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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Professional licencing processes establish minimum standards of competence, training and education. They do not guarantee excellence and a license represents that its holder is no worse than the worst legally allowable practitioner. Half of all surgeons are below average. You don't want one of them if you have a choice.

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Depends on what the average and standard deviation are. If the average is shitty in the absolute sense, I probably want one well above average. If the average is stellar, I probably don;t care as long as I am not getting bottom of the barrel.

And if you had a choice between a below-average licensed surgeon and an unlicensed surgeon?

There's no process that can guarantee above-average practitioners for everyone, it's a paradox. That doesn't mean minimum standards are pointless.

Half are below the average of practicing surgeons. But the average surgeon is much better because you weed out a lot of incompetent people who can't get certified.

Surgeons are not number 10 heating oil commodities. The difference in quality between one surgeon and the next matters when it comes to an operation's outcome. Likewise - and this is the gist of my comment - licensing software engineers might raise the minimum bar, but it won't make hiring any easier because licensing doesn't establish relevant expertise or pertinent experience. Obstetricians not thoracic surgeons are what you want for Cesareans just as you don't want a J programmer writing your CMS.

What do you mean licensing doesn't establish experience or expertise? That depends entirely on what you use to qualify people for licenses.

Naturally, you won't hire a heart surgeon to do a brain transplant, but then you don't have a generic "surgeon" license, you have separate "brain surgeon" or "heart surgeon" licenses. You get a Cesarean from someone licensed to do it, and that won't be a thoracic surgeon.

And it _would_ make hiring easier, because you have a much smaller pool of candidates to look at. The problem with licensing is that you end up having to pay for a license, and technology changes to fast to keep licensing relevant. And so much of tech education is expected to be done without guidance or experience.

Again the license means a person is minimally qualified. It doesn't mean they are good at whatever they are licensed to do. As a licensed architect in real life, I am minimally qualified under the law to design a State Penitentiary. I lack the experience and expertise [and inclination] to do it well in accord with contemporary standards...i.e I'm not qualified to do that type of project beyond a general legal minimum for practicing architecture.

So when there's a new penitentiary in the works, there's an RFQ for design services.

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