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An "expert witness" is merely an ostensible title meaning someone is available to be paid for their testimony. One irreducible problem is "Who decides who an 'e

An "expert witness" is merely an ostensible title meaning someone is available to be paid for their testimony. One irreducible problem is "Who decides who an 'expert' is?" A former customer of mine was a civil engineer, and also a California-credentialed Professional Engineer (PE), who did code consulting and gave expert testimony about the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code. His code interpretations earned about $100k in 2023 dollars ($50k in 1996) for 45 minutes of effort in 1996. I'd take a guess that an appearance was ~$10-80k depending on the amount of preparation, time, and travel. Needless to say, he had/has a 8-figure house in Saratoga, CA. Finding a niche that is essential to industry and monetizing it well is a fairly repeatable plan for success if one identifies and chooses the right profession. (PE in California means someone has attained accredited education, worked in a learning capacity at an appropriate type of firm for 4 years, and taken the very difficult PE exam. California licenses generic PEs and fields related and adjacent to construction and civil engineering. It's a shame there aren't specific software or hardware critical assurance PE subcategories.)

toasted-subs 3y ago
Well there's a reason why. There's an EE licensing example, but it's just a review of basic circuit design. Not all that useful in practice.
bumby 3y ago
It’s a little odd that a civil engineer is being an expert witness for pressure vessels, which are typically the Dobson of mechanical engineers. Though, to be fair, most states leave it up to the individual license holder to determine what domains they’ve are competent in. The other aspect that’s interesting to me is that, like “engineer”, the term “expert witness” may be too generic to have much meaning. From the related Oregon case linked elsewhere: >“Courts have long recognized that the term ‘engineer’ has a generic meaning separate from ‘professional engineer”
- mynameisnoone 3y ago
  In this case, it's not for the time period because the specialty of ASME boilers and pressure vessels had legacy CivEs in addition to MEs. These guys had decades of experience on massive industrial, petrochem, and nuclear engineering projects.
  - bumby 3y ago
    That makes sense. As an aside about your comment: >It's a shame there aren't specific software NCEES tried to have a software PE but it withered on the vine and was only offered for a few years. I suspect the incentives in industry don’t support it and the only way itv would get traction is if it were forced by regulation.
    - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
      I probably sound like a broken record on this but the software PE was effectively impossible to get firstly because the Fundamentals of Engineering exam that is the first step to becoming a PE wasn't discipline specific at that time IIRC and contained topics like thermodynamics that very few CS students would have had exposure to. Even for those candidates who got past the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, four years of professional experience under an already certified PE was the next step but there weren't any existing software PEs to do the supervision. Only after passing those two hurdles could the candidate take the software PE exam and become a PE. So basically NCEES made no honest effort to make attaining a software PE realistically possible.
      - bumby 3y ago
        It’s possible that your conception of what the software PE should’ve been differed from the opinion of NCEES. If I remember correctly, it was controls-focused, which makes sense to me given what PEs are normally called on to stamp. If the focus is on safety critical public works, controls is the biggest risk in terms of software development IMO. So in that light, I want a software PE to know things like thermodynamics if they are writing controls code for a nuclear reactor or aerodynamics if they’re writing avionics code for an aircraft. In my experience, there’s a lot of problems created when SWEs don’t consider the physical dynamics of the system and having some breadth of engineering knowledge can mitigate some of that. Breath of engineering knowledge is the aim of the FE exam. There are oodles of materials to study specifically to pass the FE, so I don’t think that’s really an hurdle for a properly motivated person. Also in that vein, I want them with real experience under a PE. It’s a hurdle, but there are plenty of PEs in domains like oil & gas, aerospace, automotive etc. to work under. But if you think you’ll can work at a FAANG or adjacent SV role and get a PE, it’s probably harder to find a senior PE. I also don’t know if it adds much benefit to a web developer.

toasted-subs 3y ago

Well there's a reason why. There's an EE licensing example, but it's just a review of basic circuit design. Not all that useful in practice.

bumby 3y ago

It’s a little odd that a civil engineer is being an expert witness for pressure vessels, which are typically the Dobson of mechanical engineers. Though, to be fair, most states leave it up to the individual license holder to determine what domains they’ve are competent in. The other aspect that’s interesting to me is that, like “engineer”, the term “expert witness” may be too generic to have much meaning. From the related Oregon case linked elsewhere: >“Courts have long recognized that the term ‘engineer’ has a generic meaning separate from ‘professional engineer”

mynameisnoone 3y ago
In this case, it's not for the time period because the specialty of ASME boilers and pressure vessels had legacy CivEs in addition to MEs. These guys had decades of experience on massive industrial, petrochem, and nuclear engineering projects.
- bumby 3y ago
  That makes sense. As an aside about your comment: >It's a shame there aren't specific software NCEES tried to have a software PE but it withered on the vine and was only offered for a few years. I suspect the incentives in industry don’t support it and the only way itv would get traction is if it were forced by regulation.
  - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
    I probably sound like a broken record on this but the software PE was effectively impossible to get firstly because the Fundamentals of Engineering exam that is the first step to becoming a PE wasn't discipline specific at that time IIRC and contained topics like thermodynamics that very few CS students would have had exposure to. Even for those candidates who got past the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, four years of professional experience under an already certified PE was the next step but there weren't any existing software PEs to do the supervision. Only after passing those two hurdles could the candidate take the software PE exam and become a PE. So basically NCEES made no honest effort to make attaining a software PE realistically possible.
    - bumby 3y ago
      It’s possible that your conception of what the software PE should’ve been differed from the opinion of NCEES. If I remember correctly, it was controls-focused, which makes sense to me given what PEs are normally called on to stamp. If the focus is on safety critical public works, controls is the biggest risk in terms of software development IMO. So in that light, I want a software PE to know things like thermodynamics if they are writing controls code for a nuclear reactor or aerodynamics if they’re writing avionics code for an aircraft. In my experience, there’s a lot of problems created when SWEs don’t consider the physical dynamics of the system and having some breadth of engineering knowledge can mitigate some of that. Breath of engineering knowledge is the aim of the FE exam. There are oodles of materials to study specifically to pass the FE, so I don’t think that’s really an hurdle for a properly motivated person. Also in that vein, I want them with real experience under a PE. It’s a hurdle, but there are plenty of PEs in domains like oil & gas, aerospace, automotive etc. to work under. But if you think you’ll can work at a FAANG or adjacent SV role and get a PE, it’s probably harder to find a senior PE. I also don’t know if it adds much benefit to a web developer.