Controversies over the term Engineer | Hacker News Reader

Controversies over the term Engineer

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17 pointsblogimus24 comments

I passed the EIT exam, worked under professional engineers for four years, and obtained letters of recommendation from them, all so that I had the right to sit for the professional engineering exam. I then took that exam and passed it. I pay $200 per year to maintain my registered professional engineer status in my state. All this gives me the right to stamp legal documents as an engineer ... and be held legally accountable for designs that cause injury to others, either physical or financial. I wear a stainless steel ring on the little finger of my right hand that was given to me to remind me as I sign off on designs, that the safety of others is in my hands.

I am allowed to put on my business card, my website, and my consulting advertisements that I am an engineer. Theoretically, you are not, if you haven't done these things, and a case could be made that you should not be able to, just like you don't get to call yourself a doctor or a lawyer.

The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years, which is a shame. I don't see this trend suddenly reversing, so I don't lose sleep over it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel a little regretful over it's demise.

Out of curiosity, have you found that having a PE licence has been useful at all in your work?

I studied Software Engineering at an engineering school accredited by whatever organization regulates the practice of engineering in Ontario. I remember at a few points in the program, they made a point of saying that once we graduated, we could apply for a licence (after we spent time apprenticing), but it was never clear to me why having a PE licence would be useful. I don't know anyone from my graduating class that's bothered to apply for a licence either.

For one thing, in the US, you're not allowed to have an "Engineering" company without having a P.E. on board. Beyond that, I've come across a few positions here and there that require a P.E. It typically has more to do with legally needing a P.E. to supervise a project than simply wanting someone with that experience.

It really depends on the field. Mechanical and civil engineers are the most likely to get a PE, whereas electrical and computer engineers are IIRC the least likely. Mechanical and civil engineers are just more likely to be in situations where it's advantageous to have a PE. (Owning a small engineering services company, for example)

The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years

So, do railway engineers (as they are known in the USA and Canada) take the oath and wear the little ring? Or did that "serious deflation" you refer to start sometime around the birth of the railroad? ;)

I think the culprit here is not deflation of the language -- the language has always been ambiguous -- but rather inflation of the scope of engineering education. It's not just for P.E.s anymore. If you believe the term engineer should be restricted to P.E.s you should start by explaining that to every academic engineering department I've ever seen, all of which are happy to hand out "engineering degrees" to graduating "engineering students" who tend to be called "engineers" for short, whether or not they go on to get a P.E. (which, as you point out, is a lot more effort and a rather impressive accomplishment).

I literally had a Ph.D. in EE before I even heard the term "Professional Engineer". [1] Not because my school was training people to practice without a license, but because they're training people in skills -- like my old field, semiconductor laser engineering -- that don't require P.E. certification. Of every EE Ph.D. I know, I know of exactly one who actually got a P.E. certification.

And, only slightly off the subject, need I point out that quite a few Ph.Ds have "Doctor" as part of their name? It's quite common in many countries, including the USA. I don't do this, because I don't work in academia, and outside the academy one tends to get confused with an M.D., but according to this fun article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)

you are required to use your academic title in certain legal situations in Austria, and German Ph.D.s tend to use the title all of the time.

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[1] Because my undergraduate degree was in physics. I presume that if I'd studied undergrad EE someone would have mentioned along the way that my B.S. wouldn't actually qualify me to design a commercially-available table lamp without adult supervision.

Some schools are probably better, but I left my university after learning from graduated students that the dream course I was looking forward to, where all of the requirements would make sense and I would finally be told what I can do with my newfound knowledge, didn't exist. One friend of mine said that his BSEE degree entirely drained his confidence to accomplish anything in the real world. One could argue that a university degree should be purely academic, but this school's program wasn't too helpful there, either.

To sum up, the only ways I know of to realize that you are or aren't qualified to do something are to try it until you get rich or get sued, or work with someone else who already has.

I completely agree with you. While I still haven't gotten around to getting my P.E. (and if I did, it would probably be more for fun than practicality), I share your sentiment. It is a shame. Probably won't change. But I don't lose sleep over it.

> The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years

Sorry, but I don't buy that. The term 'engineer' has been around since the Renaissance. Licensed Professional Engineers have only been around since the 19th century.

Nobody is suggesting that just anybody should be allowed to call themselves a Professional Engineer (or the equivalent in various jurisdictions). The attempt in Quebec and a few other places to outlaw most common uses of a word that has been in the English lexicon for 6 or 7 centuries is, frankly, insane.

