arclightSep 3, 2025

@alda As a nuclear engineer, I have never been asked to show my portfolio of reactor designs I maintain in my free time, I have never been asked to derive the six-factor formula, the quantization of angular momentum, Brehmsstrahlung, or to whiteboard gas centrifuge isotopic separation, water hammer, hydrogen detonation, or cross-section resonance integrals.

There's something deeply wrong with an industry that presumes you're a fraud unless repeatedly and performatively demonstrated otherwise and treats the hiring process as a demented form of 80s-era fraternity hazing.

Show threadGaëtan Perrault

@arclight @alda

I've been in the software industry for 20+ years.

I have worked with multiple 19 and 20-year-olds who barely made it out of high school but could deliver more and better software faster than 40-year-olds with degrees. I have also worked with multiple university grads who simply failed to deliver software that was assigned to them.

Hiring managers often maintain a defensive posture in terms of hiring because of this variability.

And there is something deeply wrong with the industry. But it's not quite what you've characterized.

You are an engineer. You have a piece of paper signed by an authority saying then you are fit to perform these duties. That one or more trusted bodies have verified your skills and knowledge.

Software doesn't have this.

There is no piece of paper that you can put on a resume that could verify that you are fit to perform the duties of building software. So the industry has duct-taped a (crummy) solution, this constant testing.

Sep 5, 2025 at 9:02amWeb