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In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

blog.digital-horror.com

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Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#21

Post by austin-cheney »

zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that th…

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t.

A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer

Never does that occur in software. Most people employed to write software struggle to use giant tools to put text on screen and cannot measure things. That isn’t engineering. By the time a developer does graduate to a level commensurate with engineering we call them senior principles to distinguish them from the false engineers.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#22

Post by fffrantz »

austin-cheney wrote: post #21
zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that th…

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

Also, and it's striking to me that there never was a crackdown on this, but in a lot of countries, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you have an engineering degree from a vetted higher-ed institution and are part of your provincial/state engineers' association.

For example, in N.S., your job title cannot contain the word engineer unless you're registered as an engineer with Engineers Nova Scotia, the provincial regulatory body. And to get the EIT status (engineer in training, the provisional period before becoming a professional engineer), you must hold a CEAB-accredited undergraduate degree. So, software engineers rarely exist and it's mostly software developers in N.S.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#23

Post by jmillikin »

austin-cheney wrote: post #21
zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that th…

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

There's a difference between software developers who glue together libraries to build cat picture voting sites and software developers who write real-time avionics firmware. The second type of developer can reasonably claim to be "software engineers" -- blueprints for a garden shed and for a skyscraper are distinguished by content, not medium.

Between those two limits the line must be drawn somewhere, and honest people will disagree about exactly where, but it seems reasonable to claim that people working in most software development positions of interest to Hacker News are closer to the latter than the former.

If you want to claim that junior developers are apprentices (journeymen? are apprentices interns?) and senior/staff/principal/whatever are engineers then that's fine (if idiosyncratic), but that's not what other people mean when they say or hear "software developers aren't engineers".

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#24

Post by mathgeek »

jmillikin wrote: post #23
austin-cheney wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

There's a difference between software developers who glue together libraries to build cat picture voting sites and software developers who write real-time avionics firmware. The second type of developer can reasonably claim to be "software engineers" -- blueprints for a garden shed and for a skyscraper are distinguished by content, not medium. Between those two limits the line must be drawn somewhere, and honest peop…

To be clearer: when you say the latter, do you mean the latter of your blueprints example or your avionics one? I'd guess that since most developers/engineers are working in things like web apps, fintech, applied AI/crypto, etc. these days that most of the folks contributing to and consuming HN are closer to the "not engineers" in your specific example, but that is indeed just an educated guess.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#25

Post by jmillikin »

mathgeek wrote: post #24
jmillikin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between software developers who glue together libraries to build cat picture voting sites and software developers who write real-time avionics firmware. The second type of developer can reasonably claim to be "software engineers" -- blueprints for a garden shed and for a skyscraper are distinguished by content, not medium. Between those two limits the line must be drawn somewhere, and honest peop…

To be clearer: when you say the latter, do you mean the latter of your blueprints example or your avionics one? I'd guess that since most developers/engineers are working in things like web apps, fintech, applied AI/crypto, etc. these days that most of the folks contributing to and consuming HN are closer to the "not engineers" in your specific example, but that is indeed just an educated guess.

I meant avionics/skyscrapers -- edited to disambiguate.

The idea that most software developers are working in low-skill positions (i.e. distributing the output of an LLM over their Jira queue) is probably not as wrong as I wish it was, but those kind of developers aren't interested in software development as a craft to begin with, so I think (hope?) they aren't anywhere close to comprising most of the HN readership.

Also those positions don't pay as well; HN cares more about the $600k/yr jobs than the $60k/yr ones, and nobody pays $600k/yr for someone to copy-paste NPM invocations from Stack Overflow.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#26

Post by fallingknife »

austin-cheney wrote: post #21
zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that th…

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

Reasons why nobody worthy of the title engineer should take this definition seriously:

1. It is recursive

2. It equates training and education with competence

3. It was written by a bureaucracy

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#27

Post by ahtihn »

fffrantz wrote: post #22
austin-cheney wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

Also, and it's striking to me that there never was a crackdown on this, but in a lot of countries, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you have an engineering degree from a vetted higher-ed institution and are part of your provincial/state engineers' association. For example, in N.S., your job title cannot contain the word engineer unless you're registered as an engineer with Engineers Nova Scotia, the provin…

Why do you want the government to regulate what people are allowed to call themselves when there's no public benefit?

What harm is being caused by software developers calling themselves software engineers?

It's seems like authoritarian power-tripping to want to regulate this.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#28

Post by fallingknife »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #7
roenxi wrote: post #2

> Whether it’s debates like the shift from master to main in git or deeper discussions around inclusivity in language (master/slave rename in redis), these things can shape team culture. Well, that'll certainly do something to team culture. If an EM seemed to be significantly invested in this sort of decisions then I would form strong opinions about their ability to prioritise. This is just not an issue that is going…

You're seemingly presenting this as an option between two binary cases. paraphrasing my impression of the vibe of your comment into the two distinct options: > Your collective opinions about how we work as a team matter > You're only here to work on things that are considered a priority In reality, there is always some nuance/middle ground available > Your opinions about how we work here matter. If this is something…

But changing the name of the default branch is not worth one hour of eng time, much less the annoyance of the other team members. I understand that the term "master" is offensive to upper class white people, but I just don't care. They need to stop acting like crybabies and get on with doing their jobs.

Re: In the trenches: on being an Engineering Manager

#29

Post by sevensor »

austin-cheney wrote: post #21
zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that th…

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in resea…

As someone who holds degrees in Real Engineering, I don’t care what computer programmers call themselves. I agree that most of the time, Software Engineer is an aspirational title, but you could say that about a fair number of electrical engineers too. You’re just not close enough to the field to see what marginal competence looks like. For that matter, Doctor was once an aspirational title for physicians, having been reserved for those licensed to give instruction in church doctrine. My point being, it’s fine. Nobody is ever going to confuse a software engineer for a real engineer, any more than you’re going to ask an MD about the nature of the Trinity.
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