mis-, or non-feasance sufficient to lose that license. Taken together, the requirements are ongoing, though some individual elements are one-time.

Not getting disbarred hardly counts as an ongoing requirement in all but the most meaningless sense of the word.

https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi...

Problem is people calling themselves engineers without being one.

It would be wonderful to have an equivalente for computer science. You do it right after graduating, study for it once and you're done. Not leetcoding for 6 months every other year for life which is ridiculous waste of time.

Think of all the marketing, sales, Human Resources jobs etc…

Would you expect MD or CPA to be spelled out every time?

"Most working engineers don’t even bother with a PE."

Engineer is right there, no need for you know the E of PE is for engineer.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=working+engineers+PE

https://search.brave.com/search?q=working+engineer+PE

https://www.google.com/search?q=working+engineer+PE

You are giving off troll vibes. Maybe you are in the wrong forum? HN has been called all sorts of things but never a "general public" forum. Next time, just ask if you don't know - no shame in that.

Software engineers don't like the concept of formal credentials. Fine. But you'll have to demonstrate your skills at one of the interview stages.

Or we could create something like the American Academy of Software Engineers, or the Society of Software Engineers, or the Software Engineering Institute, which would be tasked with accrediting schools and programs, and in order to practice as a software engineer in the industry, on top of a university degree, you'll have to pass another examination from the credentialing authority to obtain a professional title like Professional Software Engineer or Chartered Software Engineer.

Other professions gatekeep before you can take the interview.

Formal credentialing generally means you demonstrate "I can do this", in a very drawn-out, thorough manner. It's gatekeeping more, but there's a much larger guarantee for your creds to be transferrable from place to place.

In software engineering, you demonstrate "I can do this", in a several-round bout of interviews. And then have to demonstrate it all over again and again, for every single company. Your interview performance is non-transferrable.

My opinion is, the latter is more wasteful as it involves repeating yourself a whole lot.

The former has a higher upfront cost but you are betting in the long run that it will amortize over time as you continue to go on interviews.

The latter has less upfront cost but a greater chance of creating more cost in the long run, depending on how much you interview and where.

OP spent 6 hours- personally I wouldn't spend that much on any assignment, but the bigger issue here is that 6 hours is only valid for one company. Interview "work" is so proprietary and non-transferrable- like currency that is useless outside that one company. You cannot take what you did there and show it elsewhere to expedite an interview. You will have to run through another several-hour process again (whether interviewing or another assignment), for some other variation of a CRUD based problem that they expect developers to do.

I suppose the closest thing we have to avoiding repetition is- the answer many won't like- Leetcode. You still have to navigate through opinionated views of your answers, but at least there are more patterns that carry over that its benefits compound more easily from interview to interview.

> . . . wasteful as it involves repeating yourself a whole lot.

It's also incredibly wasteful for the companies doing the hiring. Which is why they often try to offload that waste to the candidate.

But those companies would probably have to pay more for programmers who were already vetted as part of their membership in a professional organization; people who were actual engineers. So it's not in the companies' best interests to change anything.

Furthermore I do see a difference between being a person who knows how to write code and being a software engineer. The former can easily be achieved without any formal education, but the latter is more difficult to achieve without formal education. There is lots of stuff not learned in a coding bootcamp and it will take time to close the gap.

I do not think one can generalize like that and claim, that we all do not like formal credentials. I wish formal credentials worked differently though. Not through some university institution, which might or might not teach us important things, but maybe more practical and hands on, more projects, where actual work is done and we all get more opportunity to learn from thise experiences.

Local governments impose licensing requirements on some professions. This is not something the professions just voluntarily impose on themselves. (If they did impose it on themselves, there might even be antitrust problems as a result.) This is mainly (or at least purportedly) for the protection of public health and safety, not to make it easier on potential employers interviewing job candidates.

It actually has nothing to do with job interviews, because every such professional needs a license in order to practice their profession, even if the professional is a self-employed entrepreneur.

So to be clear, when someone asks for software engineer licensing, in effect what they're asking is for local governments to regulate the ability to practice software development, even for self-employed programmers.

And then you can expect a visit from the government software inspector.

Anyway, government isn't a fig leaf, it's a cudgel. It has to be, otherwise the system would be undermined by mass defection.

It appears to have been for Engineers who want to be credentialed in software rather than a credential for a software developer to be able to attest to PE level standards of competency.