Are there any other industries that do this? Do cabinet makers ask you to do like a full day of work for free?
My buddy just got a job at a high-end cocktail bar as a bartender. Part of the interview process was asking him to mix a drink.
Gordon Ramsay has talked about how he'll interview chefs by asking them to make scrambled eggs.
Actors, even famous ones, generally have to 'read' for roles in order to land them.
Musicians interview for seats in symphonies by playing music.
MBAs have to do case studies to land jobs at high end consulting firms.
Hell I applied to Taco Bell as a kid and they made me take a short math test to prove I knew how to make change.
I could give similar examples for dozens of other jobs.
The cases where you don't need to demonstrate some skill in order to get the job generally fall into a few categories:
- There's some outside certifying body like the Bar, CPA, PE, various tradesmen unions, or all the licenses like a CDL.
- The jobs are undifferentiated so the workers are fungible (no special skills required).
- Job skill is immediately apparent (less than two weeks to know for certain if someone can do the job or not).
- The cost of a bad hire is low so you're willing to eat the cost and just cut the workers how don't work out.
Lately it seems take home projects are more and more common and these do take 8+ hours. If you want the job.
Here's what happens if you want to move to a "different place".
Say, you go to a different country: you have to spend upwards from a few month, but likely few years to confirm your degree. You won't need a stage, but you will not become an attending right away. In many cases there aren't even analogous positions if you move countries, unless medical systems are very similar, so, in most likelihood you will have to do at least a good chunk of residency training all over again. This will also be usually compounded by studying a new language to a very high degree as doctors are expected to produce a lot of written reports / engage in written communication, and, unlike programmers who almost universally use English regardless of the country they work in, doctors absolutely have to have good command of the local language(s).
Similarly, if you move between different medical organizations which manage hospitals. Sans the language requirements. However, within the same country hospitals will usually be more similar than between countries. Anyways, most hospitals will have fixed dates when job applications are processed, and even if you are extremely lucky and you don't need to redo any of your previous residency (both systems use the same PACS system, same or very similar internal organization etc.) you will still have to wait until the "draft" date. Typically, and due to competition, doctors will go to the hospital they intend to work at anyways before the "draft" date.
Even within the same hospital, if you want to move to a different department, you will still do residency, at least in part. I.e. say, you were already an attending in internal medicine, and you want to move to radiology: then maybe instead of 4 years, you'll do 3 years residency.
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The above has a lot of compounding factors. Huge waiting times to get a position lead to doctors holding on to their positions with a lot more devotion than programmers. In many cases it's a job for life.
Because hospitals have to be in geographically diverse areas, they cannot, like programmers, all bunch together in one or two cities in a country and jump jobs w/o moving to a different apartment / house. A lot of hospitals thus include accommodation programs, which make it even harder to switch jobs.
It's very common for doctors to marry doctors. This makes some things easier, but it also means that if you need to switch jobs, then you have to do it in lockstep with your spouse.
Not in the least, if you move from a "less prestigious" country to a "more prestigious" country, you are almost automatically downgraded in your rank, and if you want the equivalent job, you'll have to jump through the same hoops the second time.
All of this is still not true in a most simple case, so getting job at a different hospital in the same specialization. Ex. in Poland most doctors are hired in multiple hospitals at the same time.
Genuinely curious how does this work? Do they get paid per the number of hospitals who hired them? How do they go to work? How do they know what hospital to go to?
PS. My wife is a doctor, and I had to live through what I described. So, none of that is invented, it's just what I see happen to her and to her colleagues. To make this more concrete, she was an attending in emergency department and wanted to switch to radiology. In her case this resulted in the full 4 years of study on top of about half a year of just showing up in the hospital and tagging along with the radiology team. (This was in Israel, one of the central hospitals). One of her colleagues was a transfer from internal medicine (also an attending), and he was doing 3 years of study to get into radiology. Another was a Russian emigrant doctor with about 10 years of practice from a hospital in St. Petersburg. He was also doing a 3 year of residency.
They also had two people drop out of the residency just during the year my wife was there (before she gave it up), and that's out of a group of six residents. One was a Brazilian emigrant, who eventually decided to go back to Brazil and another one was a guy who was an Israeli, but received his degree in Romania, which was cheaper, I guess. He just couldn't pull it up, and eventually was let go from the program.
The Russian guy was also on the verge of leaving due to some bad blood between him and the head of the department. The head was actively trying to sabotage him and make him leave for god knows what reason. The Russian guy though, despite having some sort of a chronic illness was spending multiple days in a row w/o leaving the hospital.
I mean, back to my original point: I saw nothing that could come close in the programming world. And the fuss people here make about home exercises is just a sign of being way, way overly privileged compared to the majority of the workforce. By which I don't mean to say programmers should suffer like everyone else, rather everyone else has to get better conditions. It's just of all people, presently, programmer should probably show more comradery with other paid workers instead of complaining about their own issues.
They have duty schedules, so they know where they should be at a given time. They have contracts signed with each hospital, like any employee. They can also work in private healthcare at the same time. It's just the case of setting up a schedules so they won't collide.
> she was an attending in emergency department and wanted to switch to radiology. In her case this resulted in the full 4 years of study on top of about half a year of just showing up in the hospital and tagging along with the radiology team.
That's normal because this is a specialization change. Not many doctors change specs or have more than one in most cases, at least in Poland.
Of course many carpenters work as contractors so that's why it seems a bit silly.
How long is the lecture? 1hr? That doesn't sound bad compared to a 20hr programming assignment!!