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> I strongly believe that only physicians should be running hospitals. This is how it is for other professional industries. As an attorney, you can lose your l

> I strongly believe that only physicians should be running hospitals. This is how it is for other professional industries. As an attorney, you can lose your license for sharing any profits with someone who isn't a lawyer. I believe states typically require accounting and engineering firms to either be wholly or two-thirds owned by such professionals as well.

brianwawok 5y ago
> I believe states typically require accounting and engineering firms to either be wholly or two-thirds owned by such professionals as well. What states are these, Canadian states? In the US, many many many SaaS shops are wholly owned by businessmen / bean counters. It's like, weird, to be an engineer who runs a software company.
- nawgz 5y ago
  > engineering firm > SaaS shop Now, I get we like to refer to ourselves as Software Engineers, but surely you understand he means actual certified engineering firms, not groups of code monkeys, right? Software is virtually never engineering, you'd have to get to a situation like flight control software before you're doing anything legit
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    I am a software engineer and do not consider myself a code monkey. Do not speak for all of us.
    - nawgz 5y ago
      If you have never stepped into a domain where you have to formally verify your software, I think you should probably not take too much offense to such a comment. While I admit it may be slightly negatively connoted, I primarily used it to illustrate that the kind of engineering going into making a bridge differs greatly from making your UI widget pixel-perfect or your SQL query from being too polynomial
    - scarface74 5y ago
      I’m sure “sales engineers” feel the same way…
- chrisux 5y ago
  I feel like the person you are responding to was not meaning software engineering. Electrical engineering, Chemical engineering, Civil engineering, Mechanical engineering, etc are all more likely: especially as what you say about software engineering is definitely well known.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kllvql 5y ago
  I believe this is in reference to Professional Engineering firms, which often requires PEs either as owners or in certain roles. As far as I'm aware software engineers are not required to be Professional Engineers in the US for most tasks, nor are SaaS shops required to be licensed as Engineering firms. [1] https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/engineering-firm-license-certificate-of-authorization https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/engineering-fir...
  - bumby 5y ago
    NCEES did toy with the idea of a software engineer Professional Engineer license, but it went away due to too little interest. I think it was in part that industry didn't want it because it would give more leverage to SEs. IMO the only way that will become commonplace is if it is forced by regulation.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  They are talking about the "applied physics" engineering fields.
WoahNoun 5y ago
Many states of laws regulating the "corporate practice of medicine." But it seems like that leads to a hospital just being bunch of loosely held together independent businesses/contractors.
zip1234 5y ago
From what I can tell, this is just to keep money in the hands of lawyers and keep prices high. There are plenty of things that could be done better now by non-lawyers with the help of lawyers (look at Rocket law).
- selfmodruntime 5y ago
  Why shouldn‘t money from law be kept in the hands of lawyers? It‘s a grueling education with an even more grueling exam and even now a lot of law graduates can barely afford to keep a roof over their head
  - bumby 5y ago
    Because the profession is meant to serve the public interests and not just be a money grab. According to government data, the median lawyer is in the top 10% of income earners.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      To put numbers on it. To get to the top 10% of income you only have to make around $120K.
      - bumby 5y ago
        Correct. ONet data puts the median lawyer at about $127k. From what I could find, 90th percentile of income is around $126k. While I know HN is probably SV and software biased, saying "only" $120k comes across as out-of-touch for the way most people live. For comparison, the median SF lawyer makes $191k according to BLS data. I could not quickly find 90 percentile data for the area.
        scarface74 5y ago
        Your average Enterprise CRUD developer in any major city in the US can hit that number within 3-5 years and a job hop. It’s not exclusively a SV thing. And your number is correct according to Census data. https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...
scarface74 5y ago
What does that even mean? All lawyers have support staff where the lawyers “share” their billable votes with non lawyers
- mminer237 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure no jurisdiction allows lawyers to share their billable hours with their support staff. You have to pay them either hourly or salary, not linked to how many hours you're billing. You can't give them a law firm stock package or say they get a 10% commission on all billed revenue or something. At best, some jurisdictions allow law firms to give an annual bonus if the firm does well.

