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Requiring the sheet of paper is less about ensuring the person is qualified, and more about having something you can revoke if they act negligently. It turns ou

by feoren 2y ago

Requiring the sheet of paper is less about ensuring the person is qualified, and more about having something you can revoke if they act negligently. It turns out to be important some small percentage of the time that you can say "we will revoke your license if you aren't more careful in the future". And engineers can reject terrible suggestions from non-technical bosses by saying "I'd lose my license if I did that." That's it's main value-add. I've been to work social events where all the alcohol was provided by the company, but they still had to hire a bartender. You'd pick up a drink, hand it to the bartender, and they'd open it and give it back to you. It sure seems like a stupid, wasteful ceremony; that is, until someone is on their way to getting blackout drunk and the bartender can start refusing to open more drinks for them. They can even use the line "I could lose my bartending license if I keep serving you." The requirement for a licensed bartender was not to make sure someone knew how to open the drinks, it was to make sure someone had the authority and accountability for keeping things under control. (Not to mention making sure everyone was over 21.) Requiring a stamp from a licensed professional seems pointless up until it prevents a big problem. I'm not opposed to requiring that a Licensed Software Engineer (or whatever) sign off on the software running on chemotherapy machines, as long as that licensing is all done in good faith.

WillAdams 2y ago
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
bsoles 2y ago
Having an engineering diploma is not the same as having an engineering license though. In US, 99% of engineers do not have a professional engineer license.
- feoren 2y ago
  I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment at all, but your 99% number is definitely way off. The number of PEs in the US seems to be around 500,000 per NCEES. That represents way more than 1% of all "engineers" -- there are not 50 million "engineers" in the US, unless Subway has started calling their employees "Sandwich Engineers" now. What are you counting as an engineer, if not a PE? For this discussion, an engineer would be someone working in a profession where a PE license is available, matching their day-to-day work. You could say "what about software engineers?" but that will skew your numbers, because we don't know how many SEs would be licensed PEs if a licensing program was available (which is kinda what we're discussing here). The question is: for those professions where a PE license is available, how many get it? This is a number that seems a bit hard to find, but the consensus seems to be around 20%. So you're off by a factor of 20x. Please don't just make up random stats, or you will be contributing to the misinformation in the world.
  - bsoles 2y ago
    An engineer is someone who has an engineering degree from a college/university; it is that simple. Having a PE license or not has nothing to do with being an engineer. The PE only brings additional responsibilities, liabilities, and signature authority to someone who is already an engineer. Otherwise, what do you propose we should call someone who has, say, a mechanical engineering degree from a university? Are they not an engineer? I also don't care about the numbers of an organization who has a conflict-of-interest in the matter. I teach graduate level engineering classes and I know for a fact that almost nobody in my classes goes for the PE license. That is representative enough for me over the years.

by feoren 2y ago

WillAdams 2y ago

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

bsoles 2y ago

Having an engineering diploma is not the same as having an engineering license though. In US, 99% of engineers do not have a professional engineer license.

feoren 2y ago
I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment at all, but your 99% number is definitely way off. The number of PEs in the US seems to be around 500,000 per NCEES. That represents way more than 1% of all "engineers" -- there are not 50 million "engineers" in the US, unless Subway has started calling their employees "Sandwich Engineers" now. What are you counting as an engineer, if not a PE? For this discussion, an engineer would be someone working in a profession where a PE license is available, matching their day-to-day work. You could say "what about software engineers?" but that will skew your numbers, because we don't know how many SEs would be licensed PEs if a licensing program was available (which is kinda what we're discussing here). The question is: for those professions where a PE license is available, how many get it? This is a number that seems a bit hard to find, but the consensus seems to be around 20%. So you're off by a factor of 20x. Please don't just make up random stats, or you will be contributing to the misinformation in the world.
- bsoles 2y ago
  An engineer is someone who has an engineering degree from a college/university; it is that simple. Having a PE license or not has nothing to do with being an engineer. The PE only brings additional responsibilities, liabilities, and signature authority to someone who is already an engineer. Otherwise, what do you propose we should call someone who has, say, a mechanical engineering degree from a university? Are they not an engineer? I also don't care about the numbers of an organization who has a conflict-of-interest in the matter. I teach graduate level engineering classes and I know for a fact that almost nobody in my classes goes for the PE license. That is representative enough for me over the years.