7 ms·

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salespers

• Annatar 8y ago
  "Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.
  • pjmlp 8y ago
    I do, in my home country it is not legal to sign off projects as engineer if not certified by the Engineering Order as such. A certain level of quality is expected, not labeling one selfs as engineers after 1 month bootcamp.
    • mcv 8y ago
      I have no idea if there are rules in my country about calling yourself an "engineer", but you can only use the title 'ir' or 'ing', both of which mean ingenieur, which translates to engineer, if you've graduated from a technical university or high-level technical school (technical college? higher trade school? 'ing' is from a level lower than a university degree).
  • floss_fulltimer 8y ago
    > Have you formal education in engineering? Good point. In many countries getting a degree in engineering takes way, way more effort than in computer science. Then it takes 10-15 years of work to be called "senior engineer".
    • C1sc0cat 8y ago
      And from family experience (uk) its more a case of who you know not what you know.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • vehementi 8y ago
    That's why? So if we merely fixed job titles we wouldn't have this problem of fraudsters?
    • Annatar 8y ago
      It would be a good first step measure. There is lots to clean up in the IT industry.
  • wyclif 8y ago
    The subject of what constitutes an engineer or what entitles a professional to the "engineer" title has been discussed ad nauseum here on HN. Spoiler: "engineer" as a title for someone who does computer programming and software development without a license is perfectly fine and acceptable in the USA. In Canada, however, it's probably not.
    • Annatar 8y ago
      Lying on one's resume isn't acceptable anywhere, as programmers are not engineers. It's lying and resume inflation for the explicit purpose of making oneself sound more competent than one really is. If one comes to me for a job interview stating on one's curriculum vitae that she or he is a software engineer, the first thing I will demand to see is a portfolio of specifications, manuals, process flows and architecture design documents before going on to look at how they codified those, and one can bet that for 99.99% of the candidates the interview will have finished at that point 99% of the time.
      • Pyxl101 8y ago
        On what basis are you claiming software engineers are not engineers? What constitutes being an "engineer"? For the record, the National Counsel of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, which is the US body that regulates engineering licensure and "Professional Engineering", recognizes Software Engineering as a branch of the engineering disciplines: https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ "Professional (Licensed) Engineer" is not typically used in software development, but if you care about having this credential, you can become a credentialed Professional Engineer in Software Engineering. Google defines engineering as "the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures". An engineer is "a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works". Software engineers certainly fit that definition from my perspective, because software is a type of virtual or abstract machine. Software engineering certainly qualitatively feels like other branches of engineering to practice, such as electrical engineering or computer (hardware) engineering. I've never designed a structure, but I imagine the principles are the same: understand the requirements of the customer or sponsor; devise a design that accomplishes those goals within the constraints of the medium you're working with, using principles of scientific reasoning to evaluate what is possible and whether a design will meet your needs. Last but not least, software can be just as critical to human life and safety as the artifacts designed in other kinds of engineering. (But being critical to health or safety is not a prerequisite for something to be engineering. It's still engineering if you're building a rocket that only robots will fly on, after all) There may be people whose work on computers does not constitute software engineering. Running some calculations in Excel is probably not engineering. But I think there are plenty of us who build large scale systems that need to operate with high availability under demanding requirements, the properties of which need to be painstakingly planned and analyzed and sometimes mathematically proven -- we who are trained as scientists and engineers, and who apply these principles in our work -- many of us consider our work to be engineering, and consider ourselves engineers. I certainly do.
  • trsfgbb 8y ago
    > "Look at who you're replying to." > "Principal engineer" "Look at who you're replying to." meant "tptacek" or "tyre"? Or both - a general advice?
  • C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Hate to break it to you I worked for a well known civil engineering consultancy and some of our pitch's where economical with the actuality about our engineers experience :-)
  • vonmoltke 8y ago
    > What is system engineering? https://www.incose.org/systems-engineering https://www.incose.org/systems-engineering
    • Annatar 8y ago
      I know what it is as I am an actual system engineer; the question was for our self-proclaimed "principal engineer" to see if he has a clue.
• treypitt 8y ago
  If they understand their friend's work deeply, doesn't that imply they've done something comparable themselves?
