8 ms·

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers. The work I did in my 20s cannot even begin to compare with what I am doing today in my 30s. Those years of experience really makes a massive difference. It is time people are honest about ageism and simply states the real reason they prefer fresh grad or 20-something brogrammers. It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money. At least in most of the cases of ageism that I have seen.

Harvey-Specter 9y ago
> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types In Canada the term 'engineer' is regulated at the provincial level, and a person can be prosecuted for labeling themselves as an engineer if they are not registered and licensed with their province's engineering association. For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads. I know I did. But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such. I call myself a software developer because although I have a software engineering degree I'm not registered with the PEO and it wouldn't benefit me if I was. [1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1 http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  Canada, along with a couple other nations I do not recall, is an outlier in this respect. As an American EE degree holder who has been employed as an EE in the past, I think the attachment of "engineer" to shitloads of titles just to fluff them up is ridiculous. However, I think the Canadian position is equally ridiculous in the opposite direction.
- wyager 9y ago
  > For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing. > Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads. It bothers me that people believe that A) ethics can be taught like any other engineering class and B) ethics should be prescribed by some professional association. > But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp I agree this is a problem, but most of the actual engineers I meet in real life (i.e. people who did a 4-or-more year accredited engineering program, including some who are from Canada) don’t actually have a particularly impressive level of rigor that would set them apart from most of the college-educated programmers I meet.
  - jlos 9y ago
    In Canada the engineering associations are self regulating bodies, that is, the associations serve a legal purpose because of the technical nature of engineering. The thinking is that Politicians don't have the technical background to regulate the profession and so having pronvincial bodies allows engineers to regulate themselves. Hence the ethics part
  - pc86 9y ago
    You can become a software PE in the United States, but it is absolutely a racket. One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. This leads to a situation where new exams, like the software discipline, have 20 people sit for an exam in one year. The transportation discipline had 1,800.
    - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
      > One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. That's also a requirement in Canada (Ontario at least). Work experience has to be completed while working under a P.Eng.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such. Personally I don't see a problem with this. That's their job title. Whether they have a P. Eng and can legally sign documents is another matter. You are correct that technically they cannot walk around saying "I am a Software Engineer" unless they are a Professional Engineer. But I don't see the harm of someone saying "I work as a Software Engineer in X company" because: - that's their job title - the company chose the title and hired them for that role knowing their qualifications - to my knowledge there are no legal restrictions on what title a company can give a role If you want to go after someone calling themselves a "Software Engineer" when they're not a P. Eng I would argue you should go after the company for advertising an "engineer" position without hiring a P. Eng. Edit: my argument here is that professional engineer licensing bodies should go after companies hiring engineering graduates to fill an "X Engineer" role the same as they would go after an individual falsely claiming to be a P.Eng. It's stupid to allow companies to hire someone without a P.Eng to an "Engineer" role and then chastise the person for calling themselves by their job title.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    That’s how we got to where we are today. You don’t get to call yourself a doctor or nurse because you have a box of band-aids in your pocket. The meaning of engineering on the other hand has been watered down to be meaningless. There are no professional standards and no control on what companies represent their staff to be. It sounds prestigious as a title, but that’s about the end of it.
    - kogepathic 9y ago
      > The meaning of engineering has been watered down to be meaningless For some disciplines like Software Engineering, I agree. For other disciplines like Civil engineering, the term has not been watered down. No company would hire someone to certify designs who was not a P. Eng because they are required to employ a P.Eng for this by regulations/law. This problem has come up because the government/PEO has not reacted to the changing engineering landscape and don't require positions like "Software Engineer" to be filled by an actual P. Eng. Companies made the title worthless. I don't see how it's fair to fault the person in the position because there is a double standard applied to individuals and companies regarding the term "Engineer" Apply the standard both ways. People cannot call themselves an "Engineer" unless they hold a P.Eng and companies cannot hire anyone but a P.Eng for an "X Engineer" position.
- hollerith 9y ago
  The link suggests that what is regulated is "Professional Engineer", not "engineer".
  - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
    Here are a couple more links from the PEO website that are more explicit about the term "engineer".[1][2] Admittedly I don't know if the claims here are accurate or not, the Professional Engineer Act [3] is too legalese for me to decipher. [1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng [2] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#aftergrad http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#aftergrad [3] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK36 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK36
