Ask HN: Is Everyone an Engineer Now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Everyone an Engineer Now?

Marketing engineer for marketing people, design engineer for designers, sanitation engineer for janitors — so by that logic, cashier engineer would be next for the people who ring you up at checkout. What is up with this title inflation? Why call yourself an engineer just because you write software? To me, engineers are people who build things and take full responsibility for them — designing a bridge where thousands of lives are in your hands, building an airplane engine, filtering a city's water supply. Not pressing keys on a machine.

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Same as it ever was...

In the 1700's, "executive" referred to a person or group holding supreme legal power

In the 1900's, "executive" described high ranking business people.

In the 2000's, a junior sales rep, 3 months out of high school, will be given the title of account executive.

"Executioner... Execute!"

—The Grand Turk

has a big difference though ... executioner is NOT a "human" anymore

No.

Two common key points about engineering is understanding and responsibility when issues happen. Knowing what to change and why and diagnosing the problem and confidently fixing it when the system goes wrong.

Anyone can play Microsoft Flight simulator.

Does that mean everyone is a qualified captain to fly a commercial plane full of passengers?

> To me, engineers are people who build things and take full responsibility for them

But you can apply the same logic for the software engineer, you take responsibility for the project you develop and lead. You take responsibility to make it work properly in different environments and load. What about software engineers who build software for the planes or rockets?

Yes, well no, but yes.

Software developers call themselves all kinds of incorrect bullshit because nobody tells them otherwise.

In the real world, though, engineers measure things. If a given developer calls themselves engineer but cannot measure things they probably aren't what they claim. This runs deeper than just job titles.

It's a title that confers respect, so it's an easy way to make people feel better about doing jobs that aren't that great. But, to be fair, I'm pretty sure sanitation engineer started out as a tongue in cheek label.

That's a good point about matching finishes—it's the small details like escutcheons that really tie a door together. Have you tried pairing their handles with any particular brand of locks?

What’s your opinion on the software engineers who write the software that controls the systems on those airplanes? How about those who write the software in cars, or medical devices in the ER?

Lives are in their hands as well.

my VA friend is a call center agent and switches to software engineering in a blink of an eye

he is now being paid thru vibe coding as his client doesn't care about the code behind and care only on the "current" outcome

Don't worry about title inflation, it doesn't matter. In lots of companies, everyone is called an executive.

I really hesitated to use the term "ENGINEER" out of respect for those that really do work within the constraints such as quality of service, cost, safety, reliability, time, materials, and regulations. It was never a term I wanted to degrade and it was nice to point the group to the head engineer as opposed to everyone thinking they were engineers and their going about designing their own system when they were really just a smart administrator or technician. Not that I did not respect people using engineering principles, I just wanted to ensure people understood a respect for the actual engineers.

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