  • Ntrails 8y ago
    There is a huge gulf between being able to follow a thought path and being able to find it oneself. I couldn't do the same work in the same timescale as them, I wouldn't make the same decisions or spot the same pitfalls. I am simply not as good. But I spent a bunch of pub/work time discussing it and could project an aura of authority on the projects if I wished. Look at it this way. I was able to understand all of the maths proofs taught at my degree, but I could not have come up with them myself.
    • throwawaymath 8y ago
      Yeah, that's a great analogy for the core problem. Imagine putting a math problem in front of someone and asking them to solve it. They correctly identify it as a system of linear equations. They volunteer that they would solve it using x algorithm which has a time complexity of y. Then you ask them to actually solve it, and they can't even make the first movement towards doing so. They mentioned LU decomposition, but they can't even do Gaussian elimination on paper. They don't know what elementary row operations are. They can't obtain an augmented matrix or put it into (reduced) row echelon form. They don't know anything about linear independence or the rank of a matrix. You put an inconsistent system in front of them and they keep banging away at it, determined to find a solution...etc. That's what it's like interviewing one of these senior engineers. It's surreal - they confidently pattern match the problem using limited heuristics, and they toss away low hanging fruit to demonstrate knowledge. But when you ask them to do something practical and specific, they either refuse and zoom out into abstract-land again, or they hopelessly fail.
      • itronitron 8y ago
        so for data scientists I guess you could ask them to hand calculate the variance and standard deviation for a sample and see how they do on that
• readingnews 8y ago
  > Those are the "smooth talkers" of the engineering world. Those are the people you can't catch just through a verbal interview. I agree with this. I was a hiring manager, and there are those that can really talk technical, in detail. You really think they know what they are doing, how to solve complex problems, how to come up with solutions. You put a keyboard in front of them (or pencil and paper), and they go "uhh, errr, ummm." and fail miserably. I think until you have interviewed a LOT of people, it can be hard to quickly spot this. Some people are masters at telling you how someone else solved the problem as if they solved it, but they can not solve it themselves.
  • diN0bot 8y ago
    and don’t forget the reverse problem mentioned originally: false negatives. you can have someone who is a whiz at practical and specific solutions, who thinks critically and analytically and just gets an enormous amount done WELL. And empowers those around them to boot! they have the reverse problem to speaking about other peolle’s work as their own. instead, they speak of their own work as teamwork. this effects many great people. also women and poc are particularly likely to do this because they have been socialized to not speak too highly of themselves. “model minority” etc. if you as an interviewer are already skeptical of what someone says, you will increase false negatives with people who you are asking to verbally “prove” their work and yet have cultural memories of being penalized for “bragging”. they’ll describe a solution and downplay it as challenging or hard because women aren’t likes le when they’re the smartest person in the room, etc. an interview process should seek to understand many skills: practical, implementation, execution, problem solving, design, high level, communication skills. a varied process that focuses on a few specific skills, one at a time, is likely to convey the most accurate signal.
    • pc86 8y ago
      The problem with hiring is that a false positive is much more damaging than a false negative. Getting the group of people together to vet a candidate is expensive; recruiters are expensive; for the candidates, taking the time off is typically pulling from a very limited bucket of just a few weeks every year; flying people in to interview is expensive; and ultimately, to go through all that and hire someone bad makes you go through the whole process again. If it takes you a few months to figure out it's not going to work, it's unlikely anyone desirable from your original candidate pool is still available. False negatives are expected, and honestly probably good overall and in aggregate, because it decreases the odds of a false positive. One of my first bosses that involved me in the hiring process told me one day that the point of interviewing is not to find reasons to say yes, it's to find a reason to say no.
• monksy 8y ago
  These problems are very simple to solve. Get them to go into detail. Get them to explain their thought process while looking to solve the issue. If you feel that they're talking about a problem someone else solved, ask them that directly. (Did you work with others? etc) If they're lacking on the technical details either it's been a long time ago or they didn't do it.
  • KajMagnus 8y ago
    > explain their thought process while looking to solve the issue I would think they and their colleagues discussed alternatives together, collaboratively in for example a Slack chat — so an interviewee can give you good replies about the thought process and alternative solutions that were considered and discarded. I would assume. Or maybe the interviewee him/herself came up with ideas, that his/her colleagues realized weren't going to work, and explained why, for him/her. Then s/he might be really good at describing the thought process.