- jlebrech 9y ago
  does the ethics test preclude doing work on rayguns? asking for a friend.
  - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
    Probably, engineers are required to adhere to a strict code of ethics that puts the public interested first. Rayguns tend to be developed by people with evil ambitions. If I were a professional engineer and my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities.
    - gaius 9y ago
      my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans.
      - jlebrech 9y ago
        maybe their engineers are called advisors?
      - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
        > So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans. Whether or not Canada has an arms industry is irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's unethical to build weapons. Having an ethical obligation and acting on it are two different things. People can argue about the philosophy around the ethics of creating weapons. It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer.
        gaius 9y ago
        It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer. If that were true, wouldn't the professional body expel them from membership? Or perform some other form of sanction? Which it hasn't - ever, to my knowledge.
- gadders 9y ago
  Ethics exams are the stupidest kinds of exam. If you have no ethics, you'd have no problem and cheating to pass.
  - lithos 9y ago
    They don't care if you know the material. They care about having a legal lever to manipulate so that there is proof that you should have known better.
- yann63 9y ago
  The English word "engineer" is quite difficult for French people, because in French we have the term "ingénieur" (usually meaning "ingénieur diplômé"), which is something like the big universities diplomas in other countries. A better translation of engineer would be "technicien". French "ingénieurs" come from "Grandes écoles", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  True or not true: Engineers in Canada wear a ring made of steel from a bridge that collapsed? Found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
moduspol 9y ago
I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both. But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping what they're bringing competitive with less experienced ones. That's a market--which is reality.
- balabaster 9y ago
  Never compete on price. Provide something that nobody else can and stick with it, otherwise it's a race to the bottom. Those companies that hire the cheapest labour will get the quality they pay for. Let them, it's not your problem. There are enough who care about doing it right that they will eventually find you and will pay you according to the value you bring.
  - dennis_jeeves 9y ago
    >There are enough who care about doing it right If you know any of them, please list them. One real problem is that the ones who want to do it 'right' are few and possibly not easily identifiable so potential job seekers may not know where to search for them.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Amazon competes on price
    - dozzie 9y ago
      Never take universal quantifiers literally.
      - billmalarky 9y ago
        Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
wyager 9y ago
> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. The problem you’re actually describing is completely orthogonal to whether someone is a “brogrammer”. The actual issue is that most programmers learn neither computer engineering nor computer science. Businesses are typically very high time preference, so they don’t care and are willing to hire people who “know how to code” and that’s basically the extent of their knowledge.
coldtea 9y ago
>This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. Does it matter if neither the product sales nor the execs will suffer from producing it?
- jjkk0101 9y ago
  Right, those examples albeit being good to convince a kid to into 5 yrs college are rarely the reality in the IT business. Quality has a price that most of the companies are not willing to pay and might as well detract'em from tapping into a new market.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
When you say "brogrammer" it makes people not want to read the rest of your comment. Please be civil on HN and in general in the world.
- billmalarky 9y ago
  Are we really this thin skinned? It's a funny portmanteau not a slur.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Given the context, though, its use here is acceptable.
stcredzero 9y ago
One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. My fiancee who is a commercial bank loan underwriter made this observation: There are some people who have been in her industry for decades, but effectively have little experience, because they don't examine their decisions and figure out why things went right and went wrong. Then there are other people who have far less "experience" in terms of the number of years they have been working, but are effectively more experienced, because they can analyze new opportunities using the data they've encountered before. Experience as a software developer does count for something, so long as you're aware, and you're constantly developing models for evaluating cost/benefit and risk. If you can add in the ability to deal with and manage people, then you will have a very valuable and uncommon toolbox of skills!
- jzebedee 9y ago
  It goes with the adage: "Some people have 20 years of experience; some have one year of experience repeated 20 times."
  - nickoakland 9y ago
    First encountered this concept in Reid Hoffman's book Startup of You
throttledagain 9y ago
> 20-something brogrammers You'd prefer 50 year old geezers. Oh wait I'm not supposed to use that term. We only get to call young people nasty names. Sorry everyone.
WalterBright 9y ago
Ironically, working longer hours makes one less productive (in engineering).
kamaal 9y ago
>>Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers. Exactly, this is like saying carpenters get obsolete every few years because wood pieces with new joints come in every few years. >>It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money. And for naivety, you can easily sell stories like 'work for great exposure' to newly arrived kids.

