I used to think this, and then I started interviewing "actual" engineers. Most engineers in the world don't have a license, or a graduate degree. And even those that do confirmed that traditional engineering is often just as much of a shitshow as software engineering.https://twitter.com/stephendpalley/status/1249685093653843974 …
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The actual laws vary country to country. Canada has the strictest laws, where everybody called an "engineer" needs a license. But in most places, only the "principle engineer", the one who signs off on plans, needs a license. The people under them don't.
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We usually think of "engineering" as civil engineer, bridges and stuff. High stakes things. But a lot of engineering is very low-stakes. There was probably an engineer involved in designing your suitcase. In designing your tote bags. In designing the box your purchase comes in.
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Hillel Retweeted Jason Crawford
In most countries, the most regulated subfields of engineering are the ones that directly killed people. In the late 1800's we'd see a major bridge collapse about once per week. https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1216750827987062784 … Regulations are written in blood.
Hillel added,
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But many fields of software engineering are heavily regulated, too. Avionics has DO-178C. Medical devices have IEC 62304. These regulations could probably be a lot better, and will likely be strengthened as more accidents happen. But the point still stands.
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And there's even some ways that we're _better_ at "engineering" than trad is. The biggest is version control. Exactly one of the 17 engineers I talked to had version control in his traditional job. Others: pull requests, open source, practicioner-oriented conferences.
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The converse of this is that just as trad engineering isn't wildly better than software, software isn't wildly different from trad. The common counterclaim is "you don't have to move a bridge after it's built!" I've talked to several civil engineers who had to do exactly that.
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Personally, I do see the need to differentiate software engineers from software developers, for the same reasons that we distinguish electricial engineers from electricians and lineworkers. I want this not to elevate engineers, but to respect developers.
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Replying to @hillelogram
In EE, some schools (e.g., Purdue) also have distinct EE and "EE tech" degrees that are more oriented at putting people into "technician" jobs, see https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/9gf7gn/what_kinds_of_jobs_can_people_who_major_in_eet/e63ug8s/ … for discussion of this, for example.
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Replying to @danluu @hillelogram
I haven't really seen something like this for software (in theory, maybe a software engineering degree is supposed to be more practical, like a "tech" degree is for engineering, but I don't think that's really true in practice for the program I'm familiar with).
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IMO, almost all software jobs are the equivalent of "technician" jobs (e.g., I'd include my own jobs at Google, MS, and Twitter in that category), but people really don't want to admit that, so they pretend that programming is super hard, you need to know a bunch of theory, etc.
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Replying to @danluu @hillelogram
Which means that companies that are actually hiring "techs" would decline to hire people with a "CS tech" degree instead of a CS degree even if that's what the actual job is.
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Replying to @danluu @hillelogram
I think the use of titles like "SRE" and "DevOps" like is part of this. What do you call an engineer you hire to operate a large system? In EE or ME, they might be a tech. But "tech" is low prestige, low pay, etc., inventing a different name for the same job is a way around that
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