I'd look at it the other way: Other high-difficulty jobs have mandatory licenses and certifications that weed out the chaff. Lawyers have the Bar exam, engineers have the Professional Engineering exam, doctors don't have a specific test but they have all of med school, EMTs need to get an EMS license/certification. Software engineers can get their foot in the door with a javascript coding bootcamp.
This explanation works for entry-level candidates but fails to explain why senior candidates are often expected to do similar exercises _in addition to_ any work experience they have.
New lawyers, doctors, and CPAs have to demonstrate textbook mastery to pass a handful of exams once in their career. Engineers are expected to demonstrate textbook mastery for every job they apply to _for their entire career_ (and often multiple times per application!)
everyone you mentioned here has some kind of an ongoing public tally going on - Yelp/Google reviews, customer referrals that lead to new business or lack thereof. If I'm looking at a crappy lawyer or accountant, they probably have a 2* average of public reviews and/or out of business because noone wants to refer to them. Is there an equivalent of that for a mid-career programmer?
I don't think this is true. Most of the doctors and lawyers I know work at big firms with a publicly reviewable presence, but there's no practical way to review individuals at those firms.
Accountants don't have to have a CPA. Half the accountants working under my partner (Accounting Manager at a large private university) don't even have a Bachelor's in Accounting.
> EMTs need to get an EMS license/certification
I love EMTs. I was one. I'm a paramedic. I train new EMTs. But the EMT course is 160 hours, and is designed and tested to be passable as a high school junior. Let's not use that as a comparison.
Most of these positions also have zero to minimal continuing education requirements which often, let's be real, are trivial. Quick online courses that can be busted out in a couple of hours, or "go to this hotel in a nice location, spend a couple of days, and go to the conference room off the lobby for a couple of hours in the morning".
Software engineering? You have people saying here - with a straight face - "Yeah, a 3-4 hour take home exam at every company you interview at is entirely reasonable" for the rest of your professional life.
I have a friend who is an accountant. For entry level jobs, those jobs were meant to be done by someone with a high school diploma and the bar for interviewing is literally "hey can you do basic excel" as you get closer to staff level the interviews become far more complex and nearing what you see in tech because they are testing if you _could_ pass the CPA if you had to. This kind of grilling can be skipped by simply having a CPA.
There's really some truth to the licensing thing. In some ways, I'd really like our field to adopt certifications so we can skip the BS of interviews. I got the leetcode certification, let's talk design or something relevant please.
