Ask HN: What role do you identify as in your occupation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What role do you identify as in your occupation?

8 pointsjamesknelson13 comments

Hi HN,

I'm curious as to how people see their role in their occupation, and the story behind your view.

It would also be interesting to hear if other people disagree with the fit between a given role and a given story!

Depends on the context. If random people ask, I usually say "I'm a consultant" and then if they ask "what kind of consultant" I explain that I specialize in big-data / data-warehousing / data-mining and the like. Sometimes I'll volunteer that I'm working on a software startup.

But in a different context, like at a startup related event, I'll identify as "Founder" and/or "CEO".

If the person asking is really obviously not technical, I may give a generic "I'm an IT guy" or something.

Personally, I see myself as a guy who likes exploring new technology and ways to apply technology to solve problems. If I had to give myself a title, I'd say "problem solver" or "troubleshooter". shrug

My contract says my title is software engineer, but titles don't mean much in a small company. Which I kind of like.

That said, I didn't study Software Engineering at university. And so, in almost 10 years in various roles writing software, this is the first one in which I've allowed this title to apply (previously I've had: Systems Analyst, Software Developer, Bioinformatics Technologist, Instrumentation Engineer, etc).

I also didn't study systems engineering (which is a real discipline responsible for remarkable achievements such as taming the complexity of massive systems such as modern airliners), but not that Systems Engineering, I mean the wishy-washy, everyone's-an-engineer sense of Systems Engineer as typically used in software land - that's what I think a more accurate title for my role would be.

I work on the hardware for our widget, as well as the user-facing software. I set up our automated build system that builds everything including our ARM Linux OS image, including kernel and bootloader. I established the production and Q/A checklists. I actually do some of the assemblies. I determine what components we use, and I work with real engineers to validate and test and update customer spec sheets accordingly. I answer questions like, "what kind of power system would let us get XX hrs runtime at YY% duty cycle".

I have a complete picture in my head of the product, its capabilities and limitations. When it goes wrong, at any level, I'm the one that has to fix it. I've never worked with a Systems Engineer at a big tech company but it seems as if this is the sort of scope they work with. Except they probably don't have to write the userland code as well :)

I really wish that there was an acceptable title similar to "Engineer" that wasn't engineer. Early in my career, I was saddled with the "Software Engineer" title at a large telecommunications company. I suffered a lot from real engineers complaining that I wasn't a real engineer because I didn't study engineering. Eventually, I decided that they were right, but that "Software Engineering" wasn't a real engineering discipline anyway (at least not yet). How many "software engineers" know the mean time between failures of their systems? When they integrate a library, can they enumerate the risks involved? Even on a team that prides itself on very low defect density, I don't think we can really call this discipline "engineering" in the way that other other disciplines are "engineering".

Of course, when I speak to young software engineers now (real engineers who studied software engineering), they often violently disagree with me. This often strikes me as being a bit ironic. What's even more ironic is that after 30 years in the software industry I know considerably more about "software engineering" than anyone I have met coming out of an engineering program (which is not surprising, and I mean no disrespect to the people who have such a degree -- in 30 years, I'm sure they will know considerably more than I do now).

I tend to view people's confidence that they can predict the properties of software in the same way you could predict the properties of different metals as being hubris. One programmer has a late night out and drinks too much. The next day, still woozy from the night before he writes some code. It looks all right a first glance, but he accidentally overwrites some memory that makes a task in another part of the machine completely fall over. There is 4 million lines of code and this software error sleeps until memory usage is just right. Hopefully it is not medical software...

Having said that, my colleagues who are actual engineers reassure me that real engineering is also fraught with such random behaviour, so I'm being too picky. It's always something I think about while riding elevators.

Call yourself a Software Developer, regardless of your title. All my development roles on my resume say exactly that, regardless of what my employers called it. When "civilians" ask what you do, say you write software.

It's your resume, put what you want on it.

I agree, this isn't engineering. Where's my supervising Principal Engineer, and where's my path to that?

But if someone wants to call themselves a Software Engineer, or a Custodial Engineer, of a Software Custodian, I don't really care.

> I agree, this isn't engineering. Where's my supervising Principal Engineer, and where's my path to that?

1. Not all engineers in traditional engineering disciplines, like EE, work as/under licensed engineers, with supervising Principle Engineers (depends on the jurisdiction, job, and individual). If they've been trained and are working as electrical engineers, should they call themselves something other than electrical engineers at that point?

2. NCEES, who state engineering boards depend upon to license engineers, considers software engineers to be an engineering discipline, as do a number of US states. There are already a number of software engineers who have passed the software engineering PE and FE exams and who are now licensed engineers. There are even more on the way. NCEES started offering software engineers PE exams back in 2012, now over half of US states offer the exam [1].

1. http://ncees.org/about-ncees/news/ncees-introduces-pe-exam-f...

In my current gig I was originally hired to help the developers improve their ability to write software using agile (specifically XP) techniques. Rather cautiously I put "Agile Coach" on my business card. I'm not one of those coaches who focusses on management interaction. I sit down with programmers and pair program with them. I help break down stories with program managers. I introduce techniques to people and sit with them while they are learning to use them. My main goal is not to introduce a system, but rather to work with people and wait for opportunities to show why one way of doing things will be more successful than another way. It's a bit like a sports coach who will watch you do something, then introduce corrections, but always showing you how that correction made things better.

For family reasons, I had had to move back to Japan from the UK and ended up working on contract for the same company. In the end, coaching from 9000 km away is pretty difficult. The communication bandwidth just isn't there. So now I primarily write code. My boss encourages me to continue "coaching" individual people, but I have to limit myself to one person at a time.

I don't view myself as a coach any more. In truth, I have very little influence over what generally happens across the team any more. I go months where I don't even speak to some people on the team. I suppose I am mentoring individual people and cranking out code, which is a contractor's job.

My role now is "contract programmer" I guess. I still pair program about 50% of the time (and with a 8/9 hour time difference, that's fairly tough on the sleep schedule... but it gives me plenty of time to ride my bike during the day ;-) )

Web Developer. I develop things for the web.

I primarily use Python but I also use JS and SQL. If I need to write some Ruby, I'll learn to write some Ruby. If I need to use some Go I learn to use some Go. so the title:

  Python, JavaScript, SQL Web Developer but also whatever other language I need to learn

doesn't seem as elegant as Web Developer.

Same boat. Except if the audience seems like someone who might then refer to me as a Web Designer (and there are a lot of these people), I will probably then call myself a "computer programmer."

I prefer Techno Mage in that instance

Relocatable engineering department component.

I'll just throw Patio11's famous rant here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

I see myself as a UX Generalist.

I've been doing freelance development as a solo developer for a number of years now, and this entails doing everything from interviewing users, gathering requirements, building the actual product, and then iterating based on user feedback. My reasoning for seeing my role as a "UX generalist", as opposed to a "JavaScript generalist" or "full-stack engineer" is that it feels like in this role, development comes second to actually providing the customer with the best experience.

I'd love to hear what words other people would use for the same role!

I was actually hired as a simple KPO data associate in a reputed e commerce company y. Now with python it became data analyst. The closest thing i wanna become I data scientist as growing potential for my knowledge and lifestyle.

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