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CE classes for nearly all professions are a joke compared to the shit software engineers are expected to go through to rehearse for interviews.

As for government work, I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I did government work for 14 years and never needed any certifications. If I had, the company would have paid for it and it would have been on company time.

Imagine CE credits for things like distributed systems and machine learning as you move along in your career: wouldn't that be more useful than brushing up on that Trie algorithm you'll never implement?

Sure. So get that executive masters or Coursera certificate, and then spend an hour convincing an employer that you actually learned something in your course.

It would be great if the continuing education most of us actually enjoy doing were a valuable thing to do. As it is, if you want to switch jobs, it's much more valuable to study old things that help with whiteboard interviews than to spend time learning new things.

The issue is changing jobs, not keeping up with credits for your current job.