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If you were a carpenter, you'd tell your friends you're a carpenter. If you were a janitor, you'd tell your friends you're a sanitation worker. If you were a
by forensic 15y ago
If you were a carpenter, you'd tell your friends you're a carpenter.
If you were a janitor, you'd tell your friends you're a sanitation worker.
If you were a stripper, you'd tell your friends you're an exotic dancer.
Patio is saying we should say "engineer" instead of "programmer" because programmer has similar connotations to janitor.
- screwt 15y agoIn my experience, 'engineer' has closer connotations to janitor than 'programmer'. Certainly in the UK, engineering as a profession has a big image problem because the average person doesn't distinguish between e.g. a heating engineer (who fixes the boiler) and say, a civil engineer (someone with a Masters degree + 4 years professional experience and accreditation). People I know who are programmers all have professional jobs and by and large are earning more than those I know who are engineers. That's probably not a representative sample of 'programmers' though. tl;dr: 'engineer' doesn't sound too professional either, at least in the UK. IMO Software Developer sounds better than either, and that's what I tell people I am.
- forensic 15y agoIn North America an engineer is either a train operator, someone with a university degree in "Engineering", or a programmer. So you can see the difference.
- LargeWu 15y agoWhat you describe as an engineer would probably be called a technician here in the US - somebody with a relatively specialized skill set whose responsibilities are mainly operation or maintenance of equipment or systems.