brianwawok 5y ago

> I believe states typically require accounting and engineering firms to either be wholly or two-thirds owned by such professionals as well. What states are these, Canadian states? In the US, many many many SaaS shops are wholly owned by businessmen / bean counters. It's like, weird, to be an engineer who runs a software company.

nawgz 5y ago
> engineering firm > SaaS shop Now, I get we like to refer to ourselves as Software Engineers, but surely you understand he means actual certified engineering firms, not groups of code monkeys, right? Software is virtually never engineering, you'd have to get to a situation like flight control software before you're doing anything legit
- brianwawok 5y ago
  I am a software engineer and do not consider myself a code monkey. Do not speak for all of us.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    If you have never stepped into a domain where you have to formally verify your software, I think you should probably not take too much offense to such a comment. While I admit it may be slightly negatively connoted, I primarily used it to illustrate that the kind of engineering going into making a bridge differs greatly from making your UI widget pixel-perfect or your SQL query from being too polynomial
  - scarface74 5y ago
    I’m sure “sales engineers” feel the same way…
chrisux 5y ago
I feel like the person you are responding to was not meaning software engineering. Electrical engineering, Chemical engineering, Civil engineering, Mechanical engineering, etc are all more likely: especially as what you say about software engineering is definitely well known.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kllvql 5y ago
I believe this is in reference to Professional Engineering firms, which often requires PEs either as owners or in certain roles. As far as I'm aware software engineers are not required to be Professional Engineers in the US for most tasks, nor are SaaS shops required to be licensed as Engineering firms. [1] https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/engineering-firm-license-certificate-of-authorization https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/engineering-fir...
- bumby 5y ago
  NCEES did toy with the idea of a software engineer Professional Engineer license, but it went away due to too little interest. I think it was in part that industry didn't want it because it would give more leverage to SEs. IMO the only way that will become commonplace is if it is forced by regulation.
Workaccount2 5y ago
They are talking about the "applied physics" engineering fields.

WoahNoun 5y ago

Many states of laws regulating the "corporate practice of medicine." But it seems like that leads to a hospital just being bunch of loosely held together independent businesses/contractors.

zip1234 5y ago

From what I can tell, this is just to keep money in the hands of lawyers and keep prices high. There are plenty of things that could be done better now by non-lawyers with the help of lawyers (look at Rocket law).

selfmodruntime 5y ago
Why shouldn‘t money from law be kept in the hands of lawyers? It‘s a grueling education with an even more grueling exam and even now a lot of law graduates can barely afford to keep a roof over their head
- bumby 5y ago
  Because the profession is meant to serve the public interests and not just be a money grab. According to government data, the median lawyer is in the top 10% of income earners.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    To put numbers on it. To get to the top 10% of income you only have to make around $120K.
    - bumby 5y ago
      Correct. ONet data puts the median lawyer at about $127k. From what I could find, 90th percentile of income is around $126k. While I know HN is probably SV and software biased, saying "only" $120k comes across as out-of-touch for the way most people live. For comparison, the median SF lawyer makes $191k according to BLS data. I could not quickly find 90 percentile data for the area.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Your average Enterprise CRUD developer in any major city in the US can hit that number within 3-5 years and a job hop. It’s not exclusively a SV thing. And your number is correct according to Census data. https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...

scarface74 5y ago

What does that even mean? All lawyers have support staff where the lawyers “share” their billable votes with non lawyers

mminer237 5y ago
I'm pretty sure no jurisdiction allows lawyers to share their billable hours with their support staff. You have to pay them either hourly or salary, not linked to how many hours you're billing. You can't give them a law firm stock package or say they get a 10% commission on all billed revenue or something. At best, some jurisdictions allow law firms to give an annual bonus if the firm does well.