> Moving safely means moving slow, and that costs more - it's as simple as that. Plus it would also automatically disqualify like 80% of the workforce, due to the need for a proper formal education and certification, which would literally paralyze the industry.

Would that be so bad, in the grand scheme of things?

In the US, professional engineering licenses tend to be required when you're signing off on things for regulators. Which is common in Civil Engineering and Architects; it's not actually that common with Mechanical Engineers and isn't even available any longer for Software.

But you're right, it generally requires you have a 4-year degree and have worked under a licensed engineer for some number of years.

In Europe it is. At least in potential life endangering environments. Maybe not for a web page for the govermenmt in order to apply for trivial documents such as the national ID; but for stuff like Healthcare backends, any self-called Engineer from the US couldn't even join that project without a Bachelor Degree.

I've worked in this area (in Europe) and that is nonsense. There is no requirement, other thans on the software itself. Bachelor-ish people are generally recruited, but not for their degree, but their skills (and low cost).

I'm from Spain. In lots of places you need a proper degree because of the accountability on civil causalitities.

It depends on what you mean with 'a lot of places', but coding up healthcare data systems or firmware for devices where you'll have no interaction with patients or hospital, it's the company that's liable.

Them hiring only people with degrees is almost certainly orthogonal to legal requirements in such cases.

Any sort of professional interaction with patients, sure, whole different ballgame.

At the very least qualifications and licensing should be required for anything critical, or for any engineers writing software that does work that would otherwise be done by a legally liable licensed professional.

Components at every stage of the design and manufacturing of a commercial airplane are signed off by licensed engineers who are legally liable for negligence, and yet Boeing could outsource the 737 Max's software to $9/hr programmers in India. Obviously physical engineering failures still happen, but it's ridiculous that there's no liable professional responsible for software that keeps a plane full of hundreds of people from falling out of the sky.

If a licensed accountant was caught lying about hundreds of people stealing from their employer to the point of getting some sent to jail he could easily do jail time for negligence or perjury. Instead some seemingly anonymous dev wrote shoddy software that ruined hundreds of lives and the Post Office gets to just say that the computer did an oopsie.