What's your opinion?
Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#2I really think this falls under my opinion of most titles in software. There's so much variation with little differentiation or standardization. Is it entry-level or junior, midlevel or intermediate? What defines a senior dev/engineer? You may have people that have the title of developer who do more "engineering" (however you want to define it) than someone with the engineer title at another company. Just the way someone might be a senior dev at one company but not be considered a senior dev at another.
Don't get me started on companies calling themselves Agile, etc...
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#3I think it is wrong to give the same title to everyone who happens to write a lot of code. Writing code is such a huge area, people who write code already outnumbers Engineers in USA, giving all of those the same title just doesn't make sense. Programming microcontrollers or writing a web frontend or writing math libraries are very different fields requiring vastly different skills, calling them the same thing just creates confusion.
That is like calling bio engineers and electronics engineers the same thing.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#4Nope, I'm a 'traditional engineer' in the sense I have a Mechanical engineering background by education and formative work experience.
The term engineer doesn't matter really, software developer / programmer is just fine.
Only time it does is if you are a professional engineer/ chartered engineer, who needs to sign-off a bridge design or something safety critical, then you need a 'real engineer'. Super rare outside of construction and aviation.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#5This label would seem obtuse twenty years ago. Traditionally, engineers
require an empirical understanding of physical phenomena, e.g., fluid
dynamics, thermodynamics, etc.
In the Venn diagram, the intersection of "engineer" and "coder" circles is large, but the "coder" circle is 100x bigger than the "engineer" circle.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#6IMO the use of the term "engineer" is sadly now meaningless. Engineer implies an understanding of the world around you, which implies calculus and physics, and other things depending on your academic and professional focus. Today people whose math is limited to subnet address calculation call themselves "network engineers" (and believe it). People who spin AWS hosts with Ansible are "devops engineers". People who know how to program but don't have an intuitive sense of what is and what is not congruent with science (an intuition that engineering school hopes to instill), and hence best practices, call themselves "software engineers".
The term means nothing now.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#7No, we're not engineers. If anything, the prevalence of that term has taken away the truth of what we do. There is a lot of logic and analysis in our work, and it does require an understanding of how some systems work, but ultimately we are artisans, not engineers, and it would be better if our titles expressed as much.
"Software Artisan" sounds cheesy, but I never minded the good old "Software Developer" title.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#8I think software engineer is a great title.
First of all, it's always "software engineer", never just "engineer". And I don't know if everyone who works in software should have it (that seems silly) but I don't see a problem with the title at all. It's a cool sounding title that's been around for decades at this point. Many people have this job title, have degrees in software engineering, and have built their entire careers with the name. It's way too late to be gatekeeping the "engineer" word.
I really don't share any of the skepticism other people in this thread seem to have. It seems overly pedantic and ultimately pointless.
(Next on the list - do data scientists deserve to be called that way, are people with PhDs really doctors and are SSH tunnels offensive to real-world underground passages)
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#9I don't think so. Computer programming and software engineering, for instance, are two different types of activity.
Re: Ask HN: Should everyone who work on software be called an Engineer?
#10This label would seem obtuse twenty years ago. Traditionally, engineers require an empirical understanding of physical phenomena, e.g., fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, etc. In the Venn diagram, the intersection of "engineer" and "coder" circles is large, but the "coder" circle is 100x bigger than the "engineer" circle.
> This label would seem obtuse twenty years ago.
It's been around since at least the 1960s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#History