If doctors were interviewed like software developers • Hacker News Board

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#91

Post by TwistedWeasel » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #53

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated so we should just not care?

I think "Why is software different?" is the wrong question. Why is software the same? Most professions don't need professional licensing, and it's not clear that the economy would be served well by adding licensing requirements.

if you look at it economically, maybe. It's a complex problem. The economy doesn't benefit from contractor licensing either, but the consistency reliability and quality of our infrastructure does.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#92

Post by lacker » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #28

lacker wrote: 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…

I'd love if software required a degree. I have a degree and pretty much everybody I ever worked with has a degree. Looking around the entire floor there's only one person without a degree I am aware of. It's a myth that you can work without a degree, you'd never get a job interview in the first place. Seems to be mostly a US myth by the way, makes sense because degrees are crazy expensive there.

During my time as a manager at Facebook there at least 4 different engineers on my team who did not have a college degree. It’s certainly harder to break in without one, but it’s possible.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#93

Post by lacker » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #85

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " How many of the incredibly successful people we know of in the industry were drop outs Knuth, Dijkstra, Kernighan, Ritchie, etc. all had degrees, although some are non-CS because CS degrees weren't a thing back then. Linus Torvalds, Dave Cutler, and Theo de Raadt all have degrees. The only hardcore coder (i.e. not a business person) without a degree I can think of is John Carmack.

jwz and Carmack are the canonical examples but I also can't think of anyone else who is as widely known as those two.

Vitalik Buterin is another well-known example.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#94

Post by _qulr » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #91

_qulr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "Why is software different?" is the wrong question. Why is software the same? Most professions don't need professional licensing, and it's not clear that the economy would be served well by adding licensing requirements.

if you look at it economically, maybe. It's a complex problem. The economy doesn't benefit from contractor licensing either, but the consistency reliability and quality of our infrastructure does.

The reliability of licensed contractors is... questionable. ;-) In some cases it seems pretty silly. For example, beauticians need to be licensed, even though they make very low average salaries, so it's not particularly helpful to them, and it doesn't stop some of them from giving bad haircuts.

The mention of contractors brings up an important point though. Many people support software developer licensing because they believe (mistakenly IMO) that it would make hiring easier, but not all software development is done by employees. In a licensed profession, you cannot legally practice the trade, not even as an entrepreneur, unless you have a license. Are we to apply this same standard to software development? Nobody can write software without a license from the state? Is that even possible? What about the people writing consumer software alone at home? Can nobody even publish a web site with HTML and JavaScript without a license? A web site is essentially all you need to create a billion dollar business, so either licensing prevents that from happening, or licensing won't really be a uniform standard for the software industry.

Mark Zuckerberg was a college dropout. Thus, he wouldn't have a license. No Facebook. Maybe you're ok with that, if you hate Facebook, but nobody really thinks the problem with Facebook is that Zuck was an incompetent programmer. In any case, software development licensing would put up a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the tech industry.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#95

Post by kthejoker2 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

sa46 wrote: post #39

ogre_codes wrote: post #3

"We have a lot of redheaded patients, we're looking for someone who has at least 7 years experience working with redheaded patients on a regular basis"

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

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#96

Post by sys_64738 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

lacker wrote: 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…

Software developers would also need malpractice insurance to protect them from bugs. This is the difference. What real engineering and medical disciplines enforce is personal responsibility for their actions. If you screw up then you're going to be sued big time. Software always claims zero liability. It's why software development is not real engineering.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#97

Post by pseudalopex » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

cameronfraser wrote: post #69

vsareto wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never been asked these questions for senior+ interviews

Many people have.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#98

Post by phobosanomaly » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

isochronous wrote: post #68

jbandela1 wrote: post #59

Actually, these kind of stuff do get asked at the various interviews to becoming a doctor. * Working for free because it is a passion. Actually a big part of the medical school interview is making sure you are passionate about medicine. You are pretty much expected to be doing some type of medical volunteering on an ongoing basis to demonstrate your passion. In addition, once you are in medical school, interviewing f…

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.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#99

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #88

nemo44x wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really not true. At NASA for example there are standards that need to be followed when designing a system, implementing the code for it, reviewing and testing it, and releasing it. [1] Yes there will always be bugs but no practice or method is invulnerable to this. Software in general, in these high risk environments, has been extraordinarily successful in terms of reliability and safety. [1] https://sma.nasa.…

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. People will stop using their site if it’s too large a problem.

Software is different than many technical and engineering fields. Codebases change over time as new requirements come in to extend functionality. Things can be patched. When standard engineering practices are required they are implemented. Yes, mistakes happen too but bridges fall down on occasion.

Re: If doctors were interviewed like software developers

#100

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #89

nemo44x wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if they continue to do things short of code (when required, etc) they'd lose their license. They have to work within the confines of the code, where applicable. Software engineers will certainly lose their job if they don't ship code to standards set by the company they work for. Someone writing code for an airplane is going to have a different type of standard than someone writing code for video game, however…

Left up to private enterprise they will set their standards to the lowest they can get away with to maximize profits and reduce the time to market.

So the makers of Candy Krush should ban heap allocation and dynamic memory allocation and perform rigid static analysis on all the code they ship?