Comment by ozgung | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ozgung | Hacker News Reader

Everyone calls them Interviews but they are not really interviews. They are exams.

Oral exams, live coding exams, system architecture exams, take-home exams, behavioral examinations, code review exams, extended essay writing exams, case study exams, sample work trials.

You can't be a real professional if you have to take exams in every job change.

In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.

They don't take exams from random people in random companies that know nothing about evaluating knowledge. They take official, standardized exams prepared by professional testers/educators.

Engineering jobs can't be standardized. Engineering and required skills and knowledge is too broad for that.

An interview is not an exam. It's a meeting. The interviewer asks questions to learn about the candidate. The interviewer may ask some questions to learn about the company and the position. That's all. That's the universal definition of a job interview. All the other things are additional tests and exams.

Do they need to do those exams for better selection? Probably not. Their "hiring process"es are not backed by any science. Then why are they doing that? They have to filter somehow. If there are 1 to 100s ratio of candidates for each position, they need to filter hard. Exams are the standard method for ranking and filtering.

But we are professional engineers, not students.

Indeed, and ridiculous exams at that. Imagine being at school and they had a several question exam from anything across a four year degree. No information on what area to focus on, because there’s no focus on purpose.

Quarter of a million dollars in a suitcase, loaded gun, and a copper ticking clock on the table next to you. Picture of your kids that need new school clothes.

Miss one question and you fail. Must also be confident, friendly, and not too old while doing it.

—> “I can’t find anyone that can pass my simple test, they must all be frauds.”

This is not how proper exams work, and for good reason.

> Imagine being at school and they had a several question exam from anything across a four year degree. No information on what area to focus on

Hey, that's my PhD entrance exams!

Sudden death?

Most devs are not engineers, and has not passed a licensing board or belong to any professional associations.

Most devs are doing work that more closely resembles pipe fitting or carpentry than any engineering discipline.

> devs are doing work that more closely resembles pipe fitting or carpentry

Yet plumbers and carpenters (and electricians) are all licensed.

I have a Bachelor of Software Engineering. The degree is fully accredited by, and I am a member of the Australian Institute of Engineers.

We do exist, but as you said very rare. There were 12 of us in my graduating class in 2004.

This is an interesting point. Most US universities are accredited overall, but their individual engineering programs aren't always accredited by engineering accreditors.

For example, UC Berkeley's EECS department lost its ABET accreditation in 2020 (which it had maintained since 1983.) Stanford University lost its ABET accreditation in Electrical Engineering in 2014 (which it had maintained since 1936.) In contrast, nearby Santa Clara University and San José State University both have ABET-accredited EE and CS programs. So, consider hiring some of their graduates!

Many computing professionals are members of professional societies such as ACM or IEEE (and many are not since they don't see the value in the expensive dues.)

What has also not been widely adopted, and has even been opposed, is standardized professional engineering certification (exams, licensing, continuing education requirements, etc.) for computing professions such as software development.

I think this may be related to the computing industry's remarkable success in avoiding liability and associated regulation, particularly for software and online services.

Perhaps of interest: https://www.nspe.org/career-growth/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncee...

> In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.

The field of programming emerged from mathematics, not engineering unfortunately. So we lack any useful certification processes.

At many schools, CS departments emerged from Electrical Engineering departments. Some (MIT, Berkeley, ...) even have a combined EECS department, while others (Stanford) are part of the school of engineering.

However, it does not seem to be common practice for computing professionals to acquire professional engineering certification. (Perhaps graduation from an accredited program is considered to be equivalent?)

There do seem to be Professional Engineer (PE) certifications for computer engineering at least:

https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/electrical-and-computer/

https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/FINAL_PE-Electr...

There are also company-specific certifications (from Microsoft, Cisco, etc.) but those are less general.

It's not like all engineers are certified. And people have tried to create certifications for programming, they just suck.

The only issue is that Software Engineering (is that the term we use?) does have more churn and change than other types that have PEs like Civil.

Not saying it’s not possible to focus on fundamentals that have only changed superficially in decades (like the networking stack or data structures), but it is more difficult in this field.

Sounds like you’re arguing for a professional licensing regime to exist

In software at least, professional licensing exams basically petered out because no one required them so no one cared.

My guess is that it would impede outsourcing and end up costing companies too much money.

In general, licensing is for regulatory reasons (e.g. signing off on drawings). Engineers don't generally do it unless there is some industry requirement to do so (especially in civil engineering). And there mostly isn't in software.

I started the engineer-in-training track when I was in the offshore drilling industry but then I left and never went back.

There should be. Engineers are liable for their failure.

And on the plus side that liability also provides people a lever with which they can push back against stupid managerial decisions. My father was an aeronautical engineer, and his favorite word to say to management was "No". Yes, the engine inspection takes a long time. No, I cannot cut corners in any way just to save you some money (No idea if this is just one of his stories or a real situation, but you get the idea :p ).

I don't know why people are so against it in this field

We have this idea that gatekeeping in all its forms is bad; and like all absolutes it is not true.

> and like all absolutes it is not true.

Like this absolute? ;-)

> I don't know why people are so against it in this field

Because the vast majority of failing software just means inconvenience, rather than disaster.

Tell that to people having their identities stolen every time a data breach happens.

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