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Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

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Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#21

Post by tinym »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #10
strict9 wrote: post #4

>You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go. I generally agree with this point and many others in the article but when looking for a position the tech stack of a company you're interviewing with matters a whole lot. Using some older…

I see your point, but Facebook had large collection of code written in php(still is?), and they are far from having "lack of investment or interest in technology."

To your point they also, like, wrote their own PHP interpreter. If you asked your Facebook interviewer about PHP you'd probably get an interesting answer!

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#22

Post by strict9 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #10
strict9 wrote: post #4

>You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go. I generally agree with this point and many others in the article but when looking for a position the tech stack of a company you're interviewing with matters a whole lot. Using some older…

I see your point, but Facebook had large collection of code written in php(still is?), and they are far from having "lack of investment or interest in technology."

They are definitely the outlier and the version of php that fb uses can barely be called php when they more or less rewrote how it works under the hood.

But this isn't a dig at php, just stating chosen languages/frameworks matter a lot. I think it speaks volumes about a company's tech philosophy if they still mainly use php and jquery for web development.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#23

Post by 0x445442 »

mikewarot wrote: post #2

Don't call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed to do so. Most states have a professional licensing board to oversee the practice of Engineering. Here's the link to the one in my home state of Indiana.[1] I've been a programmer, system administrator and a machinist. I've never called myself an engineer, and wouldn't want the criminal liability for doing so. I wouldn't call myself a "computer doctor" either fo…

Software “Engineers” have this magic spell called a EULA.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#24

Post by trentgreene »

mikewarot wrote: post #2

Don't call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed to do so. Most states have a professional licensing board to oversee the practice of Engineering. Here's the link to the one in my home state of Indiana.[1] I've been a programmer, system administrator and a machinist. I've never called myself an engineer, and wouldn't want the criminal liability for doing so. I wouldn't call myself a "computer doctor" either fo…

You are very much legally in the clear to call yourself an engineer, even if your actual title is "Solutions Engineer" (i.e., sales).

You cannot however represent yourself as a licensed professional (engineering or otherwise) without actually having that license. That's what's illegal.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#25

Post by 0x445442 »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #6

> Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers, which sets MBA’s optimization antennae to twitching disagree completely with this. I view scientists, engineers, programmers, and system administrators as a part of the profit center because they are intrinsically tied to value creation and value amplification.

Yeah this is an important point. Amazon viewed themselves as a software company almost from the beginning. Now a considerable portion of their business is from AWS because of that mind set.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#26

Post by [deleted] »

mikewarot wrote: post #2

Don't call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed to do so. Most states have a professional licensing board to oversee the practice of Engineering. Here's the link to the one in my home state of Indiana.[1] I've been a programmer, system administrator and a machinist. I've never called myself an engineer, and wouldn't want the criminal liability for doing so. I wouldn't call myself a "computer doctor" either fo…

[deleted]

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#27

Post by denton-scratch »

This sounds like Dale Carnegie stuff. Dale Carnegie was a salesman; I wasn't, I was a technician (a programmer, if you like). I had six months of serious sales training, but sales isn't the trade I was made for, although I enjoyed working with salesmen.

It's true that hirers expect you to sell yourself, beyond just showing that you're qualified for the job. But I don't mind saying I'm a programmer by trade, and good enough for the job you're offering. It's up to my manager whether I add $500,000 to the bottom line; in general, engineers/programmers/technicians don't get to choose what they work on.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#28

Post by arka2147483647 »

itsmemattchung wrote: post #18
strict9 wrote: post #4

>You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go. I generally agree with this point and many others in the article but when looking for a position the tech stack of a company you're interviewing with matters a whole lot. Using some older…

> Using some older/unfashionable languages or maintenance-only frameworks indicates a lack of investment or interest in technology. Not necessarily. Although many would consider C an older language, it's often the right language for the right job (e.g. network packet processing).

I perceive this as:

- There is always a need for low-level programming, and there is not as much development of new languages, abstractions, frameworks, and libraries in the low-level space. Indeed, most of the time you don't want any abstraction, framework or library between you and the low level thing you want to do.

- In the high-level programming space, there is a never ending race to climb higher and higher in the software stack. As such, all frameworks tend to be obsolete faster. Either it is replaced by the new high level hotness, or it gets stuck as a middle-level somewhere, below the new hotness.

Because of that, low level things don't become outdated as fast.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#29

Post by dnissley »

strict9 wrote: post #4

>You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go. I generally agree with this point and many others in the article but when looking for a position the tech stack of a company you're interviewing with matters a whole lot. Using some older…

The problem with this is that each person's definition of older/unfashionable differs. Some people think of java that way! And I would say they're wrong. Cobol on the other hand...

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#30

Post by Archelaos »

mikewarot wrote: post #2

Don't call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed to do so. Most states have a professional licensing board to oversee the practice of Engineering. Here's the link to the one in my home state of Indiana.[1] I've been a programmer, system administrator and a machinist. I've never called myself an engineer, and wouldn't want the criminal liability for doing so. I wouldn't call myself a "computer doctor" either fo…

This is very good advice, if you want to work in Germany. The general requirement to call oneself an engineer ("Ingenieur") is that a person has successfully completed a technical or scientific course of study at a German university or university of applied science with the duration of at least three years (full-time). Each German state has its own Engineer Law ("Ingenieurgesetz", IngG) for the details, which also include the regulations regarding the recognition of foreign qualifications and fines for unauthorized use of the title (for example, up to 25,000 Euro in Baden-Württemberg).
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