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Comment by zachdaniel | Hacker News Reader

This highlights something interesting for me: I've literally never heard anyone "arguing" that they should have the title of "software engineer" or "programmer" or "software developer". I don't know the history of it, and it could easily just be something that I haven't personally witnessed. Ultimately I fall into the camp of someone who would do fine getting quizzed on the computer science stuff, but at the same time it is ultimately about adding value (at least, when we're talking about someone paying you to work for them).

There aren't two camps: "glue software engineers" and "computer scientists". There is a spectrum of people with varying abilities in a wide array of sub-fields.

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>I've literally never heard anyone "arguing" that they should have the title of "software engineer" or "programmer" or "software developer"

this kind of discussions only happens on the internet because in reality nobody gives a *, especially that the only place that seems to distinguish those is the USA

coders/developers/programmers/se/programming ninjas/shamans/system necromants

an artifical titles

I used to work for a small company that developed a cellular radio network design application and also had a radio network engineering consultancy arm. We renamed the product and changed our job titles to include Engineer and Engineering because our sales people said it enabled them to charge more and sell up our services more easily, and I believe them. I was on some sales meetings to provide technical background so I could see they knew what they were doing.

It may seem silly, but words mean things and you need to clearly and effectively articulate why your product is valuable, or what value you bring as an employee. Effective communication is really important.

The entire sector is somewhat fraudulent in its nomenclature, because it’s still a pretty young field. We’re basically going through what mechanics and physics went through about 250 years ago. At that time there were no legally-defined engineers, anyone who could do reading/writing/math could develop entire factories.

At some point it will have to clear up its act. I expect it will take another 50 years or so, as employment demand stops growing and eventually falls, at which point it will make sense for incumbents to raise formal barriers to certain titles.

On of my girls is thinking of doing Computer Science so we were checking out University courses are there are BEng and MEng computing courses with professional accreditation here in the UK.

I do understand it from marketing standpoint, but when we talk between people from this industry, e.g here, then it's pretty weird.

I use "nerd" as my job title.

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