Comment by guessmyname | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guessmyname | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I recently visited Berlin to research about the German Freelance Visa [1] after being rejected by multiple local startups that were looking for Software Engineers with +3 years of work experience. I asked for feedback to one of them and was told that I should not consider myself an "engineer" because I don't have an university degree in the field, even with +9 years of work experience. I asked more people about the topic and most of them agreed that I should call myself a Software Developer instead since I am self-taught. What do you think about it?

EDIT: To add a bit more, I don't mind the title, you always end up doing more or less the same things, many companies love the titles though. Some of my friends have titles like "Lead Developer", "Senior Software Engineer", "CTO", "Back-End Developer", etc and they all do pretty much the same thing that I do, so I don't see the point on nitpicking my resume. I will surely take the advice and start calling myself a "Software Developer" instead of "Software Engineer" because I agree that calling myself an engineer without a formal education is misleading.

[1] https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/305249/en/

Yes, German companies love their degrees...

I work as a Freelancer too and all the German contract jobs 'require' a degree 'or similar experience'.

In the end, explaining 'similar experience' is a struggle.

You even have to pay less taxes if you do 'consulting of higher value' as a freelancer (called freiberufler status) but explaining this without a degree is a struggle too.

In the end I'm happy about my B.Sc. in Computer Science. When I tell people I have it, I get no more questions asked...

Yeah, the Freiberufler status is crazy.

I don't mind having grown up in Germany---but I don't miss never having worked there.

20 years in the industry with no degree: Engineer is just a word. Call yourself that if it gets you the job.

This is what you can find on the wikipedia entry on engineers [0]:

> The foundation education of an engineer is typically a 4-year bachelor's degree or in some countries, a master's degree in an engineering discipline..

I would add further that, following the above, a software engineer is someone who has a formal higher education in engineering applied to the design and implementation of software systems. Under these definitions, a developer without formal university education is not a software engineer, although he may be technical competent to design and implement software systems. In a nutshell, the difference is not on "competence" or "skills" but the lack of formal education..

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer

Sounds harsh, but knowing that Germans tend to be direct I wouldn't read too much into it. Also depends on the role. Universities teach programming from an angle which optimizes computation time over human time, even though that's rarely what industrial programming is about. For example, just recently I asked my professor can I reuse code which would achieve the required behavior in one line over creating a completely new approach. The professor asked me why would I want to do it inefficiently. I asked isnt it efficient to do it in one line rather than reimplementing the functionality. He said that you are technically wrong, but proceeded to show me how to do it nonetheless.

In addition, the programming languages used to teach things are old. We are still given examples in Fortran and C is taught on freshman courses.

The academic world is vastly different. For that reason, if I would personally apply for a software engineer role which is about web application development and I would be said that I need a degree for that, it would raise a red flag for me.

I don't see how you can say you're a Software Engineer when you don't have a national accreditation or standards body and peer review processes. Backed by research studies via Empirical evidence.

Electronic Engineer, Aircraft Engineer, ect... Have more standards and accreditation backing them up.

In other words half the fun is trying to figure out what they want.

From what I can tell, the main difference in the US is that most states have a so called "industrial exemption" which waives the license requirement for engineers who work for employers under certain conditions. Depending on one's field, (e.g., electrical and mechanical), most engineers are unlicensed.

Also, the law in my state is less concerned with the specific title, than about what people actually do. In general, professions that could affect public safety are regulated. That includes haircutting, K-12 teaching, and engineering.

Still, similar to what people do in Germany, my friends who have their own businesses, but are unlicensed, choose vague business names that avoid the words "engineering" or "design." My LLC is "technology."

Title to me doesnt matter. I dont have degree either .Software arena moved to quick with lots of framework and new platform mobile. Most university will teach basic and some lecturer dont even understand what they teach at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com