I always pose this slightly differently as developer vs engineer, but it's the same thought. You can be a developer that's only ever written JS after reading a

I always pose this slightly differently as developer vs engineer, but it's the same thought. You can be a developer that's only ever written JS after reading a few blogs trying to make your Wordpress site do something fun. If you don't know what a pointer is, or aren't able to talk about thread safety intelligently, or pick-your-example, you're a far way off. I often press employees on this - it doesn't require a 4 year degree, but it does require years of education. You can be a developer the rest of your life, or you can continue to educate and push yourself. I graduated with a 4 year degree and definitely had a head start on some of the more esoteric concepts, but I think it took 7-10 years before I was confident to call myself a software engineer.