Medicine, law, pharmacy, actuarial science, accounting...
For most upper class jobs it's the norm.
I was thinking of the complicated interview process, which seems rather exclusive to software, at least as far as I know.
Medicine, pharmacy, actuarial are all licensed professions. A lot (most?) law and accounting practitioners are also licensed.
So, is the difference for software that it doesn't require a professional license, so employers are forced to sort of invent their own "licensing" in the form of these very difficult interviews?
Not that I'm advocating for licensing by the way, it comes with its own set of problems (notably rent seeking behavior). Just trying to understand why software as a field seems to stand out here.
When I interview at AmaGoogFaceSoft, they can't take my word for it that I know how to code my way out of a cardboard box. So my interviews tend to be fairly technical, making me prove that I know what I know, and might actually be a useful asset to the company.
When my wife (a CPA) interviews, they know that she knows a whole bunch of stuff, by virtue of being able to go the accreditation board. So when she interviews, it tends to be a super mile high sanity check (have you done accounts receivable/payable before, yes? no? If no that's ok too...)
I can't speak for medical, but I have family in law and it tends to lean a lot more towards the accounting style for interviewing (barring maybe some patent law or other specializations). E.g. one had an interview for a corporate banking regulatory position that went roughly "Oh you have no experience in banking or regulatory law? Well that's ok, welcome aboard anyways."
All the accreditation board knows is that she knew enough at one time to pass the tests. It says nothing about whether she still knows that stuff today.
It's the same thing with a PE license. In fact, with a PE the advice is to take the test as soon after graduation as you are able, because the further out of school you are the harder it is to pass. So, it says you knew that stuff once. It cannot be used as a measure of current competency.
This is why there are programming candidates failing fizzbuzz.
It’s the equivalent of someone applying for a pharmacist position and not knowing what antibiotics are, but it happens, because anyone can call themselves a programmer.
