Ask your girlfriend about her rotations (where students literally cry after being screamed at while working insane hours), MCATs, and how difficult it is to get into any medical school. Job interviews don't have to be as difficult as credentials are both required (there are folks at Google and Facebook without CS degrees -- and that's a good thing, obviously) and are difficult to get irrespective of where you go to school (CS programs wary widely, as this is still a young discipline unlike biology).
Pharmacy is also similar, with a few caveats: pay is somewhat below what a software engineer can expect mid-career (~$120,000 for retail pharmacy, somewhat less for pharma research), residency is not required, but rotations are still insane, and schools are still selective.
In some ways, I think it would benefit the patients if the medical profession was somewhat more meritocratic and less focused on pushing students to their breaking point during rotations and residency, which continues because "that's the way it has always been done". It still somewhat scares me just _what_ a sleep-deprived student could do to a patient due to the very basics of sleep deprivation.
[Full disclosure: I work at Facebook and have dated a pharm student/pharmacist.]
Of course "in the medical profession" doesn't equal "doctor or pharmacist". Likewise, "software engineer" doesn't equal "software engineer at Google or Facebook": there are plenty of firms that don't use coding interviews. Nobody says that to be a software engineer, you have to work at a licensed firm that has to (as part of licensing) use a certain hiring process, require certain credentials, etc...
(This also isn't an endorsement of all modern interview practices: it's particularly silly for startups to cargo-cult interview questions they've overheard at other companies without measuring their effectiveness and calibrating candidates' response.)
How would a startup measure the effectiveness of an interview practice or calibrate off of candidates' responses if they don't put it into practice based on the experience of other companies/people?
Ask your girlfriend about her rotations (where students literally cry after being screamed at while working insane hours), MCATs, and how difficult it is to get into any medical school. Job interviews don't have to be as difficult as credentials are both required (there are folks at Google and Facebook without CS degrees -- and that's a good thing, obviously) and are difficult to get irrespective of where you go to school (CS programs wary widely, as this is still a young discipline unlike biology).
Pharmacy is also similar, with a few caveats: pay is somewhat below what a software engineer can expect mid-career (~$120,000 for retail pharmacy, somewhat less for pharma research), residency is not required, but rotations are still insane, and schools are still selective.
In some ways, I think it would benefit the patients if the medical profession was somewhat more meritocratic and less focused on pushing students to their breaking point during rotations and residency, which continues because "that's the way it has always been done". It still somewhat scares me just _what_ a sleep-deprived student could do to a patient due to the very basics of sleep deprivation.
[Full disclosure: I work at Facebook and have dated a pharm student/pharmacist.]
Of course "in the medical profession" doesn't equal "doctor or pharmacist". Likewise, "software engineer" doesn't equal "software engineer at Google or Facebook": there are plenty of firms that don't use coding interviews. Nobody says that to be a software engineer, you have to work at a licensed firm that has to (as part of licensing) use a certain hiring process, require certain credentials, etc...
(This also isn't an endorsement of all modern interview practices: it's particularly silly for startups to cargo-cult interview questions they've overheard at other companies without measuring their effectiveness and calibrating candidates' response.)