5 ms·
Your friend was working for a bureaucratic company. Source: I know plenty of engineers without any formal degrees working for big money at real companies.
by fridif 5y ago
Your friend was working for a bureaucratic company.
Source: I know plenty of engineers without any formal degrees working for big money at real companies.
- sandworm101 5y agoIf they dont have formal degrees, then "engineer" is a loose term. They would not be professional engineers (PE/PEng).
- xkqd 5y agoSaying that here will be unpopular. But it’s important to keep in mind that in many countries “engineer” is a protected term with qualification requirements and not simply a job title.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rendall 5y agoThere is no software engineer professional accreditation, the way there is for, say, civil engineer
- Zigurd 5y agoUnpopular idea, but that is why I use the word "engineer" sparingly. Engineers doing real engineering is becoming a smaller part of making tech products, especially software. Software developers can be at least as highly skilled and intelligent as can be engineers, but, most of the time, they are engaged in a highly skilled craft rather than engineering. Making software is sometimes more creative and more integrative than engineering.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoAlso software can change radically in ways physical engineering doesn't - we may continue to make refinements to steel alloys, but you won't come in to work tomorrow and discover that everyone is now building bridges out of glass.
- sandworm101 5y agoBut a software engineer isn't a member of a state-sanctioned professional association. They cannot be struck off for bad behaviors, nor are they licensed to do anything beyond the norms of any other citizen. They are not members of a true profession like doctors/lawyers/engineers.
- caseysoftware 5y agoI'm not sure what "state-sanction professional association" means but there are many professional associations like IEEE (covering tech as a whole) or ACM (that covers computing specifically). There's also ABET - Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology - which establishes formal requirements and standards for the teaching of Software Engineering as a discipline: https://www.abet.org/accreditation/ https://www.abet.org/accreditation/ So I think those pieces are there, they're just not the norm yet.
- sandworm101 5y agoState sanctioned means there is law mandating that only one group is in charge of the profession and they, outside government, regulate that profession. Lawyers only have one bar association in each state. Doctors have only one medical board.
- fridif 5y agoThe State of Oregon already tried to sue someone who was a software engineer for not being a "certified 'Engineer'" and the state's own supreme court ruled in favor of the defendant.
- tomc1985 5y agoI'm personally in favor of such an organization but it really goes against the meritocratic spirit of tech. Lots of us have used tech to bootstrap a better life through sheer mastery and not a "professional" track
- fridif 5y agoThis is the reason why our country will die a soon approaching death: the people who built all of our engines for WW2 were not certified engineers.