Old, but fun read that argues that today’s programmers are not like typical Engineers and shouldn’t really call themselves that as Engineering requires certification, is subject to government regulation, bear a burden to the public, etc.
I don’t control the job title my company gives me.
No one has suggested that you do and it’s a very silly thing to say. Why on earth would we suggest that you control your company’s actions? Did you read OP’s post?
Well… I did write an engineering thesis and later got a diploma, so I think I will call myself an engineer.
There is a huge difference between a “programmer” who just codes, and a software engineer, who studied computer science and learned the skills for problem solving as an engineer. The latter is protected in many countries.
Yeah, and at least in my country, there are mandatory courses common with all technical (not sure how that should be translated properly to English) engineers, such as extensive physics, maths, electricity and such, that us software engineer students also have to pass along with our specialization to even get to the thesis part of the engineering degree.
After all this, I’ll have no trouble calling myself an engineer. Neither does the university I go to. Nor anyone, really.
Without the degree, sure. I’d be ashamed, even, to claim such a title. But that’s just because the whole engineer degree is well established and has a set meaning. I’d be software developer, as I am now, instead of the software engineer I aspire to be.
I may be self-taught, but I love the field of programming computers and have studied it in my own free time. I happily call myself an engineer if the 99% of engineers coming out of uni and entering the job market can be called one.
and the bar is getting lower. Fast iteration, releasing broken, poorly understood, barely maintainable pieces of shit as quickly as one can.
Fucking agile
If they didn’t make you put a ring on it, you’re not an engineer. Simple as.
Not a simplistic definition at all…
No, go engineer yourself
I think software is still engineered.
Perhaps as a compromise, non-software engineers could call themselves hardware engineers, or hard engineers for short.
Should bridge that gap in terminology. And ofc assumption should be “engineer” means “hard engineer” and software engineers should always specify they’re software engineers and not call themselves just engineers.
All this gate keeping is bullshit, but I do have to agree that we are really bad at actually engineering.
I don’t think gate keeping engineering is bullshit, software or otherwise. In fact I think it is one of the few eminently important things to gatekeep.
If computer systems have peoples lives depending on them, having accredited engineers that may be part of a chain of liability for their mistakes is a potentially life saving measure. It provides increased guarantee that someone will be held responsible, be it the firm, or in the case of bankruptcy, the individual engineer.
This provides a significant incentive to only sign off on work that meets all relevant safety criteria.
I’m not sure if that’s how it works in software engineering, but it certainly should.
There are separate titles for accredited engineers in the US and UK. If anyone cared enough they’d already be using them. The fact is, vanishingly few software engineers work on high risk (to human life) projects. Versus, for example, structural engineers doing it daily.
We’re kinda close because we make a tool that people in a dangerous line of work use to plan their dangerous work. That said, there are checks at each step (output from our software is checked by other software, which loads it onto hardware with its own checks, and then get double check everything before pushing “go”).
I mean you can’t go to the store purchase a stethoscope and call yourself a doctor. Similarly, programmers do not require any sort of certifications or are heavily regulated unlike engineers. It’s an interesting argument for sure.
It depends on the jurisdiction.
In Alberta, Canada, for example, employers will hire programmers from two distinct pools of educational streams: Computer Scientists and Software Engineers.
CS programs are governed by the faculties of science, software engineers by the schools of engineering.
The software engineers take the same oaths or whatever and belong to the same organization as the other engineers (in Alberta, APEGA) and are subject the same organizational requirements to be able to describe themselves as engineers. They can have the designation revoked the same way a civil engineer could.
Practically speaking, as someone who works with both, I don’t see a meaningful difference in the actual work produced by grads of either stream. But at least in my jurisdiction the types of arguments being made don’t really hold because it is a regulated professional designation.
From Alberta but not working there anymore. Found out somewhat recently, specifically in regards to Software, APEGA lost their protection on the word Engineer. Again, specifically in regards to Software.
The protected title for Medical Doctors is Doctor of Medicine. I can get a PHd in Software Engineering and call myself Doctor.
that’s not what gatekeeping is….
you don’t “gatekeep” qualifications and skills.
“you’re not really an artist because you were born rich” would be an example of gatekeeping.
“you’re not really a doctor because you didn’t graduate from medical school” is just the definition of a doctor.
In Germany engineer is a regulated term. Computer scientists wanting to call themselves engineer or software engineer need to complete certain higher education programs. A B.Sc. program in CS is enough for example.
Same for the Netherlands.
Yep, but only the Dutch word is protected so we just use English titles everywhere
The people doing software engineering without such a degree in the US are definitely in the minority, so there’s not much point to the hand-wringing generally speaking.
As someone who has a formal education in Computer Engineering, I can attest that the degree is essentially a combination of modern Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degrees. In other words it is a dual major without any of the benefits.
Not all Software Engineers do actual engineering and that’s okay. The only problems I’ve seen with this in my time in the tech industry is when you have someone who can talk the talk, but when it comes time to do the difficult mental work, they fold like a deck of cards, or worse release a product that’s half-baked. You will see this a lot when a boot camp churns out talent hoping to make a quick buck and then they are given a truly important and hard problem to solve, such as healthcare or military applications.
For that reason, many SWE roles require education to be specified on resumes, rather than certifications as a hoop you have to jump through. If your job did not question your education when you were interviewing then that is usually a good indicator of the kinds of people you will be working with. With all of that said I’ve worked with many engineers that did not have a formal education and were very talented, some of which lied about their education to get where they are today. This happens frequently across all industries however, and isn’t unique to software.
Meh. I don’t care. I’m a mechanical engineer by education. While I’ve used it in many jobs, none in a way that requires certification.
In the US, certification is needed in civil engineering and only small subsets of mechanical and electrical engineering. I’ve worked with many engineers who don’t even have a university degree in engineering. I’m not precious about other people calling themselves engineers.
Except for that stretch of time when hotels were trying to hire janitors as “custodial engineers” and offering like $10/hr. Eff that noise. That made an already deteriorating job search experience on LinkedIn worthless.
Weird hill to die on.
In my opinion, software engineering has about another 50 years before it matures to the point where it is a “proper” engineering profession.
I call myself an “IT systems engineer”.
As a software engineer, I think there are many places where there is a big difference between a SWE and a programmer/developer based around how active you are in designing the architecture, algorithms, and other systems of the software you’re working on.
That being said, people who try to exclude SWEs from engineering are just gatekeeping for gatekeeping’s sake. Up until COVID, you could be a PE in software engineering, they only stopped it because the field was changing too fast for the tests to keep up.
