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Comment by fffrantz | Hacker News Reader

Also, and it's striking to me that there never was a crackdown on this, but in a lot of countries, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you have an engineering degree from a vetted higher-ed institution and are part of your provincial/state engineers' association.

For example, in N.S., your job title cannot contain the word engineer unless you're registered as an engineer with Engineers Nova Scotia, the provincial regulatory body. And to get the EIT status (engineer in training, the provisional period before becoming a professional engineer), you must hold a CEAB-accredited undergraduate degree. So, software engineers rarely exist and it's mostly software developers in N.S.

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Why do you want the government to regulate what people are allowed to call themselves when there's no public benefit?

What harm is being caused by software developers calling themselves software engineers?

It's seems like authoritarian power-tripping to want to regulate this.

In the United States it is illegal to identify yourself as a police officer when you are not, and there are clear consequences for violating such laws. Professional titles either carry some sort of significance or they don't. The very clear consequence of titles/labels that aren't valid is fraud and there are very many laws in the US about this for a variety of venues.

It seems the only reason for a person to identify themself as some sort of engineer when they are not is fraud. What other would a person have to misrepresent themself?

Many professions have legally protected titles. In the USA it's illegal for someone without a CPA license to claim the title of "certified public accountant", and since engineering failures can have fatal consequences the same protection is offered to the title "engineer" (or "professional engineer", etc) in some countries.

You might argue that it's the certification that matters, not the title, but the title of "structural engineer" has been around for approximately as long as humans have been stacking up rocks to sleep under; the certifications have not.

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