And in general I've seen little correlation between credentials and quality, both in the software industry and elsewhere, so I don't think any such certifications will really solve anything either.
Top-end devs make a name for themselves and don't really have to worry about hiring. Companies compete for them with crazy high offers.
Bottom-end devs try to make up for their lack of experience or skill by "hacking" the application or interview process somehow.
In between, "good enough" devs power the world's bog-standard apps. They're not going to win any awards or lead any talks, but they can do the jobs well enough to make the company money. They know they aren't top-end and can't just say "I'm quitting, who's hiring?" on twitter, but they are also competing with the hordes of less-skilled devs because there's no easy way to tell them apart.
I've never heard of "credentialism", but why doesn't it work in this instance, when it does for doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.?
There are loads of bad doctors though, and bad lawyers, and bad engineers.
"Credentialism" refers to over-reliance on credentials, rather than just looking at what someone can do. I'm not against education, but education is not the same as credentials. People that can hack the interview process can also hack the credentials.
I've seen people with college degrees in IT employed as programmers that literally cannot program. I'm not talking "bad programmers" or "brain fart moment", I'm talking "consistently being unable to grasp even basic control flow over a period of months or years". Also some good programmers can be hard to work with for reasons other than their programming ability.[1] Plus not every programmer is suitable for every position or every type of programming or "jibes" with every other programmer in their sensibilities and approach.[2] The hiring process is just as much about that as testing basic skills.
No one thinks credentials are a guarantee of quality (people will always slip through the cracks no matter what), but I'm not sure they're even a strong indicator of quality either, certainly not for programming. This is hard to quantify of course, and just based on my own observations over my career.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21585958
[2] Simple example: I'm firmly in team "short names", but I know some people really hate it, but I'm pragmatic if nothing else and don't mind doing whatever works well for the entire team. On one extreme end I've worked in a team that insisted on the longest possible name for everything: every variable had to spell out the full name of the class where it came from, often >20 chars, otherwise people considered it "unclear what anything refers to!" I once added a mkdir() function, this was considered "obscure" so it had to be "CreateDir()", then someone said it may not be clear what "dir" is so "CreateDirectory()", and then another remarked it actually makes all intermediate directories too, so we ended up with "CreateRecusiveDirectoryTree()" – I'm not saying this is "wrong", but it does not jibe well with my sensibilities. Several other things also didn't, so I didn't last too long).
Your link talks about "good programmers that lack social skills". In my experience, politeness is a finite resource and dealing with people on a regular basis fully unable to do their listed job is a severe tax on mine.
I've encountered several doctors, etc. who weren't very good, including one who shouldn't have been allowed to practice, IMO. Point taken.
Anyway, in your experience, what actually WOULD be a good indicator of candidate quality?
Those who don't have to worry about hiring are not (necessarily) top-end devs, but good self-promoters and networkers. Not every top-end dev is a good self-promoter or good at networking.
