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I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

zachary-thomas.medium.com

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Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#3

Post by thomzi12 »

system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

Sure! My company calls the role "software engineer" so that's how I describe the role but I think developer is also a good word for it

Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#6

Post by Bingaloopa »

system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

Software Engineer and Software Developer are used interchangeably for the most part and I don't think you can really get any meaningful distinction just by the name (in most countries at least).

Some countries (Canada I think being one?) may require you be licensed/registered with an engineering body before you're allowed to call yourself an engineer, but thats not the case in most countries AFAIK

Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#7

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

The US doesn't have software "engineering" degrees, so how does one exactly study software engineering? Computer science, too, is not "engineering".

Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#8

Post by echelon »

system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

If you do any sort of measurement, analysis, or design before implementing a system, you're leveraging engineering principles.

Examples: measuring data scale for growth rate and future needs, calculating incremental costs of cloud instances and data stores, designing and proving a state machine, instrumenting systems, measuring and stress testing a system against load, understanding back pressure and dynamical behaviors of distributed systems, designing threaded or active/active systems, vector clocks, consensus algoritms, test suites, etc. etc.

I've had to write short inductive proofs in several of the systems I've built.

It's engineering. The sooner we get over the imposter syndrome debate of what we can and cannot call ourselves and embrace the full scope and possibilty of what we can achieve, the sooner we can become better and more capable software engineers.

Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#9

Post by angrais »

echelon wrote: post #8
system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

If you do any sort of measurement, analysis, or design before implementing a system, you're leveraging engineering principles. Examples: measuring data scale for growth rate and future needs, calculating incremental costs of cloud instances and data stores, designing and proving a state machine, instrumenting systems, measuring and stress testing a system against load, understanding back pressure and dynamical behavi…

>> I've had to write short inductive proofs in several of the systems I've built.

In what context was this necessary?

Re: I became a software engineer after 5 years in data science

#10

Post by Waterluvian »

Bingaloopa wrote: post #6
system2 wrote: post #2

Unless studied software engineering, you can switch to become an "engineer"? Wouldn't be software developer term more fitting?

Software Engineer and Software Developer are used interchangeably for the most part and I don't think you can really get any meaningful distinction just by the name (in most countries at least). Some countries (Canada I think being one?) may require you be licensed/registered with an engineering body before you're allowed to call yourself an engineer, but thats not the case in most countries AFAIK

Indeed. I worked at a Canadian company that got a legal nastygram from the professional association saying to stop calling us engineers.

Then I started working for an American company that was like shrug no laws against that.

I just can’t say professional engineer.

The whole thing makes a ton of sense when we’re building bridges or airplane safety rated computer systems, but not so much when building websites or whatnot.

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