Hacker News Reader

Comment by leansensei | Hacker News Reader

Oh no, we do, because the software world has been abusing what engineering means for decades, in order to inflate job titles. Most people are programmers, not software engineers, and that's OK.

View on HN

What we do is absolutely engineering, there’s just a lot less credentialing upfront and rigor before something is released, because usually people’s lives do not depend on it and it’s easy to release updates.

But it is indeed engineering, and that’s OK.

Why is it engineering what makes it engineering

We use science and technology to design, build, and maintain complex systems that solve real-world problems.

Do you have some other definition of engineering that excludes SWE?

That’s the thing we don’t need to invent a vague definition to attempt to cast a wide net

Here is the definition https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/engineer...

The credentials and rigor are what Professional Engineering is supposed to include. The credentials help give bite to Ethics Boards and other tools used to keep the entire profession honest and safe. The rigor is supposed to include things like making sure that you are solving the right problems.

Many people's lives do depend on software today. Insurance software dictates who gets treatment and who doesn't; that's real lives at stake. Finance software controls access to things like food and shelter; that's real lives at stake. Firmware in prosthetics and diabetic injectors and so on and so forth. Software runs the world, we pat ourselves on the back saying, but forget the world is full of real lives.

Doing engineering with processes that are suboptimal with respect to a subset of the goals of engineering doesn’t somehow make it not engineering.

Sure, I think many of us are doing the best engineering work that we can given the industry situation. I've also seen so many of my peers, some of our brightest minds, waste their careers on stuff that a proper Ethics Board might stop or at least ameliorate. I can work to be the best engineer I can be and still wish we were an industry that actually respected engineering, not just used the title like a party favor that has no inherent meaning.

Maybe you're an outlier seeing as you're even on this forum. Most other non software engineers I know do not give a single thought about "title inflation," it does not even register in their minds as a topic to think about.

My resume includes a bunch of time at a primarily Civil Engineering firm and one of the things I took away from that was also some respect for this "title inflation" issue. That company would not allow any "Engineer" in a title that didn't involve someone without up-to-date PE credentials. Technically my title the whole time there was "Senior Software Developer". I still feel guilty switching my resume back to "Senior Software Engineer" to not have to explain that "gap" to software interviewer who somehow think "Developer" is a less important title than "Engineer" and don't understand title inflation in our industry.

(At one point I even debated the value of getting PE credentials at my age for extra leverage in that company.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com