Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers
Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers
It undermines a long tradition of designing and building infrastructure in the public interest.
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.
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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.
Yeah I was gonna ask, whether certification/government regulations are required for all engineering disciplines. I graduated with a CS degree and work as a software engineer now. I have family members who studied different engineering disciplines (industrial, civil, mechanical, etc), and only 1 of them ever needed certification (civil engineer). What makes one more "engineering" than others?
In the US, there aren't as many certification requirements. In civilized countries, "engineer" is a protected professional title like doctors and others, and you have to have your PE cert to say you're an engineer.
Given the general quality of software, I think it would be a good thing to make it a protected title in the US too.
I live in Australia, which I guess is not a civilized country.
In any case, what does that even mean for software engineers to be certified? Do we get certifications for specific programming language? Or a stack? Or is it specific to what industry your tech is based on? Cos I don’t think it makes sense for someone working on a social media platform to have the same certification as someone who’s working on health tech for example. Why does it need to be a protected title? Does the general public even care or is it just other certified engineers who care?