I use the title "Programmer". I think it's much more accurate than "Software Engineer", which brings to mind a bunch of guys with slide-rules and pocket protectors making a UML diagram for some offshore Java developers to "implement".

Remember that Knuth's book is called "The Art of Computer Programming", not "The Art of Software Engineering".

At my university, the SE degree was much more about how to handle projects to help improve requirements gathering, combat schedule slippage, and other sorts of topics to improve project success rates, rather than spending time on overdesigning applications. I feel like it was a better use of time and tuition compared to focusing on design patterns, or programming languages and frameworks.

That's because Engineering isn't Art. It's not Craftsmanship either. If you're really practicing Engineering, then you're using a lot of math and a lot of well-understood design principles to design whatever it is you're creating before you create it. You're able to prove, based solely on the design, that when you get around to actually building it the thing is going to meet all applicable requirements. The PE signs off on that design as a guarantee that it's going to be good. And /then/ you build it.

Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go. Programming is almost always like this, because it's just too damn hard, time-consuming, and expensive to document the design in sufficient detail ahead of time. No requirements documentation is as detailed as the final source code, when it comes to describing precisely how the software must behave.

That, I think, is why software development will always be Art or Craftsmanship rather than a true Engineering discipline. If you're designing a bridge, it's much cheaper and faster to design it on paper than with steel, because paper drawings and specifications are able to capture all of the details that matter. If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every iron atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software, there is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first because every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and the software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without actually writing the source code, so we skip that level of design. We're craftsmen instead, designing as we go.

"Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go."

Interesting. Any woodworkers here? I've been under the impression that furniture makers would first work out the design, careful cut the pieces, then assemble them.

Likewise, many painters will do several sketches, then carefully build up the final piece when working on canvas.

Of course there are artists who make stuff up as they go, but the suggestion that artists and craftsmen do not, as a rule, employ careful planning and detailed steps in the creation of their work is false.

There's an art to engineering, and there's engineering in art.

"If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every iron atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software, there is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first because every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and the software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without actually writing the source code, so we skip that level of design."

    Blueprints :: High-level source code

    Construction of physical bridge ::Compiler/interpreter

Discuss. :)

I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer) not to give the term "Engineer" too much weight, since it was explained to me that the janitors in my grandfather's office were called "Sanitation Engineers".

Subway hires "sandwich engineers" . . . or so I've heard.

When I worked there we were called sandwich artists (2003).

> I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer)

Phrases like this give me a strong sense of history.

I nearly knocked my Arduino Lilypad into the trash the other day, and while straightening up, moved a G1 and two Sansa MP3 players.

It occurred to me that I have a perhaps a dozen computers in my house.

A great-grandfather was listed in the 1900 census as a "stationary engineer"; the next two show him as "machinist", and I'm guessing he had not changed trades. I doubt his schooling went beyond about 8th grade, for his father was a farmer in northern Germany.

Controversies like this are, I think, just another indicator of the changing face of careers. Here in NYC web developers are called everything from "software engineers" to "developers" to "coders" to "presentation layer engineers." And that doesn't taken into account the front- vs back-end issue.

That being said, I appreciate that many certifications (MCSE, ZCSE) use the term "certified engineer" as, I do believe that the term engineer should qualify someone with a more developer skillset.

I have two engineering degrees (Mechanical and Electrical), but make my living from my startup and web-development consultancy. Needless to say I encounter the misuse of the term engineer quite often and cringe everytime. In fact, one of my good friends started to refer to himself as an Information Engineer, not having any formal degree, and when I asked him about it, he said he hadn't even really given it a thought and changed his title right then and there.

I know people don't do it maliciously, and many even do it tongue-in-cheek (e.g. "Sanitation Engineer", "Happiness Engineer", and many others I've encountered). So, like cryptnoob, I don't lose any sleep over it and really don't take it too personally. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. I kind of wish the term "Engineer" were regulated in the US (not just P.E.), but that's life. And I'm sure someone with a Masters in Engineering would be bothered that I can describe myself as an Engineer, having only a couple of B.S.'s.

I like how us "true" engineers in Canada are given an iron ring. It's like we have our own little secret club :)

Sorry to correct you on that, but the iron ring doesn't make you an engineer in Canada. At least not in Quebec, where I'm from. They make that quite clear during the ceremony.

The iron ring has moral implications, while the title of engineer has legal ones.

The article is incomplete. You can't use the title "Engineer" in Texas without a P.E.

You should help complete it then... it's Wikipedia :-)

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