Hacker News Reader

iirc, almost every technical person there who does coding is a 'software engineer' ... even ken thompson, rob pike, guido, etc.

EDIT: k nevermind about ken thompson and rob pike ... but there must be other big-shot hackers whose title is still 'software engineer'

View on HN

Ken Thompson and Rob Pike are designated as Distinguished Engineers - sources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson http://research.google.com/people/r/index.html

Yep. It's like calling Michelangelo a painter. It's true, but...

AFAIK, their SW engineer positions have five levels, so not everybody's equal really.

Well, if Michelangelo had a business card, I think he'd write "painter" or "artist" on it. There isn't much else to say.

What should they be using besides "software engineer"?

Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, Architect, CTO and many other buzzwords.

It's more than five levels. And there're titles for the levels above Senior Software Engineer, but many of the best programmers keep on using plain old "software engineer" because they'd rather be known by their code than by their titles. (Or they make jokes about them, eg. one that I know is officially titled a Principal Engineer, but goes by the title Engineer in Principle.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com