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Honest curiosity: is it fraud (in the US) to claim that you are a member of a profession that you are not? (I am not saying that is what he intended to do here). For example, if someone owes me money, is it illegal for me to send them a letter, in which I purport to be a lawyer?
In most states, it's illegal to braid hair without a license. http://braidingfreedom.com/
A friend grew an engineering company in Oregon from 200 employees to > 1000 employees. He took the company public and is an industry standard. His reward: getting charged with not following the letter of the law. He spent most of his life savings fighting back. Moral: do business in a different state.
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> To get my degree accredited in Canada, I must work some huge number of hours as a Software Engineer working with Software Engineers. But of course, there is no such thing in Canada , and so... yeah. We exist. I'm a Canadian P.Eng. (Software). I got my experience working on software for controlling unmanned vehicles, and I know a few dozen other Software P.Engs. Requiring some amount of local experience makes sense,…
I've considered getting my P.Eng. once I complete my degree; do you feel that it's a worthwhile credential to have? Every P.Eng. that I've met has been involved in mechanical or electrical engineering, so I'd like to get the perspective of someone in software.
There are possible career benefits, though they're not huge. The company I left was just starting to require a software engineer on every team to sign off on each release. And, my father convinced me to do the paperwork for the P.Eng. with a story of a raise he missed out on due to not bothering with the P.Eng. despite holding an engineering degree.
Everyone's talking about the title issue, but it's amazing that the Oregon board doesn't believe he should be able to publish or present his ideas. You can go on and on about what it means to be a certain title, but the man should be able to put forth his work and ideas.
Did you read the Board's complaint? At first the asked the Board to investigate the city even though the Board had no jurisdiction to do so. they advised him of this and also cautioned him not to advertise himself as an engineer, in accordance with Oregon's code. He agreed, but then went on to write to various government and media entities promoting his idea and promoting himself as an engineer, before asserting again to the Board that he was an engineer - the very same Board to whom he had given his assurance that he would not hold himself out as such.
He could have put the exact same information and proposals out in public, saying 'I'm not an engineer, but I believe I have come up with a great solution to this traffic problem' and he would have been fine. It's simply not true for you to assert that they're trying to censor his ideas.
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How does this apply to "software engineers"? Do they have to call themselves something else in the state? As far as I know there is no national accreditation body for the title in the US.
My layman's understanding is that in US you're correct, that there isn't an accreditation for SEs. Heck, you can have a job title of Software Engineer without even having graduated college.
Also, if his job title includes "engineer" the board is going to have a very difficult time justifying the case.
And.... this is a civil matter. His best option is to get a good lawyer and just ignore them.
Yet another reason for small government.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does this apply to "software engineers"? Do they have to call themselves something else in the state? As far as I know there is no national accreditation body for the title in the US.
I went through an ABET accredited software engineering program, they pointed us to the NSPE. I'm not a PE but I still call myself a software engineer on everything except government forms. As far as the government's concerned I'm a programmer.
1. (note the "software" in the list of exams offered) http://ncees.org/engineering/pe/
Honest curiosity: is it fraud (in the US) to claim that you are a member of a profession that you are not? (I am not saying that is what he intended to do here). For example, if someone owes me money, is it illegal for me to send them a letter, in which I purport to be a lawyer?
It varies by state; in California the unauthorized practice of law is a crime. Perhaps predictably, the people complaining about this feel that it's a form of rent-seeking by incumbents, but none of them have bothered to consider the flip side of the equation which is that bad actors who falsely hold themselves out as licensed professionals can hurt would-be clients in two ways: by directly exploiting them for the co…