Harvey-Specter 9y ago

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types In Canada the term 'engineer' is regulated at the provincial level, and a person can be prosecuted for labeling themselves as an engineer if they are not registered and licensed with their province's engineering association. For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads. I know I did. But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such. I call myself a software developer because although I have a software engineering degree I'm not registered with the PEO and it wouldn't benefit me if I was. [1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1 http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1

vonmoltke 9y ago
Canada, along with a couple other nations I do not recall, is an outlier in this respect. As an American EE degree holder who has been employed as an EE in the past, I think the attachment of "engineer" to shitloads of titles just to fluff them up is ridiculous. However, I think the Canadian position is equally ridiculous in the opposite direction.
wyager 9y ago
> For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing. > Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads. It bothers me that people believe that A) ethics can be taught like any other engineering class and B) ethics should be prescribed by some professional association. > But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp I agree this is a problem, but most of the actual engineers I meet in real life (i.e. people who did a 4-or-more year accredited engineering program, including some who are from Canada) don’t actually have a particularly impressive level of rigor that would set them apart from most of the college-educated programmers I meet.
- jlos 9y ago
  In Canada the engineering associations are self regulating bodies, that is, the associations serve a legal purpose because of the technical nature of engineering. The thinking is that Politicians don't have the technical background to regulate the profession and so having pronvincial bodies allows engineers to regulate themselves. Hence the ethics part
- pc86 9y ago
  You can become a software PE in the United States, but it is absolutely a racket. One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. This leads to a situation where new exams, like the software discipline, have 20 people sit for an exam in one year. The transportation discipline had 1,800.
  - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
    > One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. That's also a requirement in Canada (Ontario at least). Work experience has to be completed while working under a P.Eng.
kogepathic 9y ago
> and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such. Personally I don't see a problem with this. That's their job title. Whether they have a P. Eng and can legally sign documents is another matter. You are correct that technically they cannot walk around saying "I am a Software Engineer" unless they are a Professional Engineer. But I don't see the harm of someone saying "I work as a Software Engineer in X company" because: - that's their job title - the company chose the title and hired them for that role knowing their qualifications - to my knowledge there are no legal restrictions on what title a company can give a role If you want to go after someone calling themselves a "Software Engineer" when they're not a P. Eng I would argue you should go after the company for advertising an "engineer" position without hiring a P. Eng. Edit: my argument here is that professional engineer licensing bodies should go after companies hiring engineering graduates to fill an "X Engineer" role the same as they would go after an individual falsely claiming to be a P.Eng. It's stupid to allow companies to hire someone without a P.Eng to an "Engineer" role and then chastise the person for calling themselves by their job title.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  That’s how we got to where we are today. You don’t get to call yourself a doctor or nurse because you have a box of band-aids in your pocket. The meaning of engineering on the other hand has been watered down to be meaningless. There are no professional standards and no control on what companies represent their staff to be. It sounds prestigious as a title, but that’s about the end of it.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > The meaning of engineering has been watered down to be meaningless For some disciplines like Software Engineering, I agree. For other disciplines like Civil engineering, the term has not been watered down. No company would hire someone to certify designs who was not a P. Eng because they are required to employ a P.Eng for this by regulations/law. This problem has come up because the government/PEO has not reacted to the changing engineering landscape and don't require positions like "Software Engineer" to be filled by an actual P. Eng. Companies made the title worthless. I don't see how it's fair to fault the person in the position because there is a double standard applied to individuals and companies regarding the term "Engineer" Apply the standard both ways. People cannot call themselves an "Engineer" unless they hold a P.Eng and companies cannot hire anyone but a P.Eng for an "X Engineer" position.
hollerith 9y ago
The link suggests that what is regulated is "Professional Engineer", not "engineer".
- Harvey-Specter 9y ago
  Here are a couple more links from the PEO website that are more explicit about the term "engineer".[1][2] Admittedly I don't know if the claims here are accurate or not, the Professional Engineer Act [3] is too legalese for me to decipher. [1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng [2] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#aftergrad http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#aftergrad [3] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK36 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK36
jlebrech 9y ago
does the ethics test preclude doing work on rayguns? asking for a friend.
- Harvey-Specter 9y ago
  Probably, engineers are required to adhere to a strict code of ethics that puts the public interested first. Rayguns tend to be developed by people with evil ambitions. If I were a professional engineer and my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities.
  - gaius 9y ago
    my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans.
    - jlebrech 9y ago
      maybe their engineers are called advisors?
    - Harvey-Specter 9y ago
      > So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans. Whether or not Canada has an arms industry is irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's unethical to build weapons. Having an ethical obligation and acting on it are two different things. People can argue about the philosophy around the ethics of creating weapons. It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer.
      - gaius 9y ago
        It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer. If that were true, wouldn't the professional body expel them from membership? Or perform some other form of sanction? Which it hasn't - ever, to my knowledge.
gadders 9y ago
Ethics exams are the stupidest kinds of exam. If you have no ethics, you'd have no problem and cheating to pass.
- lithos 9y ago
  They don't care if you know the material. They care about having a legal lever to manipulate so that there is proof that you should have known better.
yann63 9y ago
The English word "engineer" is quite difficult for French people, because in French we have the term "ingénieur" (usually meaning "ingénieur diplômé"), which is something like the big universities diplomas in other countries. A better translation of engineer would be "technicien". French "ingénieurs" come from "Grandes écoles", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
True or not true: Engineers in Canada wear a ring made of steel from a bridge that collapsed? Found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

