I don’t know if that’s true. More schooling does not mean more trustworthy or careful doctors. And I suspect some negative trait selection.

Milton Friedman wrote a PhD dissertation on the topic of medicine that I invite you to take a look at.

> than if nothing were done.

The alternative is not to invite people who have no experience to build bridges or perform surgeries.

There are no credentials to work at Google. But you’ll find very skilled and capable people running large projects.

Investors want capable people. Those people are vetted through their reputation in their professional circles.

> Would you also be happy to commute to work over a bridge designed by someone with a 10-wk bootcamp in civil engineering?

No. But I would like to drive over bridges from people with 30 years of bridge building experience over a 4-7 year degree.

If you live in Europe you drive over bridges built without credentials all the time.

> Credentialing RAISES the skill floor.

Correct. That’s my mistake.

The point is if cut off the bottom 20th percentile the field doesn’t get much better. Those people aren’t trusted leaders anyway.

You do however lose a significant amount of upside. Including countless top performers from non traditional backgrounds, which is characteristic of computer hackers.

You can maybe argue that the general public, unlike a corporation is not capable of vetting their own doctor, so the government classified those options for them. And that’s reasonable. But that does not apply at all to software engineers who don’t solicit public work.

I have all the traditional credentials and this is not a projection of my own career.