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Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#12No, it should be called Software Hacker. Engineering has to do with the physical world, there is nothing physical in software
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#13There is a lady on my team that has a bachelor's in psychology and Masters in English.
Her title is IT Analyst. She doesn't know a lot about programming or IT, yet here we are. IT titles are incredibly meaningless nowadays. All I look for is Junior or Senior now.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#14I would never call myself a software engineer, simply for the fact simply for the fact that I never cared about the “engineering” piece. enough to be any good at it. For similar reasons, I’m not a “computer scientist either”.
In a professional capacity, I refer to myself as a software developer, but in an more accurate, general context, I refer to myself as a hacker, though not a a particularly good one. That’s seems to be that best way to describe my brain works and how I work.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#15I saw a lot of people that used to be an office secretary, took a ‘data science bootcamp’, and now list themselves as Data Scientist on LinkedIn.
It’s a virtual world, a veritable mmo at this point. You pick your class and role and no one can stop you.
There are kids one year out of college that cram Leetcode and make more than decent developers that worked for decades.
It’s a wild world, I wouldn’t trust shit, certainly not titles.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#16IMO the use of the term "engineer" is sadly now meaningless. Engineer implies an understanding of the world around you, which implies calculus and physics, and other things depending on your academic and professional focus. Today people whose math is limited to subnet address calculation call themselves "network engineers" (and believe it). People who spin AWS hosts with Ansible are "devops engineers". People who kno…
Engineer doesn't "imply calculus and physics". Calculus and physics is not in the dictionary definition of engineer. In fact, the verb form of engineer is exactly what software, network and devops engineers do. When you say it doesn't mean anything, you must mean you, yourself, doesn't know what it means. ;)
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#17Yes, and we’ve been over this ground again and again, we should use it until another title gets us paid more. Please don’t ignore economic incentives when thinking something through.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#18IMO the use of the term "engineer" is sadly now meaningless. Engineer implies an understanding of the world around you, which implies calculus and physics, and other things depending on your academic and professional focus. Today people whose math is limited to subnet address calculation call themselves "network engineers" (and believe it). People who spin AWS hosts with Ansible are "devops engineers". People who kno…
Engineer doesn't "imply calculus and physics". Calculus and physics is not in the dictionary definition of engineer. In fact, the verb form of engineer is exactly what software, network and devops engineers do. When you say it doesn't mean anything, you must mean you, yourself, doesn't know what it means. ;)
I have a graduate degree in engineering, so I at least have some idea of what it means. Are sanitation engineers 'engineers'? They are according to your dictionary definition.
Edit to say: before I went back to school, I was a technician (no degree) who had the job title of 'engineer'. After I went to school I realized how different the worlds of the technician and engineer are. Not to say one is superior. Just very different.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#19'coder' is the best term to use.
'software developer', 'software engineer' and any other software specialisation under the sun tends to confuse stakeholders and the general public every time.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#20'coder' is the best term to use. 'software developer', 'software engineer' and any other software specialisation under the sun tends to confuse stakeholders and the general public every time.
Why? The physical act of writing code, is very small component of the work.