Go on youtube and watch NTSB / FAA investigation reports. If you think that a pilot's license demonstrates that someone is a competent pilot you are very very mistaken, and there are scores of counter examples.
Airlines very strictly test pilots and insist on check rides regardless of what official qualifications pilots show up with. They do this because they are professional organizations with decades of experience and it is necessary for safety. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt because they manage to meet the absolute minimum standard that makes operating an airplane legal is insane.
Yes, that’s what I was referring to with “baseline level of capability”. It doesn’t mean everyone is the same, or that they’re all super pilots, but anyone with a commercial license has at least 250 hours doing the primary job function and that makes it’s reasonable to ask them to do a test flight.
In contrast, we don’t have anything like real certifications for developers and many of the interviewing questions are very unlike the actual job. Hiring would be easier if we did have something closer to what a pilot’s license conveys, but that’d also slow the field down since programming has changed a lot more over the last 50 years than flying.
Airlines very strictly test pilots and insist on check rides regardless of what official qualifications pilots show up with. They do this because they are professional organizations with decades of experience and it is necessary for safety. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt because they manage to meet the absolute minimum standard that makes operating an airplane legal is insane.