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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)

#151

Post by Izkata »

grovesNL wrote: post #103
trentgreene wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That could be the case wherever you live, but this isn't true in general. The word "engineer" is protected title in some countries (without requiring additional qualification such as the word "professional" or "licensed").

I think I remember reading it's not even consistent across the US, that some states have the same protections on the title.

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

#152

Post by adalacelove »

SoftTalker wrote: post #61
adalacelove wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, specially in social settings. It nicely stops the conversation about work.

Trying to decide if you're being ironic. I find that even saying "I'm a programmer" in social settings triggers my counterparty to frantically start scanning the room for anybody else to talk to. In social situations when that comes up I usually say something like "I work for " and then immediately try to change the subject.

> Trying to decide if you're being ironic.

Not ironic at all. I actually work in machine learning but saying anything close to "AI" is a fatal error.

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

#153

Post by seppel »

Archelaos wrote: post #30
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 in…

"Software Engineer" (without German translation) is used as an official job title by many German companies and the German linkedin is also full of people describing themselves as Software Engineers. This is the first time I hear such an objection.

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

#154

Post by NegatioN »

0x445442 wrote: post #20

“You’re not defined by your chosen software stack”… Boy this article is old isn’t it.

I don't understand why so many people seem to disagree with this point.

If you're a specialist that's one thing, but a normal software stack should be generalizable?

I got hired at all of my jobs so far without having major prior experience with the languages they use, and definitely not the frameworks.

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

#155

Post by scarface74 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #44
strict9 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but what I quoted was specifically advice on being an employee: >Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. There you go And I'm saying the language/stack absolutely does matter when it comes to advice for new developers.

Note the blog post is from 2011. It mattered less then.

This isn’t true. I have folders with emails each time I’ve been looking for a job since 2008 (2008,2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020). I stayed at my second job from 1999-2008.

A sample of the email from 2008:

> Company in … is looking for a full time .NET developer to start as soon as possible. M leading edge technologies. This is a great opportunity for someone with strong VB.NET skills to come aboard a fabulous company.

Standard developer - minimum 2 years transactional website development experience on the Microsoft platform (don't need content/marketing web developers) Senior developer - minimum 4 years transactional website development experience on the Microsoft platform Experience with .NET 2.0/3.5 platform Experience with VB.NET and ASP.NET Experience with the AJAX framework Experience with writing SQL (Oracle experience preferred) Experience with data access through ADO.NET Must be willing to follow client's code standards and participate in code reviews Java script skills (basic

Nice to have experience

Telerik controls and other 3rd party software experience Database experience with SQL Server and DB2 databases Web farm experience (deployment and troubleshooting)

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

#156

Post by bruce511 »

kodah wrote: post #147
bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. Well now I have to guess. ColdFusion?

I feel like a lot of programmers on here have probably heard of ColdFusion. Allaire (and Macromedia after they bought them) built one of the best IDEs back in the day. It was a strong competitor to Komodo.

ColdFusion is a global household name compared to what I use :)

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

#157

Post by scarface74 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #80

so when will we declare this advice outdated? Or extremely limited. The first thing that is outdated, the advice is basically don't be a programmer be an expert in something the company needs. The thing is in the modern world the company often needs programmers more than it needs the other expertise, hence the big salaries we earn getting hired to solve problems. >There are companies which create software which actua…

> The first thing that is outdated, the advice is basically don't be a programmer be an expert in something the company needs. The thing is in the modern world the company often needs programmers more than it needs the other expertise, hence the big salaries we earn getting hired to solve problems

I was a boring old “enterprise programmer” from 1996-2016. I belatedly started moving into more “architect” type roles where I was brought in to lead by example and while I was still hands on, I was hired to solve more strategic issues and lead initiatives.

Fast forward to today and now I’m a “cloud architect” working in the consulting department at $BigTech.

Right now I’m working on a “DevOps” project that required a few relatively trivial Python scripts as part of the design. Most of my time has been spent “consulting”.

ChatGPT was able to spit out every Python script that I needed correctly and all I had to do was tell it - this is the input I want and this is the output I need.

It got me 100% there with code that didn’t require the AWS SDK (boto3). It does have some understanding of the boto library. But it isn’t perfect.

Yes I know how to program. But I only started making real money when I could talk to “the business” and know what to program.

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

#158

Post by castrul »

I plan to use this line of thinking to my advantage when I am able to employ people. I will deliberately call myself a programmer, avoid formal titles and just call everyone programmers, emphasize that the job is about solving hard programming problems and so on. That will attract creative people for whom the difficulty of the work is a perk and not a cost.

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

#159

Post by lizardking »

scarface74 wrote: post #157
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #80

so when will we declare this advice outdated? Or extremely limited. The first thing that is outdated, the advice is basically don't be a programmer be an expert in something the company needs. The thing is in the modern world the company often needs programmers more than it needs the other expertise, hence the big salaries we earn getting hired to solve problems. >There are companies which create software which actua…

> The first thing that is outdated, the advice is basically don't be a programmer be an expert in something the company needs. The thing is in the modern world the company often needs programmers more than it needs the other expertise, hence the big salaries we earn getting hired to solve problems I was a boring old “enterprise programmer” from 1996-2016. I belatedly started moving into more “architect” type roles wh…

This more or less describes my career trajectory up to the point of belated moving into architecture roles. It’s encouraging to hear that such a winding career path can eventually make its way $BigTech. Cheers

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

#160

Post by n0tth3dro1ds »

vore wrote: post #94
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sour grapes from lower paying engineering disciplines that have been hijacked by certification organizations. I’m a software engineer. I earn triple what you earn as a civil engineer, and I don’t have to pay a certification body for the title. I can also work in any state that I want, and I can move without second thought or recertification. Go cry about it.

Beyond certification, licensed engineers are able to be held personally liable for negligence. Perhaps in a jurisdiction that only allows licensed engineers to call themselves engineers, you sound like someone who doesn't want the burden of the title, either.

Crouch down and lick the hands of the mafia organization that rules over you. May your chains sit lightly upon you. Enjoy your $90k terminal-career salary, geographic lock-in, and annual dues! At least you’re grateful for the right to call yourself the title that you already earned as an undergraduate! May this affliction never effect the software ENGINEERING industry!
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