Licensing
I am pro-licensing, though I don't have any certs or even a degree. The reason is that it makes it easier to hire, and to get hired. When I hire a tradesperson to fix something, I just have to look up their license. That's a certain amount of protection for me - I know they have passed a test, and have insurance.
Presently, I work in a place where not a single person there is qualified to assess my skills or my work. It's not an IT organization. Licensing and certification would be good for me, making it easier to change jobs, demand raises, etc.
We've subcontracted work out, and I ended up hiring a loser once - he knew what he was doing but bit off more than he could chew at the price we negotiated. My coworker hired someone to do our website, and the guy was just learning what an "if" statement is. In both cases, I had to pick up the mess and fix it. Licensing would have helped us avoid both situations.
Another time, we didn't complete a project. If the vendor had some kind of insurance to cover unexpected situations, we could have sued to get enough money to hire someone else to finish the project. But he didn't have that insurance or know of it. So the upshot, again, was that I had to pick up the pieces and finish the programming. If licensing required the vendor to purchase specific insurance to assure good business practices, that would have helped us avoid this problem.
(I love to program - but it's just stressful to finish off someone else's project well after the deadline.)
