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It depends who I'm talking to and where I live. Where I live, engineer is a protected title and requires certification/etc so that takes it out of the race. That leaves the other options. Generally I am a Web Developer to people my age or younger, to people older than me I am usually a Computer Programmer but also sometimes a Developer or Software Developer instead. Realistically, I am a Full Stack Website Developer.
Referring to my job doesn't get any easier even as someone in tech.
Lives ARE on the line. It was faulty software that caused the Boeing 737 Max to crash twice, killing 346 people. Software runs your car, the trains, rockets, literally everything.
Do you know what the reasoning is behind protecting a title like that with a certification requirement?
It's not like a medical doctor or a structural engineer, where lives are on the line. Even with that, we end up with some official doctors of medicine who are misinformation vendors. I can't keep track of the number of times Dr. Drew has spouted anti-science nonsense about topics outside of his addiction specialty and not taken accountability for it, for instance.
At least in civil, the reason is because the professional engineer (PE) stamps all plans and assumes responsibility for said plans by doing so. Plans cannot be built without a stamp. This is the case because someone has to be found liable if a bridge should kill people, and it shouldn't be the technicians, designers or EITs under the PE, because they don't make nearly as much. With great pay comes great liability.
This makes sense for civil, structural, electrical engineering, and similar. For software engineering though, it doesn't make sense to me unless it's for software specifically meant for something critically important for life or safety, like embedded software for industrial safety sensors and shutoff relays, medical monitoring, etc. And that kind of equipment I would expect to have the responsibility for signing off as safe by software-adjacent people like QA testers and non-software people like environmental health and safety officers, lawyers, and so forth.
Not only a certification, but in Italy you need to be registered to a register/bar and pay a yearly fee in order to be an engineer.
It's like being a lawyer in some ways.
All engineers not just civil?