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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

#21

Post by eddsh1994 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10
Bingaloopa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 what…

I work on critical software and have the 'engineer' label, but do have a nagging feeling it's less structured than 'normal' engineering disciplines. I'm taking a part-time BEng to see if that's the case though!

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

#22

Post by eddsh1994 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #7
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".

The UK does, you can get chartered engineer status with a BSc & MSc in Software Engineering or Computer Science if it's applied enough with the IET. When I looked at the US i'm 99% sure I found similar degrees in Software Engineering too.

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

#23

Post by eddsh1994 »

angrais wrote: post #9
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is pretty common in the Blockchain space to verify transactions behave correctly when arriving out of sync with tools like Agda, Coq, etc... I assume it's the same on databases & I heard Leslie Lamport give a talk at work where he mentioned AWS used TLA+ to prove some of its properties.

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

#24

Post by melony »

gjvc wrote: post #17
thinking4real wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ramblings of someone who’s low skill and low ambition usually

it's not clear to whom you are referring

People obsessed with protecting the term “engineer” are usually those who want to gatekeep their jobs and salary. In other words, they are worried about competition and want to keep the career “prestigious” and kick the ladder away.

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

#25

Post by googlryas »

cellis wrote: post #16
system2 wrote: post #2

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

Upvoted not because I agree, but because I'm genuinely interested in the discussion. What is the difference in your opinion?

Just my own idiolect but I see SREs and the related competencies and practices as software engineers, whereas I see "programmers" as more of a creative endeavour and "developer" as on the spectrum between programmer and SRE

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

#26

Post by nicce »

switchbak wrote: post #19
system2 wrote: post #2

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

I've worked with a bunch of engineers, and while I respect and admire them tremendously, I'd not want to be lumped in with the kind of code they generally write. And don't get me started on the typical code a scientist writes! Let the downvotes commence. Edit: This is a gentle ribbing, but there really does seem to be a different approach in the philosophy of how to solve a problem. Engineers seem to eschew abstracti…

Very odd. Usually engineers love abstraction where I am coming from. The simpler the solution, better it usually is. Helps understanding the whole system, making it less complex. Simplicity causes less bugs.

Of course, you can do too much abstraction.

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

#27

Post by bee_rider »

switchbak wrote: post #19
system2 wrote: post #2

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

I've worked with a bunch of engineers, and while I respect and admire them tremendously, I'd not want to be lumped in with the kind of code they generally write. And don't get me started on the typical code a scientist writes! Let the downvotes commence. Edit: This is a gentle ribbing, but there really does seem to be a different approach in the philosophy of how to solve a problem. Engineers seem to eschew abstracti…

If they wanted to built their own abstractions they’d be scientists.

Actually this is one thing that has always confused me about “software engineers,” at least as someone with an engineering education who isn’t doing engineering work really: we learned how to do particular types of problems very well and reliably, and generally learned a bunch of math tricks. But at a fundamental level the material that the physics students were learning was basically more complicated. Scientist has always felt like a more prestigious title to me. Since most programmers have computer science degrees, why don’t we call ourselves computer scientists?

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

#28

Post by cscurmudgeon »

nicce wrote: post #26
switchbak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a bunch of engineers, and while I respect and admire them tremendously, I'd not want to be lumped in with the kind of code they generally write. And don't get me started on the typical code a scientist writes! Let the downvotes commence. Edit: This is a gentle ribbing, but there really does seem to be a different approach in the philosophy of how to solve a problem. Engineers seem to eschew abstracti…

Very odd. Usually engineers love abstraction where I am coming from. The simpler the solution, better it usually is. Helps understanding the whole system, making it less complex. Simplicity causes less bugs. Of course, you can do too much abstraction.

Have you never run into Matlab code with a few hundred global variables mutating frequently? :)

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

#29

Post by bee_rider »

melony wrote: post #24
gjvc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not clear to whom you are referring

People obsessed with protecting the term “engineer” are usually those who want to gatekeep their jobs and salary. In other words, they are worried about competition and want to keep the career “prestigious” and kick the ladder away.

I’m under the impression that programmers’ salary progression typically compares quite favorably to classical engineers’.

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

#30

Post by kfk »

thomzi12 wrote: post #20

Hey everyone, OP here -- thanks for reading or discussing. Curious if anyone else has switched from data science to software engineering, or has thoughts on comparing the two as a career choice. I'm all ears!

I run a small data consulting company and whenever I find an open minded data scientist or analyst I tell them to consider data and software engineering or business analytics (learning about real business problems). DA, BA and SE roles are harder to find, manage more complexity, but most importantly are closer to having an impact as they are the ones close to prod. It’s a hard pitch, especially for juniors, AI and DS are very hyped but it’s hard to guess how much they will grow (or not). My current hunch is that AI and DS will be productized in libraries and services, so the majority of companies will not need people fully dedicated to build models.
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