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Comment by resource_waste | Hacker News Reader

These are one of those things that make you wonder 'why does anyone (real) Engineer when you can be a Programmer?'

Its more economical to automate the engineering work with software/programming.

(Or if its not more economical, you wouldn't automate it)

Its not like there is a lack of engineering work to automate. Until we reach some sort of assembly-line-steady-state like we have today, I don't really know why someone would be a (real) engineer when you can make more money as a programmer. Real engineering is significantly harder physically, mentally, timing-wise, etc... I don't see any advantage. I will never be going back. I just automate now.

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Even Morris Chang has pointed that out [0]

The whole reason by the semiconductor fabrication industry consolidated in East Asia was due to low operating costs (thanks to massive government subsidies) and relatively low wages for line engineers - you're at best earning $50-70k at TSMC as an IC, despite most likely having some graduate education.

This is why so many Taiwanese engineers immigrate to the US or Mainland China, the former for higher wages and better quality of life and the latter for extremely high wages (no taxation on expats)

> automate the engineering work with software/programming

Depends on the problem space. Some domains in Engineering do not lend themselves well to automation (eg. You will always need a hands on civil or power engineer when building a grid, and Petroleum/Chemical Engineers in the refining space will have to be handy if they're working at the plant)

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/taiwan-tech-king-pe...

This brings up a classic distinction between a "Software Engineer" and a "Programmer". Without getting into a diatribe about semantics: my industry selects for people with software engineering skills. The ability to simply write code is not as valuable as the ability to problem solve, make thoughtful trade offs with known constraints, and design effective high quality solutions.

Now readers may understand "Programmers" to also have these qualities. Fine. I'm not going to argue.

But the same arbitrary distinction need not be applied between "real" engineers and programmers. Many real engineering are programmers.

Real engineers refer to people doing engineering.

Programmers/software 'engineers' refer to people doing some sort of coding.

There is basically 0 engineering in programming, its just a word to supplement pay.

BTW that was a very interesting interview... I kind of agree. However, in order to automate something, you need to know the subject. For example, in digital circuit design, we use these EDA tools, but on top of that we create a lot of custom tools to automate all kinds of phases of the process. You definitely have to know the field you're working on.

The advice goes, Fall in love with the problem. Well, sometimes you fall for a problem that isn’t programming.

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