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"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering?

What is system engineering?

It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

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The subject of what constitutes an engineer or what entitles a professional to the "engineer" title has been discussed ad nauseum here on HN.

Spoiler: "engineer" as a title for someone who does computer programming and software development without a license is perfectly fine and acceptable in the USA. In Canada, however, it's probably not.

You say the USA as a whole, but IIRC there are a couple states that do require it to be able to use the title "Software Engineer".

Those states you mention do require it, but what I was getting at is that in general terms Americans don't blink when someone refers to an engineer without reference to licensing.

That's why? So if we merely fixed job titles we wouldn't have this problem of fraudsters?

It would be a good first step measure. There is lots to clean up in the IT industry.

Hate to break it to you I worked for a well known civil engineering consultancy and some of our pitch's where economical with the actuality about our engineers experience :-)

> "Look at who you're replying to."

> "Principal engineer"

"Look at who you're replying to." meant "tptacek" or "tyre"? Or both - a general advice?

I do, in my home country it is not legal to sign off projects as engineer if not certified by the Engineering Order as such.

A certain level of quality is expected, not labeling one selfs as engineers after 1 month bootcamp.

I have no idea if there are rules in my country about calling yourself an "engineer", but you can only use the title 'ir' or 'ing', both of which mean ingenieur, which translates to engineer, if you've graduated from a technical university or high-level technical school (technical college? higher trade school? 'ing' is from a level lower than a university degree).

> What is system engineering?

https://www.incose.org/systems-engineering

I know what it is as I am an actual system engineer; the question was for our self-proclaimed "principal engineer" to see if he has a clue.

> Have you formal education in engineering?

Good point. In many countries getting a degree in engineering takes way, way more effort than in computer science.

Then it takes 10-15 years of work to be called "senior engineer".

And from family experience (uk) its more a case of who you know not what you know.

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