For better or worse, most people shortcut evaluating people’s competence by instead looking to external signals. Instead of asking directly whether this person can code, one can safely assume that getting a master’s degree in data analytics does the job.
The problem with these credentials is they rely on the judgment of the people evaluating them. This breaks down into binary thinking where it’s either this person has all skills X, Y, and Z, or likely none of the above. This type of evaluation breaks down when someone is incredible at X and Y, but doesn’t like doing Z. In this case, you’d likely have someone who could provide large amounts of value, but isn’t likely to be credentialed.
In theory, new credentialing institutions will come and try to solve this, but you run into the problem of cross-validating or knowing which credentials to think are important. Harvard degrees tend to get lots of calls back. Community college graduates, by contrast, aren’t as likely to get called back.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to replace big institutions, meaning you either have to learn all of the skills to mediocre understanding, or you have to venture on your own. Venturing entirely on your own takes a completely different set of skills, also valuable.
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