moduspol 9y ago

I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both. But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping what they're bringing competitive with less experienced ones. That's a market--which is reality.

balabaster 9y ago
Never compete on price. Provide something that nobody else can and stick with it, otherwise it's a race to the bottom. Those companies that hire the cheapest labour will get the quality they pay for. Let them, it's not your problem. There are enough who care about doing it right that they will eventually find you and will pay you according to the value you bring.
- dennis_jeeves 9y ago
  >There are enough who care about doing it right If you know any of them, please list them. One real problem is that the ones who want to do it 'right' are few and possibly not easily identifiable so potential job seekers may not know where to search for them.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Amazon competes on price
  - dozzie 9y ago
    Never take universal quantifiers literally.
    - billmalarky 9y ago
      Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

wyager 9y ago

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. The problem you’re actually describing is completely orthogonal to whether someone is a “brogrammer”. The actual issue is that most programmers learn neither computer engineering nor computer science. Businesses are typically very high time preference, so they don’t care and are willing to hire people who “know how to code” and that’s basically the extent of their knowledge.

coldtea 9y ago

>This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. Does it matter if neither the product sales nor the execs will suffer from producing it?

jjkk0101 9y ago
Right, those examples albeit being good to convince a kid to into 5 yrs college are rarely the reality in the IT business. Quality has a price that most of the companies are not willing to pay and might as well detract'em from tapping into a new market.

fjsolwmv 9y ago

When you say "brogrammer" it makes people not want to read the rest of your comment. Please be civil on HN and in general in the world.

billmalarky 9y ago
Are we really this thin skinned? It's a funny portmanteau not a slur.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Given the context, though, its use here is acceptable.

stcredzero 9y ago

One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. My fiancee who is a commercial bank loan underwriter made this observation: There are some people who have been in her industry for decades, but effectively have little experience, because they don't examine their decisions and figure out why things went right and went wrong. Then there are other people who have far less "experience" in terms of the number of years they have been working, but are effectively more experienced, because they can analyze new opportunities using the data they've encountered before. Experience as a software developer does count for something, so long as you're aware, and you're constantly developing models for evaluating cost/benefit and risk. If you can add in the ability to deal with and manage people, then you will have a very valuable and uncommon toolbox of skills!

jzebedee 9y ago
It goes with the adage: "Some people have 20 years of experience; some have one year of experience repeated 20 times."
- nickoakland 9y ago
  First encountered this concept in Reid Hoffman's book Startup of You

throttledagain 9y ago

> 20-something brogrammers You'd prefer 50 year old geezers. Oh wait I'm not supposed to use that term. We only get to call young people nasty names. Sorry everyone.

WalterBright 9y ago

Ironically, working longer hours makes one less productive (in engineering).

kamaal 9y ago

>>Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers. Exactly, this is like saying carpenters get obsolete every few years because wood pieces with new joints come in every few years. >>It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money. And for naivety, you can easily sell stories like 'work for great exposure' to newly arrived kids.