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If doctors were interviewed like software developers

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Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#101
On the other hand, if software developer were trained as doctors...

Doctors spend many years doing hands-on work under more experienced doctors, free clinic hours, 30+ hours shifts, lot's of grunt work and specializing on a very narrow field.

They end up training for 10-15 years at least before they can really be independent.

Lots of people show up at software engineering interviews with barely any training, and sometimes with really bad habits. If you do a lot of interviewing, you'll find there's many people who have been working for years, basically ripping off employers, and in many ways they're unaware of their shortcomings.

The saddest cases are when you have someone with some seniority, smart and some potential, but they grew up alone (to put it somehow). Either without a mentor (where they're smart but work in a vacuum) or with a bad mentor and picked enough bad habits to make them dangerous.

They have so many things to unlearn, that you should hire them for a much junior position than their resume experience would indicate. In general that's a no hire situation, it's much better to hire inexperienced developers and just train them properly.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#102
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, construction etc is evolving, but it's doing that as such a slow pace compared to software engineering.

Are you sure? Construction materials are evolving and changing every few years (engineered lumber, modern environmentally friendly methods, etc) whilst we still use base operating systems designed in the 60's for most of our services.

Take a look at a house built [100, 50, 25] years ago. Compare it to a house built today.

Then do the same exercise with some piece of software.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between job interviews and school interviews/oral exams, though.

Somehow I feel like you're right, but when I think about it I can't really think of why. What is actually different? The only major distinction I can come up with is that part of a job interview is seeing if you fit well with the culture of the company.

You know what they will ask in an exam before hand. The scope is somewhat limited.

I also think that these types of complaints about the difficulty of a job interview have to do with tying your self-esteem to the outcome of it.

A failed job interview is like a date, you both (the company and the interviewee) are trying to see if the relationship has a chance to be successful.

If the interview went south, there's a decent chance that you wouldn't have been happy at that job.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#104
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At NASA, sure. You can't say that with any certainty for all the other systems in the world where software has a huge impact on daily life and human wellbeing. We can't know for sure because there is no regulation or independent monitoring.

Medical tech has similar standards as does flight control and many other mission critical code bases. Static analysis requirements, limits on certain trusted compilers, libs, etc. I think you may need more time in the field and observing the reality here. There are unbelievably high standards and practices in many places. Maybe CRUD codebases for a consumer website has critical failures but that doesn’t really matter…

The whole point of my last comment was that the impact of bad software cannot be fully understood if we don't have ways to monitor and measure it. You are correct that many industries have high standards and many other industries have no need for any standards as market forces will decide, but there's likely a huge grey area in between that we don't know much about.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#105
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Construction materials are evolving and changing every few years (engineered lumber, modern environmentally friendly methods, etc) whilst we still use base operating systems designed in the 60's for most of our services.

Take a look at a house built [100, 50, 25] years ago. Compare it to a house built today. Then do the same exercise with some piece of software.

yep, both are significantly different in many way, houses built 50 years ago have a lot of differences to modern houses. Software from 50 years ago, is also significantly different but the fundamentals of both are the same, foundations, walls, roof trusses, siding, filesystems, operating systems, processes, threads, data structures etc. We may use Go instead of C and we may use engineered lumber instead of Douglas Fir for door headers.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#106
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to doctors, but I know a few nurse practitioners and jobs will auto-reject if you don't have the correct specialty. A quick search reveals there's at least 13 specialties [1]. "We need an adult gerontology nurse practitioner, not orthopedics." I thought this was interesting because a common programmer hiring model assumes you can train an exceptional programmer to your specific stack regardless of their…

IoT, distributed systems, security, networking, statistical computing, analytics, AI/ML, deep learning, robotics/autonomous driving (waaay more than embedded), operating systems, quantum, DevOps... The fact that I can name a dozen programming specialties that have nothing to do with your list at all is a tell

All of those specialties exist, true, but they add up to almost nothing. I'd wager that better than 95% of software developers are either web frontend or backend with a small sprinkling of mobile mixed in.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#107
post #45
post #7

On the other hand, if software engineers were interviewed like doctors, anyone who didn’t have a U.S. graduate degree would be immediately rejected. Anyone with great experience in another country would be immediately rejected. That is most of the good doctors in the world! The doctor interviewing process is simplified by rejecting the vast majority of qualified candidates before even interviewing them. I think the f…

Being less reliant on creds helps newer folks, while more senior folks have to maintain that ability for the sole purpose of interviewing. To me, if you can't substitute a verified credential or experience in place of a technical interview, it just shows they implicitly prefer newer folks.

How do you verify experience?

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#108
post #78
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. Software engineering is one of the most open fields in that it cares relatively little about formal credentials, tests or historical background (what else you’ve worked on). Anyone who has picked up “coding” (etc.) can join in the fray and start adding value, while learning more while doing.

Picking up coding isn't Software Engineering.

Interesting. I have been picking up coding for 25 years now.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#109
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking up coding isn't Software Engineering.

Interesting. I have been picking up coding for 25 years now.

Doesn't invalidate the point that it isn't Software Engineering, unless you own the accreditation that validates your knowledge across Software Engineering domains and practice, with a degree taken in a certified university.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#110
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I have been picking up coding for 25 years now.

Doesn't invalidate the point that it isn't Software Engineering, unless you own the accreditation that validates your knowledge across Software Engineering domains and practice, with a degree taken in a certified university.

Why is that the only way to validate my knowledge?
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