Wow we are being penalized for our reliability. I have a strange feeling that data analyst / programmer / consultant would be closer to doctors/lawyers than engineers.
The newly organizing groups could call themselves professions, and not simply resurrected medieval guilds, because their members’ mastery of a new body of knowledge gave them claims to a competence beyond the amateur’s reach. Doctors could take advantage of the new breakthroughs in germ theory and anesthesia, engineers of refinements in industrial technology. “A strong profession requires a real technical skill that produces demonstrable results and can be taught,” a sociologist named Randall Collins wrote in a history of educational credentials. “the skill must be difficult enough to require training and reliable enough to produce results. But it cannot be too reliable enough to produce results. But it cannot be too reliable, for then outsiders can judge work by its results.” Indeed, when historians try to explain why engineers have never become as pretigious and independent as doctors or lawyers, one of their answers is that the engineer’s competence is too clearly on display. (When a patient dies, the doctor might not to be blame, but if a bridge, falls down, the engineer is.)
via The Case Against Credentialism – James Fallows.