Should Software Engineers Be Certified The Same Way As Doctors or Lawyers?

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Certification involves inviting an external team of professionals to use available evidence through various analysis, verification and validation techniques to decide if a system developed is safe enough for use, or to decide if a person attained a certain level of competency.

In a situation where the use of software developed by a team of Software Engineers results in compromised classified documents, a lot of losses might be incurred by the company as a result of that event. This is the same way a doctor’s mistake can lead to grave situations like disease outbreak when some health hazards or experiment samples are not properly disposed of. If a lawyer doesn’t defend a client properly, financial losses can be incurred and the client may go to jail or in a worst-case scenario, be executed.

Having said all these, should Software Engineers be certified? Are there benefits that can be derived from certification or do the disadvantages outweigh the possible benefits?

ADVANTAGES

• When a Software Engineer is certified, it shows that the Engineer has a level of competence and also presents hiring managers with the opportunity to screen candidates based on a certain competence level or requirement. This means technical recruiters who have piles of CVs to review can quickly skim and scan for certain certifications, or applicant tracking systems can be configured by default to check for certification keywords thereby making the process even faster.
• Engineering would become even more interesting due to the prospect of having people compete for available opportunities based on certification levels.
• Certification of software engineers would make the profession more popular. (Even though arguments can be made to support the fact that software engineering could be the most popular profession today).
• It also increases an Engineer’s chances of promotion by giving the required visibility to stand out from the crowd.

DISADVANTAGES

• Software technologies are known to evolve so fast that certifications become obsolete within a very short period. For instance, since 2015 new versions of Javascript(Ecmascript) gets released every year by ECMA International to reflect the latest update on the scripting language. This means an Engineer who is skilled and certified in ES2021 may have an obsolete certification if a new version is released by 2022.
• Certification in most cases costs a lot. It would discourage talented individuals interested in the software engineering profession but cannot meet the financial requirement of getting certified.
• It is just a way to state that certain standards were met by an individual at the time of certification but does not guarantee the individual to be competent.

A lot can be said about the certification of engineers, either in support on against it. One important thing to note is at the end of the day, bringing the best out of people and teams is the goal.

What is your opinion on the certification of software engineers?

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