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Comment by kylewatson | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: How do hospitals hire doctors (industry hire)?

Do they quiz them like they did to the residents on Scrubs? Do they pull up a list of symptoms and ask what they would test/try next? Do they show them x-rays and ask them to spot the coronavirus?

Seriously? Or do they look at your degree and experience and conclude that if you worked at General Hospital in Atlanta for 5 years you can work at Metro Hospital in Philadelphia?

I honestly don't know how other professional industries hire industry-hires (not college grads/interns) but I only hear about quizzes and riddles and online tests and shit like that in programming.

Hell, do they do the same shit for electrical engineers? Chemical engineers?

I really want to know if they do and if not, how is it Boeing can hire a EE without a whiteboard puzzle but can't hire a CE without that bullshit?

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Medical doctors have a professional organization enforcing strict standards. People cannot practice medicine without passing a series of standardized exams that only recognized universities can administrator, they have and a lengthy internship process, review board etc. If they break the rules they can have their licence suspended.

I think it would be a shame to bring this sort of thing to software development, but it would allow us to get rid of some of the hoops people have to jump through to ensure they can actually do the job being hired for.

I posed the exact same question below. I have the exact same thoughts, and genuinely curious on the process they have.

I'm not that opposed in general to whiteboarding if you feel like you can't assess the candidate. However I do feel that it sometimes feels like credential and experience similar to what you describe in the medical field: if a doctor had 5 years at an inner city hospital, I don't think they would doubt his credentials to the point the want to make him put cell structures on a whiteboard?

Doctors do have professional education, harsh exams, and they can get their licenses revoked for mistakes.

Do you really want the same for programmers? "only people with Ms or PhD from accredited universities can apply, and diploma is invalidated on some mistakes"

For an EE, it might be analyzing or designing a simple circuit. Or writing an state machine in Verilog or VHDL. Or demonstrating their understanding of a industry standard.

In some industries an engineer might need to be licensed. That requires passing multiple tough exams and working under another professional engineer to get their license.

Most of those industries have board certifications. An EE or architect may take months studying for a board certification exam.

Physicians are similar in that you have board certification and residency which provides a baseline level of implied compatency. As I understand it, your residency can essentially set your career. You won't be able to change speciality, and moving up in terms of institution is difficult.

In practice this might be "you can only get hired at faang with faang on your resume", so your options if you don't get it right out of college are to do masters or hope to get a job at Amazon and possibly pivot that into a position at a different firm.

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